Swiss + Harms #6: Menschliche Abgründe
Episode 6 – The Human Abyss
Swiss und Harms – Zwischen Tour und Angel
(translator’s note: in German you literally say, “between door and hinge” for “in passing,” they altered it to “between tour and hinge”)
Description of the episode:
In this episode, Chris reports to Swiss from a hotel room in Paris and is totally shaken up. There’s an issue that’s really bothering him. The two of them now dive into the abysses of human existence, and at this point we should issue a trigger warning for the first time: if topics such as sexual violence against children are too much for you, please skip this episode (minutes 32:13 to 49:30). (Translator's note: the minutes of the TW part are noted with red color in the text)
For all the curious among you, which include Swiss, Chris then reveals the secret of his beef with the singer of a German rock band. You know the drill: tune in, spread the word, and subscribe!
Swiss: Ladies and gentlemen, have a nice good night, one has to say that it’s midnight already and for most of you, the faithful listeners, and I would say with Swiss and Harms episode 6 we both provide you with the soundtrack for a sleepless night, we leave you with—
Chris: *laughs*
Swiss: —a lot of insane topics, speechless, sleepless…
Chris: “At the next tone, it’s ex-zero-actly o’clock” (translator’s note: he twists the words “exactly” and “zero” together here, which somehow works out in German, but not really in English.)
Swiss: What’s up, eh, Christian? How are you really doing? I hope you’re doing fine. You’re currently on tour, please tell us, what’s up, how is it going?
Chris: First, you say how you really are doing.
Swiss: Shall I say it first?
Chris: Yeah, you go first, come on.
Swiss: I’m feeling a bit mixed today, I have to say, I’m just realizing—I don’t know if you know this, the winter in Hamburg is really miserable, isn’t it?
Chris: Yep.
Swiss: And it’s not in my nature at all, and they say that as a citizen of Hamburg you generally don’t complain about the weather—
Chris: Yep.
Swiss: I don’t know if you know this moment as a Hamburg resident: at some point between winter and spring, there is always this moment where I think about the weather and winter in Hamburg, “Stop it now! I can’t take any more! You’ve worn me down, you’ve got me where you want me, now just stop!”
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Swiss: “Please, go away.” And that’s how I feel right now, and I realize I was earlier—we were visiting the family, and I left from there, and I noticed I was suddenly really sick—do you know that? When you notice that you’ve just gotten really sick out of the blue.
Chris: Did you catch the flu or something?
Swiss: The night will tell.
Chris: Oh, that sucks.
Swiss: I really have the feeling that tomorrow morning could be anything from “eh fuck, I’m not doing anything for the next few days” to “ah OK, that’s crept away again”.
Chris: But on the bright side: I always think it’s really cool when I know I have two or three weeks until the tour and I realize beforehand, “Oh, I’m going to get really sick beforehand and I’ll still have enough time to get well again.” Because then you usually don’t get sick on tour.
Swiss: Yes, but, of course, you’re also much more “pro” than we are, and unfortunately for us the last two weeks—
Both: *laugh*
Swiss: —have really not been the time where we can all gather our strength and get sick again—
Chris: Yeah, great. Good.
Swiss: —but we still have shit to sort out everywhere, but it’s all good.
Chris: OK.
Swiss: It’s not as if we haven’t already been playing gigs and working feeling dead sick and so on.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. I know.
Swiss: But in that respect: it will work out. But say now—today I want to hear a lot about you, about your tour, how it is going, what’s up, where you are currently, what you are doing, what you ate, how your defecation has been… everything. I want to know everything.
Chris: My defecation has been good, frequent, and medium firmness. Today I intentionally ate really shit, just sweets and waffles and Coke, as today is our second day off in a row in Paris.
Swiss: Awesome!
Chris: It has been raining pretty much all day long, now it’s sunny. I look at Montmartre, Sacré-Cœur, that church, and the sun will set soon and—
Swiss: As a simple St. Pauli person, that doesn’t mean anything to me, of course, all these names that you just mentioned, but I suppose these are spots with which you can definitely score good points on Instagram.
