Los Angeles

Amer. football  Beer pong   Hector, Bjoern &Will  Big Will At the stadium   Hollywood blv.  Brad Pitts prints  Bjoern amdires G. Clooney W.Smiths big feet   A Big star  In the „Kodak Theater“  Wills sister & Jana 

Yee, Ricky Martin  Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive Fashion    Nicole, Will, Bjoern   Jana at the Bold & Beautiful set  At the baseball game    Partying after we won    Whtie BMW, yeee  Hooters baby  With Wills coworkers  

Big Wiiiiiiiilllllllll wasn t there to pick us up from the greyhound bus station, which was located in a shady part of L.A. Bjoern called him from a public phone inside of the station and Will told him that he would be there in 45 minutes. The 45 minutes turned into 2 hours, because Will s friend Cesar who was driving drove to the wrong bus station. So we were stranded with all these funky people, waiting. Finally Will showed up and it was all good. When I met him in San Sebastian, Spain in 2000 he weighed around 90 kilos, next time I saw him in the States two years later he was up to 100 kilos. Then we saw each other during the world cup 2006 in Germany and he was up to 130s. Now he hit the jackpot and weighs 150 kilos. He carries his extra punds around with style though. Don t you ever losse em. All this extra mass makes up for a big ass soundbox. Will is the worst snorer in the universe and we were forced to share a room with him. On top of that he is always the first who falls asleep. Then he just opens his mouth and produces this killing sound – you have to experience it. Well so we had no choice than to get drunk a lot, good excuse heh. The first night we arrived we just chilled, had a couple of beers in a local pub and went home to face the music. In the next morning we got up at 8 o  clock in the morning to go to see an american college football game. Well the game started at noon, but we had to do a little socializing outside the stadium, which involved seeing Edgar (aka Hector, what s up bro) and a lot of beers. We saw the game, sitting in the sun, absolutely no shade, but it was actually pretty exciting. Afterwards we had a nice barbecue with Will s familiy and some friends, went to a pub that had german beer and afterwards to a private party of one of Will s sisters college „friends“ (free food and drinks…) –> free the goddamn birds.

Another day we visited Will at his work place. He is working for CBS, one of the big american broadcasters. They produce TV shows like CSI New York for example. Will managed to get us onto the set of „The bold and the beautiful“ (Reich und Schoen). Jana is a big fan, hahaha. We talked to one of the main actors, who is playing Eric Forester. Good fun. But the absolute highlight was the game of the L.A. Dodgers against the San Diego Padres. Before we went we thought pretty bad of baseball. I thought it would be the most boring sport in the world. But it actually is a lot of fun, if you see an exciting game and you got some drinks in your system. We went there with Will and his girlfriend Jacky and had a great time. The L.A. Dodgers ended up winning so we were all happy and the celebrations could begin. Will we had a great time in L.A., thanks for having us your one of the best. Can t wait to see you again, I am expecting to see 200 kilos next time…

LAS VEGAS!!!

Vegas, baby!  Family pics    With my uncle & cousin in „Belagio“ “Paris Hotel“     The botanic garden in Mirage  Cirque du Soleil show „Love“    Wrestling at home   Bjoern & Chrisi     “Planet Hollywood“   Partying with my aunt (in the green dress)  The „Cathouse“ in Luxor    LAX in Luxor   View from the night club VooDoo Lounge View from „Palms“ club On the sky train in „Rio“   The Ghost bar  In the Playboy club  Happy Bjoern    

After rejoining in San Diego we went to Las Vegas again (for Jana) to meet with Jana s uncle, aunt and little (monster-)cousin. They have been living in the states for eight years and finally have a good life in the city that never sleeps. We arrived by bus and were picked up by Jana s aunt. If you think about an aunt you have the picture of an old woman. Forget about it. Jana s aunt looks like she is in her end twenties and she has more energy than both of us together. So she asked us if we wanted to go to the strip directl or would like to go home first. She was kind of surprised when we told her that we would just like to relax the evening at their place and not doing anything. Tha next day the whole family took us for a walk on the strip and showed us all the big hotels and casinos. We went to see a Cirque du soleil show (for free, because Jana s aunt and uncle know someone who works there), we went out with Jana s aunt and her sister one night to see the clubs LAX and cathouse where her uncle works. On another night we went to see a show called „Jubilee“ one of Vegas oldest shows (got in for free, because Jana s aunt knew someone who works there). We did not play at all except from the 1 cent slot machines in order to get drinks for free. Another night we went over to Jana s aunts sisters place to celebrate her sons 20 birthday. As you see we had a pretty nice program and it certainly feld nice to be with the family. Time flew by and we were on our way to Los Angeles feeling excited about meeting up with Bjoern s old friend Will….

