Well I think that either I chose a really unlucky week to start travelling, or the weather is following me as its been grey, cloudy and raining since I arrive here in Wegberg.
Not that it has been impossible to get out and about, but when you are staying as a guest you are at the mercy of not just your whim, but the whim of your hosts, and with that comes all their responsibilities and commitments as well, its a bit like a two edged sword.
Wegberg and Wildenrath are two smallish cities near Dusseldorf and apart from their location and obvious military connections there is not a lot to do round these parts, so for me its been fairly uneventful on the out-and-about kinds of things, but I have been introduced and met up with some really cracking people over here.
As I am now officially on the road, I decided to start taking a few interviews with my dictaphone and the answers I got back were quite interesting, and of course it is an ongoing process so with each interview my technique and list of questions varies and hopefully gets better.
When you are a guest on an army barracks there is not much to do, and so a lot of time has been spent chatting, playing computer games, eating and a great universal pastime of drinking and as you can imagine when you add friends, late nights and alcohol together you can get quite a interesting and diverse choice of topics covered.
With being in Germany one of the conversations ended up with me learning that there was a quite infamous brothel just a few miles down the road, which used to be called thirty fives but recently has changed its name, though no one knew what it had been changed to, and just for laughs my friend said that she would take me along when with her and together we could see what it was like inside without going solo or being worried that things might get out of hand.
Thankfully, once we woke up the next morning more sober heads took over and it was not mentioned again, however it did get me thinking about the different attitudes towards sex and prostitution from around the world. In most countries and cities it is considered by most to be a shady activity, possibly even with strong links to gangsters and underworld connections, but this view is not universal.
It was funny walking down the main street of Amsterdam and seing the street window girls right next door to normal shops like cafe's, restaurants even a carpenters hardware store, and when I saw a chippy actually working on creating a new display window in the middle of the day it just showed that to the locals view it as so normal and routine that he didnt even seem to look up at his work while all around him were semi naked women hawking their wares.
I remember when I was in Aukland with my friends about five years ago, they had told me that it had been legalised by one vote by the government at the time and that you could advertise for it everywhere, and apparently there is even a Australian brothel that is so rich and famous that it has actually decided to float itself on the stock exchange with its own lawyers, accountants and list of share holders.
One of the hotels that I have booked in the far east mentioned { mostly I have tried to book into shared hostels but every now and again I wanted to treat myself to a bit of luxury } in a confirmation email that there will be no charge for checking in additional guests into my room, and when I answered it rather cheekily that it was 'nice to know and I might just try that out on one of the days' they replied almost matter of fact that 'they would be surprised if I didn't as over 50% of the guests who book in do so'!
And lastly, if there was any doubt that sex sells and raises interest I would just like to say that although I am not trying to focus this whole trip or blog on sex, that I have had my blog for over two years now and yet until the last week I had rarely received more than 5 hits per day yet for the last week I have averaged around 15 hits per day.
Well, its time to go and grab a shower as we are all off to the PX and then maybe a meal afterwards before trying to grab a few more intereview recordings.
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