Chris: Yeah, yes exactly. And where you are definitely very close to God, right. That’s very important, too.
Swiss: Oh, I love that. You’ve got me with that.
Chris: Yeah, I know. And I now have a bit of—what you also mentioned, for me it’s a very strange mixture, because, on the one hand, I’m always kind of homesick on tour, I’m such a homebody, and especially since I’ve become a dad, it’s even worse, I don’t think traveling is cool, but I have a bit of this “spring feeling”. We were in Barcelona a few days ago, it was quite cool there too, and I realized that I’m really in the mood for warm days again. But I’m fine, dude, we had such a… I told you that and you heard it too, but maybe for those out there who didn’t hear about it, this is rather for the Swiss fans: we had the worst tour start we’ve ever had. I was on a skiing vacation, and one day before the tour started—the tour started in Nuremberg and I was supposed to go straight to Nuremberg from my skiing vacation, and everyone else was always joking like, “Chris is going skiing, he’ll probably come to Nuremberg with a broken leg and we’ll have to cancel the tour!” And exactly one day before, Nik, our drummer, calls me and says, “Bro, I’ve got a real fucking problem, I’ve just been admitted to hospital with 253 to 185 blood pressure!—
Swiss: That’s insane.
Chris: —I have to stay here.” So, for the non-professionals in the medical field, including myself, I also had to check: that’s really… that’s life-threatening, it’s just before… You’d actually expect a stroke or a heart attack. They kept him there to find out what it was until—it’s Monday now, he came out 2–3 days ago. Luckily, they didn’t find anything life-threatening, but it was probably a general “fuck up” from the body; Nik has always struggled with a few little things, he had to be readjusted a bit, but if you forget about him as a friend for a moment, and you know he’s fine now and you just look at the tour as a whole… You’re one day before a tour, and you know what that means, we’re working on a similar scale, with so many people and trucks, and every day costs an awful lot of money, and you have to find a drummer, dude—
Swiss: Yeah, and that just fits in with your end-of-the-year show—
Chris: —within 24 hours!
Swiss: —where there was “the fuck up” with Class, and now this!
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: Bro.
Chris: But you must—you know, if you’re a bit of a musician, you know that if you’re one of the string instrumentalists, especially in a band like ours where there are a lot of people on stage, filling in on bass or guitar is… Well, let’s put it this way, those are smaller shoes to fill than filling in for the drummer. You know yourself: the drums are the leader of the band on stage, clockwork.
Swiss: Yes, totally. It is the metronome that works for everyone.
Chris: Yeah, dude, we called everyone, and they all helped, and so many would have loved to do it, but they were on tour themselves—from Subway to Sally to Saltatio Mortis to Hämatom—somehow to everyone, and in the end there were just a few left, who really had time, and then Nico Vaeen from Annisokay did it, no joke, he got drum notes from us and stayed up all night, made notes, and it took less than 24 hours from the phone call to the soundcheck the next day.
Swiss: Amazing! And tell me, did he—how many shows did you play with him then?
Chris: We played two shows with him, because he didn’t have any more time then, and within these two days in Nuremberg and Munich, one of our backliners, Jörn Schwarzburger, also an excellent drummer, he also plays with Joachim Witt and so on, prepared himself and played, and Nik will play from Frankfurt on, that means, when the podcast is released, from today on be on tour, but because he has to get used to the new blood pressure adjustment now, it is possible that he might not be fit enough to play a full show, that means we now have a kind of “reserve bench”, like in soccer—
Swiss: Yeah, cool
Chris: —where Jörn’s sitting.
Swiss: It’s your backliner sitting there on the “reserve bench”.
Chris: Exactly, he’s our backliner, but he can’t fill in on each day either, because he has to go on tour with Joachim Witt then, so we have another friend, who has learned it too, Nils from the band Schattenmann, so, now we really have a “reserve bench”, just like there is in soccer. *laughs* But hey, everything worked out in the end, and I have to say this once again: dude, to stand up there, to have the courage—you’re asked by a band playing in front of 1500 people, “Can you stand in front of the targets at a shooting gallery within 24 hours?”—to have the balls to do that—
Swiss: That’s insane!
