Would you take all! of! your! clothes! off! for 1 day of rental car for free?

Obviously Wicked Campers is convinced that this is a great discount opportunity and ask their customers to pick up the vans "as god created them" to get 1 day for free. Customers 60 and older get the day for free anyway - they rather should keep their clothes on. I am sure this is not very compliant with age discrimination, but anyway ...

(quote from the homepage)
The Naked Special
Due to popular demand the Naked Special is back!  If you are renting a van for 14 days or more, and you pickup your van NAKED we will give you your first day rental free. Don't believe us? View our Naked customers here (if you're over 60, leave your clothes on and we'll also give you a free day!).

"Unfortunately" the photo link does not work anymore today - it still did yesterday. And I can assure you, it seems like a lot of customers actually thought this is a great discount opportunity ...

I honestly don't know - we chose an Escape camper - dilemma solved ;-)
Maybe we even get one in green ...

Bye-bye, Uluru ...

We are saying Good-bye before we even set foot on any plane. After 3 days of searching optimized travel routes, checking flight schedules and fares, memorizing kilometers on Google Maps we have made a big decision. We will not visit Australia's red heart. With "just" 6 weeks in Australia and soooooo many kilometers to get from one location to the other it would just end up in endless hours in a car or hundreds of euros/dollars on the plane.

Therefore we have noted one lesson learned: Never start travelling Australia from Sydney - that is the middle. Not the beginning. Not the end.

We decided to leave Sydney immediately, fly to Adelaide, get a car and drive to Cairns - bypassing Sydney where we fly back towards the end of our journey to continue travelling to New Zealand. This way we have more than 5 weeks for about 5,000 kilometers which should work out fine (considering I already did 12,500 kilometres in 28 days over in the US). Uluru would take away 1 week and cost an additional EUR 500 just for flying. We simply come back one day and do the other half of Australia, we figured.

the good side of a cold

We are known for often squeezing 48 hours into 24 mostly between Frankfurt, Munich, Walchsee, Zurich and sometimes even Seoul for a night - and if snow needs to be involved also adding 1500 km on the Autobahn on a single weekend. Sometimes this pace just doesn't work well - either with schedules, friends or health. This time my health put a stop to packing boxes, renovating my appartement, meeting friends, dogsit Ronja, clarify admin stuff and worry about Philipp falling off a mountain at the same time. A cold now cleared my calendar for the one thing I wanted to do for the past ... hmm, six months. Reading travel guides. I am getting more excited about our trip with every page I read. Travel tips are very, very, very welcome and much appreciated! Thank you.

There are great places to visit out there - I already found Dieter's favourite and Heike's (No, Heike, you should not click this Link!!!).

Speaking of a cold: This is the right moment for my (meanwhile second) favourite YouTube-Video - bless you!

clothing

... is overrated. just in case you didn't notice :o)

short break: the packing adventure

Packing now has a moral dimension.

Just in case, you didn't notice ... this is a real (!) problem. ;-P

The gift of giving stuff away

It is amazing - I have lived in my area of Munich (Nymphenburg) for a little bit more than 4 years. I share a building with 15 other appartments - most of whose inhabitants I have never seen. I wouldn't even know if someone belongs there ... that is the sad part.

The good part: when I started giving stuff away during the past weeks I have met so many nice people - and their story, a part of their life. Meeting people is just so exciting! It makes me like the area I used to live in even more. Not so smart to move away then ...

Today it was an excited father of a 1 week old who still didn't seem to grasp the wonder he created 10 months ago (being evil: mabye he didn't? ...). And a completely disoriented twentysomething who figured he could pick up the cupboard he wanted to buy with a bike (it was cool one, though) and no money (no, the look was not worth the cupboard!) ... well, some lessons are hard and/or heavy ;-)

Is there a job where one can give away stuff as a job (and still earn money for a living)?
Or maybe we could just try and believe that the endless powerpoints, point of views, teleconferences, meetings are something like "giving stuff away" - as in: my ideas, my time, my brain (hello, anyone up there?) ... I probably just need to work on the reaction of the receiving part. Well, that goes to the todo list for April 2010 (this feels great!).

Actually, early this year Philipp and I had a small project where we collected Best Wedding Wishes from complete strangers for Timmy & Ulrike in a little black book. A text and a picture of every contributor. People we haven't met before so freely - and amazingly happily - gave away their thoughts, wishes, advices to a couple they haven't met - and in most cases unfortunately probably never will meet. That was the same feeling. Meeting stories, meeting experiences, meeting wishes and giving people an opportunity to tell their story. Apart from being a very unique present it was the proof that engineers actually are able of spontaneous human interaction (well done, sweetheart ;-P ).

I am thinking of doing that again, when we travel. 1 stranger a day ... no wedding wishes this time, but 3-5 weird questions (todo!) to someone we meet on the street. Let's see if Australians are also happy to give away their stories.

The Land of Stuff

She -actually me- is currently packing up her stuff in Munich. This means taking everything you own into your hand and decide whether to keep it, to sell it, to give or simply throw it away.

Giving away works great - as soon as you post stuff for free on any ads platform it is gone. People take everything. As soon as it costs only as much as 5 EUR ... nobody calls. Is that the financial crisis or a simple form of self-perception? Maybe it is just smart ...

To throw away is also easy: Didn't touch it in 6 months? Don't think it is worth a picture and an ad? Gone.
With 1 and 2 a lot of stuff is covered.

To keep is the hardest part: Why on earth would I want to keep all my seminar papers of 5 years of university + one from school? And why wouldn't I? They are all the "originals" with real notes and real grades (in ink) on them. Will never EVER use them again but will never EVER give them away either. And there we go ... "This pair of shoes I wore when Bryan Adams kissed me (real kiss!) at a concert (true!) [I actually had a hard time giving away the shirt last summer when we cleaned out the house I grew up in. What do you think, would it have been worth keeping??? ;-)) ] ... that picture I don't have electronically, this dish was a gift of (you name any person), this book I always wanted to read again" ...

Living on the 5th floor (no elevator) actually helps not to collect too much things. Nevertheless I need more than 50 boxes to pack my (just me) 1 room appartment. Still, after 17 moves, nbr. 18 on its way to be completed. This is way too much stuff. But I promise, for every one of them I have a very good reason to keep it.

Our travel will teach me a lesson there. 5 months and all I (think I) will need I have to carry every day. 15kg max. I have no idea how this will be possible. When we are back in FRA next Wednesday packing starts. It scares me already now. I keep you posted.

If DHL delivers to the Fijis?

Btw: Stuff is everywhere - even on the other side of the world. There "stuff" even wins awards - regularly. Also a lesson somehow.