Janvier 2016, adieu Lemmy et David

Avec ma biche, j´allais le samedi 26 Decembre au marché "El Abasto". Ce marché, avec la Ramada et la Mutualista, sont des centres commerciaux importants dans la ville de Santa Cruz. Nous achetions des cesires, poivrons rouges, nous parlions avec "las caseritas" et après nous promenions au centre Chiriguano.

Le centre Chiriguano est le marché pour des ordinateurs et installations stereo. J´avais besoin d´un cartouche pour mon disque dur de mon laptop HP, parque le disque etait braqué. Apart de ça j´achetais un controller pour mon Playstation 2. Le pauvre play se trouvait dans un cabinet sans utiliser depuis 1 année.

En cromi nous allions a la Ramada. Comme vous devez savoir, la Ramada est la folie, un labyrinth entre le 1er et 2ième anneau de la ville, avec commerciants, legumes, fruits, friandises, articles de droguerie (pas de Marie Jeannette car elle est prohibée ici, les flics te jettent au prison), nachos, poissons, viande, poulet, etc. etc.

Nous retournions dans le village et après le lunch j´allais a chercher mes jeux du play, parce que je les avait emprunté a mon neveu de 13 ans.
J´arrivais a la maison de ses parents, et sa petite soeur de 2 ans et demi joue avec son moteur. Sa mere me dit: "Bonjour Robin, comment vas-tu?"
Je lui répond que "ça roule" et je demande si Roger est là. Ba non, il est avec son grand-père.
Ah bon, mais est-ce que vous me pourriez retourner mes jeux? Oui, bien sûr.
La maman de mon petit neveu me donnait mes jeux et je partais a jouer quelques favoris: le Crazy Taxi, Pro Evolution Soccer, Flatout, Burnout 3 et GTA San Andreas.

Pour la musique, l´année terminait en mineur. Lemmy Kilmister, le chanteur de Motörhead, est decedé le 28 décembre. Je me rappelle le debut des années quatrevingtdix, quand j´ecoutais l´album 1916 avec un ami. Tous les fois que je visitais les bars de rock ou discothèques et quand le DJ mettais "Ace of Spades", la salle a danser c´etait un folie. Même que les extraoridinaires chansons avec Hawkwind, comme Silver Machine publiée dans le soixantedouze. A tous ceux qui aiment le rock, Lemmy va les manquer. Je vous demande de signer ici: Lemmium


Enfin, 2016 commençait un peu zarbi. Le 31 décembre, ma biche avait preparé des fraises avec wodka, je prenais un peu, je regardais un vieux film de James Bond de 1973 et vers 21 heures de la soirée je m´ai mis au lit pour une petite siesta.

Quand je me levais une heure et demie plus tard, il n´y avait pas d´electricité. Les connards de la Compagnie Rurale d´Electricité de Bolivie avaient bracqué une connection dans le village.
Ma femme s´allait a dormir avant douze heures, et moi a 0h30 après d´avoir ecouté une chanson d´INXS et quelques verres de wodka fraise.

Avant hier, lundi, j´ouvrais le FB et j´entre en shock. Je lis que David Bowie est decedé. Twitter, même histoire, tout le monde raconte leur tristesse, nous avons perdu un grand chanteur. Il a crée des pièces et personnages incroyables et inoubliables. David et Lemmy avaient cancer, deux grands artistes, a 69 et 70 ans, ils sont partis au ciel pour faire un concert avec les messieurs Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Bon Scott, Scott Weiland. Plutôt il y aura plus de qualité de musique là-haut que ici a terre. Pour ça nous devons être content avec cela que nous avons, selon le motto carpe diem.

Bonne année a tous!

Retrogaming, part 3

In May 2000, after new work experiences in the lovely city Zwolle, I found a new job in a customs agency. The company, that originally started in Germany, had a small and old office in a building from the dutch railway company in the city of Zutphen. This implied that I didn´t have to travel so far anymore and besides I could go and have a couple of pints in my favourite bar on Fridays.

With one of my friends who liked bundles (you know, stuff where the Lovin´ Spoonful sings about) I had already made holiday plans. In July, we were brought to the small railway station Ruurlo and left to the south.

When I finally bought my Interrail ticket in Maastricht, we crossed the border to Belgium, in Liège we hopped on a train to Namur, and from there we went via Luxemburg and Strasbourg to the Moselle area. The train didn´t get further than Saverne and we jumped on a bus there to get to Sarrebourg. There we took a taxi and arrived in Gondrexange, a small village with a lake  on a camping.

Camping sites had changed, I figured. As a kid, I hung out in camping arcades, if there were any. But in 1992 I was injured and in 1993 there was no arcade (former Eastern Block holiday in Hungary), whereas in 1994 I had more interest for the bar in the french village Volonne (area 04, Alpes d´Haute Provence) and the chicks from the southern part of the Netherlands.

There was no arcade on the small french camping in 2000. Well, it was no big deal. We didn´t need an arcade, we came to explore “la belle France”. At the reception we both bought a packet of Gauloises, we sat down in the grass and smoked our cigarette.

Yet in the last week of our holiday, when we finished the 24 hour Strasbourg-Avignon-Strasbourg roundtrip (which started in a Strasbourg night bar at 4 AM where we sang Another Brick in the Wall with great enthousiasm) we stayed in Sarrebourg and took a hotel for only 30 francs per night. We spent hours in the pub, just across the Sarrebourg station, drinking a nice coffee and there was a Tales of the arabian nights pinball machine to make sure you´d get rid of your small change. This was also the place where I celebrated the french EURO2000 victory.