Chris: To say, “Yes, I’ll do it!” To have the courage—my utmost respect to Nico, if you hear this, and to Jörn, you’re the greatest, you guys are amazing, really. Thank you so much! Cheers to you with a Coke. *opens soda can*
Swiss: Awesome guys, and one has to say, there simply is an incredible number of musicians who are totally amazing. Who are not only amazing musically speaking, but where you also notice that they have walked the punk rock path, and they just go, “OK, we’ll manage!”
Chris: But you had something similar happen once; tell the story about Jakob when he was in Mexico!
Swiss: Exactly, first, I would like to make a brief interjection.
Chris: Do it!
Swiss: People, very briefly to understand, we still have—I’m recording separately, so to speak, and Chris is recording himself, and I’ve installed some software here—Chris also sent me a video today, for level setting.
Chris: It’s really bad, that video, isn’t it?
Swiss: It looks a bit—never mind, I wanted to ask you about it in private, but—some of the levels here are going a bit wild. Guys, if the sound isn’t so good: we’re working on it, but it’s good enough to get by. I heard a DER SPIEGEL (German magazine) podcast today… eh, the guy was also… the guy who was connected—that sound was also really wild, I thought… well, with us, that’s fine.
Chris: The internet is still uncharted territory for them too.
Swiss: For DER SPIEGEL. Exactly! For us it was actually… Jakob was in Mexico.
Chris: Last year, in autumn or something, right?
Swiss: Mm-hmm. Yes, exactly. We should—we had a relatively long break after the festival season, and then we were supposed to play at Highfield (German indie rock festival). Jakob wanted to—time was also a bit tight, but we had rehearsed well and all that, actually no problem, and then Jakob’s girlfriend called us, I think 6 days before or so, she said, “I don’t know if we’ll make our flight, Jakob just passed out in the bathroom!” And it turned out—you know the story—he had dengue fever, had a very severe case, fortunately got well and returned safely to Germany after a long time, but those were some really, really dark days for him; he said himself that there were 2–3 moments where he thought he wouldn’t even make it back to Germany.
Chris: It is also said that dengue fever is “break-bone fever”, which is one of the most painful diseases a body can endure.
Swiss: For real? That was horrible, he said, it was really… pure horror. And—then, yes, exactly, within 5 days we got a guy—guitar is also—well, you know, with us nothing is on tracks, so guitar is also very important—a very fit musician, whom you also know, Ruben (Ruben Roeh, guitarist for Joachim Witt) then stood in for Jakob, quickly learned it all and did very well. But I actually wanted to talk about something else with you.
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: And I was—my mother had gotten theater tickets for a play from an exiled Russian, Kirill… I know, right? Kirill something with a surname, at the Thalia, and it had been running for two years, Barocco, baroque is the name—and it’s somehow about the Russian Revolution, it’s very much about revolution, about the uprising of the oppressed, so to speak, and it’s actually a musical, and it fits a bit, doesn’t it, it’s so… Baroque was actually also “The world is coming to an end and people can still party”.
Chris: There was still… I know that one. His name was Kirill Serebrennikov or something.
Swiss: Exactly! It was too long, it lasted two hours and fifteen minutes, I’m fine with one and a half hour, or one hour and forty-five minutes, but it was half an hour too long.
Chris: Never watch the opera version of Nibelungensaga[1] then. It is 6 hours long.
Swiss: I know.
Chris: Just a side note.
Swiss: Seven or eight hours, or something
Chris: Yes, something like that, I don’t know.
Swiss: There was such a huge amount of talent in the people there on that stage, that was overwhelming. Do you know that feeling, if you watch people, and then you get to think— which happens to me very regularly—“They are so amazing, I feel like I have somehow always kinda cheated my way through it all!”, you know.
