Friday the 13th

I changed the air & oil-filter in the now almost 22-year-old BMW, near Copenhagen where we picked up a couple friends to journey with us to Switzerland. Before we drove, I checked the water levels in the cooling system. In the heat of the moment, we said good-bye to drive off with a somewhat strange feeling in our bellies. Quickly we got lost in one of the first roundabouts in Denmark that's certainly not even near to marking roads clearly with direction signs. I stopped to figure out where to go next when I noticed stream coming from the engine. I opened the hood and found out that I forgot to put on the lid onto the water-cooling system. Now we were stuck already, after 15 minutes driving. Fortunately, I had more water with me, so I filled up the engine again with H2O. I fixed the lid temporarily with a plastic rubber-thing, which gave us another 15 minutes of driving-time back to where we started. Stuck again on a road corner, we made phone calls from local's mobiles that drove by in the ice-cold night. A friend of us was on the move with more water. When waiting I suddenly thought to look for the lid in the engine. May be it had fallen down? I realized that if I won't find the lid, we would not be able to drive anywhere this night. After several unlucky attempts I was about to give up, when I suddenly saw it on the very bottom on a metal-shield like a miracle still holding on, the key to our continuous journey. After we filled up the water again, we raised non-stop, besides the ferry crossing to Germany towards Alpine lands. My two female companions slept throughout the entire night. They awoke one hour before the arrival at the boarder crossing in Basel, Switzerland. I suggested getting our passports ready, since Switzerland is not part of the EU, meaning that there is still a boarder to cross. The Swiss Officer who inspected our car looked suspiciously at our tires, saying that we were not allowed to drive on highways in Switzerland with spiked tires. He said we had to return to Germany, but ...first, we have to deal with the Germans, he said. Well, the Germans told us that its not allowed at all driving with spiked tires in Germany and we had to change our tires in a local tire shop, they said, plus we had to pay a fee. I really just wanted to get to the symposium to see Albert Hofmann speak, but what to do? We, and another van from Sweden had to wait for the Autobahn Police that would take care of us. My two friends were a bit anxious, but I said; "Let's see how this is going to turn out?” I learned never to judge a moment before its final turn around. After 15 minutes or so, a Police Officer showed up. I confronted him with: "Isn't there a simple solution to this problem?" The friendly police officer replied if we had 70 Euros with us. I said "Yes, but why?" He answered that he had to charge us the fine, but he knows of another boarder crossing into Switzerland where we can cross without problems, and so it was. After paying the fine, he showed us another way into Switzerland where we could cross without problems. As a result of this we were 2 hrs delayed and missed those at the first day of the victorious symposium! We checked into the hotel that we pre-booked. I relaxed for an hour before going to the LSD symposium for the very first time.

The next morning I woke up for Toby Mark's tone of the day ... Banco de Gaya's morning meditation set. After that I went from Symposium to Symposium, topping it with Albert Hofmann's appearance and final words that were nothing less but historical.

With this empowering proclamation, he gave his blessing to psychedelic explorers from all corners of this world, and he took away a lot of confusion surrounding the topic of LSD.