Basically the retrogaming part of the stories starts here. My friend N. invited me over to his place and opened a closet. The bloke had 2 or 3 commodore 64 machines. I still have a C64 somewhere in my parents home, with a lot of floppies. No idea whether they still work, if it hasn´t been thrown away then it has been kept for already 14 years in a dark cabinet behind my old sleeping room.

Due to circumstances I leave my country in 2003. 7 years after my 7 weeks “practical holiday” in Salamanca, I go back to my dear Spain, now to the city of Valencia. But the weekends are dull and I have a lack of social life.

When I finally move to the city of Barcelona 18 months later, the gaming aspect returns. 2 boys from Basque country move in with us (typical “piso” for students) and show their pirate playstation 2 with Burnout Takedown, we play it for a couple of hours, with a Xibeca bottle on the table to keep the glasses filled with beer.        

In a very short period of boredom I spend money on a playstation 2 with GTA San Andreas and Pro Evolution Soccer part 4. One of my friends from Russia plays with me. We both moved out of the small flat to rent a room from a very nice Catalan girl. Naturally we keep on gaming while we listen the Skeletons in the Closet album from the Grateful Dead.

During a visit of Pamplona in the early autumn of 2007, I get introduced to the Nintendo Wii. I sleep a couple of nights in the house of a friend of my homie. Pamplona celebrates the “small” San Fermin, and everybody is busy partying. One morning I wake up and start to play tennis, baseball and golf with another friend. A little later I take the bus from Villava back to Pamplona. Pamplona has a nice square in the centre. After hanging around some time I decide to return to the quarter Txantrea to search for my homie. But he isn´t there yet. His parents invite me another beer, and in the evening we reunite in the emblematic bar Akelarre.

In November 2008 I leave the house in Barcelona, because the girl (George Thorogood would´ve said landlady, but she was a bit young to be called a lady) wants to go and live elsewhere with her boyfriend. My new friend from Pamplona also moves out of the house, he works in a bar in our area and he can stay there temporarily.

One of my colleagues from work offers me to move in his flat, a 6th floor attic without a lift. Since I do not really have any other choice I agree. My friend is from Algeria and his “cuadrilla” are from North Africa as well. A typical Saturday dish they like to prepare is cous cous, and often we enjoy a can of Estrella beer in our street or the nearby square. Arabic is very complicated for me and I only remember the word “sukran”. My arab friends like music such as Zebda and Gnawa Diffusion.

One of the guys is from Guelmim, a hot desert city in the southwest of Morocco. He´s got a Dr. Hyde inside himself after 3 beers which can cause pretty annoying situations.

After an old fashioned Dutch Christmas holiday with a new years eve in Enschede, I come back to Barcelona on the first Saturday of January, and we hit the town with another arab friend from France.

3 months later I meet Yina for the first time. We start to develop a relationship and in November I move into her place in a whole new quarter.

My Play2 comes with me and I connect it to her small TV to play Crazy Taxi and Flatout. After a couple of years we move to the republic of Bolivia.

Wow, I just crawled out of a time machine in this whole new continent for me. March 20, 2013. The cans of beer in the plane were small, but I´ve slept wonderfully well. It rains outside, we pass the customs, do not need to open our suitcases and stash everything in the early 90s Toyota of my brother in law. The stores and houses are more “messy” than in Europe. After approximately 1 and a half hour we arrive at El Torno. This village is about 33 KM southwest of Santa Cruz on the national route 7. From this village it is 24 KM to La Angostura, that is where the mountains begin, and even more to the west is the touristic town of Samaipata.

OK, so the country looks a bit old fashioned. Every city of village has a small collection of arcade machines. For a half peso you get a coin that you can use in an arcade machine. For what is just one US Dollar, you can buy 14 credits.

After some exploring on Twitter I found many retrogaming fans. When I uploaded some pictures of the Sega games Road Rash and Columns, which must´ve been part of a torrent, suddenly I received a lot of followers. It is very cool to see that there are so many fans of 20 & 30 year old consoles and their games.

Because of misfortune, the retrogames on my laptop were gone for a long time, the harddisk suffered damage. Also my PlayStation 2 has been out of the running for some time because the controller was completely worn out.

In the meantime, we bought a chinese retro console here on the Ramada in Santa Cruz. The Ramada is a crowded dirty open market place where you can buy a lot of stuff; food, veggies, chemicals to kill insects, clothing, and generally it is cheaper than in the supermarket. At some place there is an arcade with an Outrun game. However I would get lost on the Ramada cause it has a strange structure, generally the streets here do have names, but the people don´t usually know them. If you ask directions, they will never give you street names, they will say: 4 blocks, then left, 5 blocks, then right, or they will tell you that a place is between the 1st ring and 2nd ring. But after a few years, if you come to the city often enough, you´ll know which minibus to take and also if you fetch a taxi, you´ll know at which amount he starts to rip you off.

So, the chinese console, worth 14 bucks, consists of Super Mario Bros 1, 3, Galaga, Bomberman, Dig Dug, Arkanoid, Millipede, Pinball, Pooyan and a lot more 80s games. It´s connected on the AV1 of my TV, because my wife has become fan of the bomberman game.  On the AV2 I reconnected the playstation 2 because I bought a new controller (the non original controller costs 11.50 dollars) and also my harddisk has been repaired, so I´ve got my MSX, C64, NES, SNES and SEGA stuff back…

Greetings to all retrofans, I hope you´ve all enjoyed this little trilogy, I wish you all the best for 2016.