Chris: Yep.
Swiss: I don’t know, I probably am more well-known than all of them, I enjoy the benefits of being an artist much more than they do, but they are so much better at what they are doing, in their “craftsmanship” than I am in mine. That really was… I was so overwhelmed, the play wasn’t just good, it was—there was also—I have a bit of a problem with this, so I don’t want to go into it any further—but it’s always fascinating to see people like that, no matter in what field, art, sport, whatever, literature, who are so absorbed in what they do, and so talented, and so passionate about it, and so incredibly good at what they do… that inspired me—I left there… that inspired me again. I thought, “Wow, it’s just… People who are good at something and have suffered for it, have put up with difficulties for it, that’s just the coolest thing in the whole world.”
Chris: Do you come out of these things feeling exclusively inspired and positive? Because sometimes when I see overly talented people, who are so good at what I also do, I’m inspired and motivated, but sometimes it turns into the opposite, where I think, “I can’t do anything, dude!” Where I think no matter what I do, it’s all bullshit. “I can’t do anything! I might as well just give up, dude!”
Swiss: That’s in a way also what I thought, like, “This is so awesome… why don’t you put some effort into what you do?” So, these people definitely have—
Chris: I’ve been telling you that for years! *laughs*
Swiss: Yeah, but that’s how it is. And that’s what I mean, when I say, “I have the feeling that I have somehow muddled myself through it all.”
Chris: Yeah, yes.
Swiss: Incredible. They are just so—it felt like they put so much more work into their art, which isn’t really true at the end of the day, you didn’t study it in some fancy academies and so on and so forth, with scholarships, but you started with some tramps in some backyard rooms with shitty microphones and a shitty computer, and it just got better step by step; now I’m in the studio with you, which might as well be a homeless shelter. *both laugh* By the way, since things worked out with Eike (Eike Freese, music producer from Chameleon Studios), I recorded my part of “Linksradikaler Schlager” (translation: left-wing radical schlager). Eike, he’s also such a cool guy.
Chris: Yes, because everyone else, who usually works with you in the studio, is gone now; they’re all on tour with us now.
Swiss: And rightfully so.
Chris: You know that Benji (Benjamin Mundigler, multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer) is now playing in the band with us, right?
Swiss: Exactly! People, if you don’t know Benji: he has recorded a lot with me already, he’s such a smooth guy, in my opinion, one of the most pleasant human beings anyone can ever meet.
Chris: And he’s the kind of guy… if I look at what HE does and can do, I get to think, “I can’t do shit.” *laughs* I wanted to tell you about Revolverheld.
Swiss: That’s right, eh, you don’t know how I felt when you said you had a physical altercation with Jörn Schlönvoigt from Revolverheld.
Chris: Almost, Johannes Strate, I think.
Swiss: Johannes Strate. Sorry, I’m rumbling a bit here. Guys, I’m sitting here in my barren kitchen and it’s raining—
Chris: It’s ok.
Swiss: —please tell us.
Chris: Well, be careful, that thing was a really long time ago, and my memories are also hazy, because I think there was alcohol involved for both of us, and I think he probably doesn’t remember it at all, and he probably doesn’t know today either… maybe he knows who I am today because he might have heard about us through the ESC, but I don’t think he has a clue who I am, and above all that I was the one back then, should he remember it. That was a festival in 2007, so we’re talking about 17 years ago. It was called “Big Day Out”, somewhere in NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia), it was a mainstream rock festival. There were Beatsteaks, Die Happy, Sportfreunde, Madsen, H-Blockx and so on, as well as Revolverheld. And back then I played guitar in a weird alternative Goth band from Munich called “Big Boy”. I was more of a temp because they had lost their guitarist, I played guitar with them for a year, and I looked like I do today in the band. Just kind of weird, colorful makeup somehow, always half male clothes, half female clothes, mainly provocative, and somehow even wilder than today, and I know we were already done, we were just a small band, played early and Revolverheld were supposed to play in the evening, and I was peeing in the backstage toilets, and then he came in, I recognized him, and then he just made some stupid remark next to me while I was pissing, he just wasn’t cool. He had a major issue with my appearance and he was also sufficiently homophobic—
Swiss: Really? Just like that? Without you having exchanged a word beforehand?
