a tiny full circle

My plan was to go to Germany and to visit my good old friends. We had developed so many ideas together in the past and it just seemed like the right time to spend some time with them, working with them from within their offices. I sent a very excited email ahead and boarded a Singapore Airlines f to Frankfurt in the beginning of December 2001. The planes flew relatively empty back then. I was so excited to visit my old friends. It was supposed to be a happy, and eye opening trip. My friends at meso were with in the midst of a collaboration with 3deluxe on a large project for the Expo.02- Swiss National Exhibition, I had not seen one of my best friends José for years, it seemed. Alex Hefter had just brought his the look of ZDF onto a new level completely, Klaus, the man behind km7 had just published his second book and was working on major redesigns for audi, the place I co-founded, arosa2000 was now calledsaasfee. It was supposed to be an absolutely packed trip, I was excited. I also had not seen my parents in a substantial while, so staying with them would help me show them that I am still the same son with the same good intentions.
One of the in f movies on the way to Germany was this European hit Amelie. I was so happily playing with my airplane food.

I hit the ground running in Frankfurt, visited all those whom I had not seen in ages, it seemed. Meso gave me the keys to their office and so with full speed I was ready to finally pull together something more than what I called my soon to be website, which was nothing more than a splash page.
I was in Europe again and everything felt so much closer to each other. I was considering visiting Tom in London on a weekend and it felt pretty much like a stop on the way there, when I ran into Neilleon IM. I could just drive to Paris and then take the Eurostar to London and visit Tom.
I simply drove to Paris, found a free and legal parking spot near Neille’s apartment in a very cool part of town and knocked on her door. Ok, the drive is an 8 hour drive and it was a bit stressful to find my way around one of the worst possible places to be with a car, but all felt pretty good. I could visit Louvre for free (Neille gave me a special ticket), and it was down the street, so I could visit some really old friends and even finally execute a little project.
Neille showed me that her website now contained a blog. It was a bit like a diary, but it was all online and in the open for anyone to read. She even claimed that she had a real readeship. I was a tiny bit sceptical about that. It was just hard to believe that one could write a diary and expect that there would be any kind of audience. However it seemed to make perfect sense to write down a little thought every day, just to make sense of things and keep a clearer mind.
I left Paris in good spirits with several bottles of Bordeaux in my trunk and with even more happy plans and ideas. (I also somehow decided against visiting Tom.)
I think it was somewhere in the Champagne, when the cold December wind somehow caught up with me. I felt a little sick when back in Frankfurt. After a lecture a day later, I had trouble finding my car in the middle of a cold snowy rainshower. The car completely broke down on me in the night after, when I was returning home from a visit to my friend Alex.
I had to wait for hours for the German AAA, the ADAC to arrive. I got a room in a hotel at around 4 am that night. Exhausted.
It took maybe another 24 hours or so for me to find myself in bed, in my parents’ house, with a fever somewhere around103F. The world around me turned into a blur. It went from bad to worse. I could not sleep, each breath was filled with pain, I was trapped in a room filled with the things I really wanted to throw away when I was 15 and which my parents kept as souvenirs.
These objects really worked quite well turning my fever visions into horror trips.
I wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to New York. I did not want to die in my old room in Hanau, Germany. I did not get better.
When I finally went to the doctor, he confirmed that I had a pneumonia and put me on KETEK(TM), a drug not yet approved by the US-FDA at that time.
I did not even wait for the entire ten days needed for the therapy to pass to board the plane. I had to go back to New York, I had to go back home, I was not supposed to stay in Germany.
It took a few more days in bed in New York for me to fully return to my senses. I had left Germany without saying good bye to many of the people I really wanted to see. What I had planned as a happy and inspiring trip definitely had started as one, but ended as one that cost me more than I had bargained for. Some of my friends were quite upset that I had not found time to visit them as promised. My sickness sounded like a bad excuse.
So on December 16th last year, in the morning (a year and a day ago) I wanted to try what Neille was doing from Paris. I looked as well as I could at BLOGGER, and began to write my very first real post.
I was not sure if I should write in German or English or Polish at first.
I managed to write at least and entry almost every day for the last year, so more than 1200 entries later here I am, posting again, from another sunny and cold New York morning.
This past year was quite incredibly packed with new learning some exciting projects and thoughts and events. Thank you so much for coming here and reading and exploring the site. I am working on things to make it more interesting. It is hard to believe that this place here is just one year old, even for me, really. Thank you so much for making it possible.
Sorry if some of the recent posts were not quite as good as they could have been. (And I just read through this one, and boy... I should probably just rest.)
I am sick in bed again. No serious pneumonia and no high fever, just a medium bad cold so it seems.
I am looking forward to getting better though. And there is a New Year ahead of this blog... and I am not sure if the entire site can grow at the same rate as it did in this past year. It went from 1 to about 1500 pages.
Thank you for making it all possible. And thank you for your encouragement in comments, emails, and in person. Thank you.