Other than England, I’ve now spent more time in Germany in the last two years than anywhere else. I think. Italy might be up around there somewhere.

I like Germany. I like the Germans. All those I’ve spent any length of time with or worked with are all friendly and fun, although I guess that might also be the way I approach people. My friend, Skeete, told me something years ago that I still use unto this day:

It’s nice to be important, it’s more important to be nice.

I think I live my life very closely to these words. I didn’t when I was younger. I was a cunt. But now it doesn’t matter who I talk to, I always treat them as an equal, no matter their standing. I think it’s got me to where I am in life. I’ve been broke, I’ve been broken, I’ve been so poor I could only afford to eat rice and nothing else, but I think, as I’ve got older I’ve never lost sight that everyone has their own fights, their own stories, and they’re trying to find their own way through life.

There’s a German girl working closely with us at the festival here in Munich. I spent a lot of time with her yesterday. We talked about her studies and what she wanted to do with her life, and she asked me about my job because that’s all anyone wants to talk about when they meet me!

We talked about grumpy old men and how we should all be nice to each other, and she seemed like a genuinely nice, happy girl, although she was too young to have found her direction yet.

Suddenly she said, “I really like your tattoos”.

I nodded, hesitated, then said, “and you’re the most beautiful German girl I’ve ever seen”.

I wasn’t hitting on her, it was simply a fact  and I told her so. I also told her I almost didn’t tell her because I was shy.

“You are not shy!” she laughed.

“Ha, OK,” I said, “maybe I’m not shy, but I always try to compliment people on something that I feel is a strong part of them, like their hair if they have a funky colour, or their clothes. I told a singer a few weeks back that he had awesome style in what he wore and he was really appreciative.”

“If you think that someone is beautiful you should tell them,” she said. “People like to hear things like this.”

“But it feels like sometimes it’s a… like they think I’m trying to hit on them,” I said.

“Not if you say it in the way you just told me,” she said.

Every day is a school day.

***

The reason I like to write about conversations I have with people, especially those I meet on my travels, is that one day I’d love to travel as far and wide as I can, and write about the people I meet, who they are, what they do; anything I can discover about them.

I’ve met some incredible people all around the world, but I’ve barely scratched the surface yet.

My taxi driver this afternoon was from Mozambique, and he didn’t speak english, only Portuguese, but with my fledging Spanish we managed to have a half decent conversation, before he dropped me at a tattooist.

And no, I didn’t get the tattoo I wanted. I was going for a portrait on my neck, but the tattooist advised me, and rightly so, that portraits weren’t good for a thin skinned area such as a neck. And then we looked at the rest of my upper body but I didn’t have enough room!