44 crap start

what a start of a tour

i arrived too late in boston. delay at miami apt. i had to meet up with my pax in the centre of boston where i had never been. so try to imagine this: me getting of the flight, getting into a cap, getting of at the holocaust memorail and 30 minutes later presenting myself to the pax as their tourguide. straight from miami...

they were NOT happy

the people who were there were only part of my group. they had not been greeted upon arrival by anyway. they did get a city walk with a local guide in boston. but their hotel was 30 minutes away from their centre. they meet a guide who has never been in new england before and are really looking forward to the trip. not.

my other pax were staying at this hotel in downtown boston. nobody had picked them up at the airport. nobody knew anything at the hotel until i faxed them a letter that i would pick them up the next day. arriving at the hotel there were 10 buses leaving there so the luggage of my pax never got down in time. all the pax angry of course.

so we leave to salem... a small city that thrives on the stories of witch hunts back in the 17th century. watch that winona ryder movie THe Crucible. it's an okay city but it's SO commercial. i had never been there before so i don't know what to suggest. however it is a beautiful day and the people were fine with that.

then off to kennebunkport with a stop at this lighthouse that people had in their program. i did find the lighthouse by taking a scenic route along the coast. that route is SO beautiful. i just love it up there. it is really very cool. i love the wooden beach houses and i love the ocean and i just love the whole atmosphere there. it wasn't cold at all. so they take a pic of the lighthouse and we move to fucking kennebunkport

george bush sr has an estate there so it is a tourist destination for a lot of americans. they told me to stop there for lunch. however it is such a small city and there are more than ten buses doing this tour that all the restaurants were full by the time we got there which was already late. result: people unhappy.

kennebunkport has some cool rich houses along the beach and we had the luck of seeing some ships in the fog which was really cool. the nice thing was that the bush estate was covered in fog and the pax didn't see it. which made me tell some jokes about bush hiding from ze germanz.

people were getting hungry and annoyed about the fact that the hotel was not in the centre of portland so i decided to take them to the hotel first and then drop them off for dinner in portland. hooray for some people. boo for others who were angry that they didn't get time to visit museums in portland. duh.

we arrived in time for sunset BUT there was FOG again. damn.

i love portland. really, it is a cool town. very young. with art students attending art school. it just looked like a really cool young town. i really want to go back there. not too big. small actually but with plenty to do. very european and at a harbor so that is always cool. yeah, portand got my vote. and some pax liked it very much.

tomorow i head to the mountains. i am too fucking tired to read about it.

oh yes my driver is 60y old and no memory. i like him a lot because he reminds me of you sean. he's black/puerto rican with the coolest smile i have ever seen on a 60y old. he has these glases that you used to wear when you were in junior high (you showed me that picture once) and he has such a FRIENDLY face and looks so relaxed. he is such a hit with the older ladies. not on my bus cos they are german but i am sure that all the stories he tells about having had sex with older passengers are true. i want to hang out with that guy not drive around with him.

the people on the bus all look the same. they are german, have grey hair, are over 60 i guess, get annoyed easily, are very punctual of course and have this german sarcasm humor that i dig. however it can become a problem if too many things go wrong.

i feel like chandler in that episode where he is not allowed to tell jokes. i constantly have to say to myself: nico, don't say it. for instance when i take a decision and i hear someone say that i should have the bus decide, i want to say 'look, i am your dictator on the bus. and i am more friendly than the one you had when you were little kids, so stop complaining' i have joked about their punctuality as well... some passengers arrived one minute before the time i had told them to be there which made other passengers comment on them being too late. so i told them: 'if you really want to be too late and leave a bad impression you have to be here one minute AFTER and not one minute BEFORE'

germans can laugh though. there's a lot of laughter on the bus. but i just don't know why they laugh. my driver took a wrong turn wich made us do a little tour around the hotel and they all thought that was so hilariously funny. they are very cynical and ironic though, but not in a cool way like in BBC comedies. as long as they can laugh it's okay. one person called ANKE DANKERS who hates her name ever since she was a child already made up her mind. she would never ever travel with TUI again cos this is too chaotic. whater.

if you want to laugh with the names. these are the pax on my bus: tiemann, behrendt, grossmann (the only under 40y old on the bus), weigang, lasch, schramm, reber, regier (he does not want to share the same bed with his wife so i have to make sure he has TWO beds in his room, huebner, hengstenberg (cool name), stark und roesch (a gay couple who asked me if they could stay in the back of the bus on the entire trip), narbe (the only single guy traveller on the bus), bittkau, bubitka, hirth and some i forgot.

think about me on this trip..