Disneyland

                       

Newport Beach

All white party     

The Hoff, welcome Shermans   

  

Partying with Matt     

The Stash Rock Stars   

BBQ   

Lagoon across Matts place 

The O.C.     

Beer Pong  Longest tongue  

Good times

From San Diego we went to Newport Beach to visit Bjoern s friend Matt and his Surfbuddies. We were welcomed by german Volksmusik and a huge poster of David Hasselhoff in front of the german flag. Good laugh. We had to get ready fast, because the guys wanted to take us to a All White Party, meaning everyone had to dress up completely in white. Matt had bought some white shirts and hats for us. We changed and of we were to the party. We were introduced to a game called „Beerpong“ and Bjoern fell in love. Matt just tried to make us drink all day and night to express his joy seeing us again. So we ended up pretty smashed. Matt would not be Matt if he wouldn t have wake us up in the next morning at 7:30 o clock, because we had to go surfing aproximately 30 minutes away from where he lived. Bjoern did not have a board so the guys gave him a thick 7`0. I had such a hard time getting my shit together in the water, it seemed that everything was shaking so much and i could not even sit on the board. Must have been the alcohol. Matt had so many friends living around in Newport so that we knew so many people we could not even remember their names. Matt s friend hooked us up to go to Disneyland for free (see pictures above) and we had a great time. Except from that our days consisted of surfing, chilling and partying with the guys. After three days Jana went to Las Vegas to see her aunt, uncle and her little cousin who live there. Bjoern stayed in Newport and enjoyed being with his friends playing beerpong and surfing. Thanks Matt we had a great time…

The U.S.A.!!! San Diego

Coronado island    

Downtown San Diego  Fast Food 

Horse races    

JC s place  

JC s birthday   

The party     

Mike and Andrew     

We decided to fly from Puerto Vallarta to Tijuana and cross the border to the states by foot, because flights into the states were far more expensive. We did not realize that Tijuana is currently really dangerous with drug wars going on and kidnappings happening. Well we made it over the border safely and were picked up by Bjoern s friend Adrian. We headed to JC s place, another friend Bjoern had made when studying in Chile. It was lots of fun seeing the guys again. JC and Adrian being latinos live in a really nice, latino community in San Diego. So we were chilling out at the pool, enjoyed the luxury of satellite television and had all that american/mexican food. It was great. JC gave us his car for two days and we drove into downtown San Diego and to the Coronado island. Obviously we went parying a lot: went to the horse races in Del a Mar with Adrian, went to some clubs downtown and to Krugerparadise next to JC s home.  
From San Diego we went to Newport and then back to San Diego. This time we visited Bjoern s friends Andrew and Mike, who live closer to the beach (Mission beach). They hooked us up with an entire apartment just for us. We went to the beach, just being lazy. Bjoern went surfing with Mike s roomate Darra and we went out partying one night teaming up with Adrian and other buddies.

Acapulco, Barra Nexpa, Puerto Vallarta

1.Acapulco  2.Typical public bus  

3. Nice belly  

4. Brave cliff divers    

5. Sunset behind the cliffs   

6. Laguna   

7. The bird island   

8. Lazy Bjoern   

9. Barra Nexpa     

We took the bus to Acapulco. If you think about Acapulco you imagine a nice beach city, hot parties and of course the famous cliffdivers. Well it s a shithole, only the cliffdivers are worth seeing. That and of course the possibility to eat meat again. After two weeks of seafood we dipped into steaks like lions.

 So we split relatively fast after arriving and made our way to Barra Nexpa, another great surf spot, where we lived in a nice bungalow right on the beach. The days consisted of surfing, eating, drinking beer and playing cuban domino. It was paradise, although we thought we wouldn t make it through the last night, because a huge tropical storm kept us up all night. The sea came pretty close to our bungalow and we were thinking about the fact that these bungalows were flooded five years ago. We stayed for 5 days, Bjoern sold his surfboard (Jana was so happy) and we were on our way to Puerto Vallarta. Puerto Vallarta is a nice holiday retreat for rich mexicans and was the first place where we had a hostel with TV since a long time. Boy did we enjoy it…

Puerto Escondido and up the coast (Mexico)

1.On the beach in Puerto Escondido     

2. Big waves in Zicatela  

3. Chacauha  

 

4. Local baby  5.Eating fresh oysters  

6. The chef cook     

7. Bjoern in the water  

8. Partying in the local bar     

9.Bjoern with friends   

10. View from the light house   

11. Cutting coco nuts  12. Jana and Carmen

Puerto Escondido is home to the biggest beach break in the world, called Zicatela, which is also referd to as the Mexican pipeline, so I made sure not to surf it. Instead we went to a point break called la punta, where I did not get any waves because I suck on lefts and the crowd was pretty big. Instead I cut my foot on some rocks in the water and we had a long and nice conversation with an 50 year old guy from argentina who is living in Mexico for about 20 years and tried to convince us to move there as well. Puerto Escondido was fun though, nice night life, lots of tourists who want to have fun and a good laid back surfer vibe. We got out there after 4 days and made our way north up the coast. We ended up in little fisher village. The journey there was an adventure on its own. First we had to get by bus to a little town, there we grabbed a cab to go to a „ferry“, which was a small boat. Took a 5 minute boat trip to cross a lagoon, which inhabits 5 meter crocodiles and then a pick up truck waited to take us for a 40 minute ride on a bumpy dirtroad. Needless to say that we sat on wooden benches that were screwed onto the truck s platform. Finally we arrived in this incredible fisher village just to realize that we barely brought money and that there was no ATM on the entire island. So Bjoern went back to Puerto Escondido on the next day to get money and 4 hours later we were set. Inicially we planned to stay in the village for 3 days, ended up staying for 2 weeks. Bjoern went surfing the best rights every day, while Jana practised her spanish with a nice Mexican couple, named Paulette and Augusto, that we made friends with.

You could not eat anything else apart from fish and seafood. The food depended on the daily catch, which could be lobster, clams, fish or even oysters. Actually one day we went to a beachshack with a huge group to get oysters. We had ordered five oyster portions on the day before, but we showed up with 8 people, so our host just got his goggles and went to get more out of the ocean. As you can see in the pictures this wasn t the only attraction in the village. El Rey (the king) put up a Christmas show for us and prepared us fresh sushi from his morning catch. One night we went by boat to the other side of the lagoon to visit Dona Cali, a 50 year old local woman, who has the only bar with a juke box. We arrived there with about 20 people and had a blast. By the end of the night her brother wanted us to become the godfather and godmother of his grandchildren. Well it was a great night. Actually the whole place was kind of magic, even though there were no proper toilets nor showers. Everything needed to be flushed by water that you brought in a bucket. Back to nature – we loved every single bit of it…

Palenque- Maya Ruins, Oaxaca (Mexico)

We actually went from Antigua to San Cristobal de las Casas (Mexico), but Jana got a pretty bad cold there, so we did not do anything. Bjoern walked around a little and cared for Jana like a mother ( I am writing this, hahaha). San Cristobal de las Casas is situated at 2000 meters above sea level and is a very pretty city. All in all we realized that Mexico is far ahead of all the other countries we visited so far in Central America. The streets are clean, people are very friendly and the food is outstanding (except for the Tacos we had one morning –> my God we felt like street dogs afterwards). We definitely have to go back to San Cristobal de las Casas and take some pictures. We left after 3 days for Palenque, where we planned to see the famous Mayan ruins. Unfortunately Jana wasn t better when we arrived and furthermore Bjoern now had a cold as well. Bad luck, but we trudged ourselves to the ruins anyways and were rewarded with the sight of a guy with very random hair (see the pictures), ah yeah and the ruins were nice as well….

Off we were to Oaxaca, some dutch girls in San Cristobal de las Casas had recommended us to go, because there was a mexican folk festival called Guelagetza. The Guelagetza is held once a year. Native people from the state of Oaxaca show their dances, which serve religious purposes or are danced to ask for a good harvest. It is really colourful and the city of Oaxaca is full of music and people who want to have a good time. It was a lot of fun, Oaxaca is definitely one of our favourite cities in Mexico. Highlight here was a Mescal fair. Mescal is made from the cactus agave and is like Tequila, although the mexicans will tell you it is healthier. Well, it certainly tastes like crap, but gives you a nice buzz…

1. Maya ruins in Palenque     

2. Bad hair day  

   

3. The maya calender  

4. View from the 4th tempel  

5. City of Oaxaca    

6. Guelagetza festival