Chris: Without us having exchanged a word beforehand. I can’t tell you exactly what it was, and if he’s listening—
Swiss: Or did you pee on him? I know that from us, our shared toilet sessions. This mutual, what did you call it? “Fraternization”? Where you… OK.
Chris: Pissing brotherhood. No. I think I said, “Moin”, or something like that and he said, I don’t know, it was definitely a tough line, and I was just quicker to get upset back then than I am now, and then I said, “You watch out, I’ve still got one free hand”, even while I was pissing. And one thing led to another and then, well, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there was a physical altercation, which someone from security ended and took me backstage again.
Swiss: Did you win?
Chris: It didn’t come to that, there was no winner.
Swiss: More like a scuffle. And from such a smooth guy. You really have to… it’s like that again, “When the curtain falls, look behind the scenes, the good ones are often bad and the bad ones are cunning” (from the song “Wenn der Vorhang Fällt” by Freundeskreis), so you know where you think, “Well? Johannes?”…
Chris: I think to myself, I don’t know, he won’t remember it, and if Revolverheld fans hear this and are angry with me, that’s totally OK. But maybe I’ll meet him in person again sometime, then maybe we can talk about it as grown men and laugh about it. But I thought that after 17 years you could share a story like that.
Swiss: Christian, I don’t think there are that many Revolverheld fans left.
Chris: You don’t think so?
Swiss: Sure, there are.
Chris: But have you ever had a fight with a colleague?
Swiss: Well, play fighting.
Chris: Well, fun… you asked me… But you don’t have any rough edges either.
Swiss: I’m such a smooth guy. I’m just not as crazy as you were back then. I walked next to Strate and said, “Moin!” I would never have dared to do that. With makeup on, you know? So completely cheeky to be rude to him when he wants to look around and then pee. No, Digga (slang used to refer to a friend), that was mean of me, I don’t even know him. I don’t even know why.
Chris: Well, I don’t know him either, he’s probably a really nice guy…
Swiss: I really am such a blasphemer. I don’t know him at all, and I’d like to say everything… wow, my level is going through the roof here. Christian, you’ll sort it in the mix afterwards. I take back everything I said here about Johannes, really, it’s completely unfounded. Yes, look, I once did something that I can tell you about here. There used to be a guy here in Hamburg, the people who made music here back then, a bit more serious, they were actually often connected, so in this rap and then R’n’B came along, we were very connected. And there was a guy I knew, Mehrzad Marashi, he always called himself Marasco, I think he won DSDS (“Deutschland sucht den Superstar”, German version of the casting show “Pop Idol”) or came second or I don’t know, and he had done a song cover with DJ S.T.A.T.I.C. from the VIBEKINGz and he… somehow there was a fight, that’s how I felt about his song. He probably had the idea for the cover and, of course, I only knew his story. Talk to two people who had a fight, everyone has their own story, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Chris: Very briefly, sorry. I just learned the other day that it always takes two people to have an argument, even in a relationship. Her and her stupid girlfriend, who always gives her shitty advices.
Swiss: Yes, I know him. This Slavek from…
Chris: Yeah, I’m sorry, but it really made me laugh. I know he’s absolutely…
Swiss: Great that you reproduce the TikTok viral trends here again—
Chris: But that one was good.
Swiss: —for the young people in your fan community. Uhm, what did I want to say? Wow, you threw me off big time…
Chris: Well, he had the cover song there…
Swiss: Exactly. Well, I only knew the story “The VIBEKINGz fucked me”, that’s how I took it. I don’t even remember if Mehrzad said it like that. In any case, I then dissed the VIBEKINGz on Missglückt. And dissed this DJ S.T.A.T.I.C.—
Chris: Parenthesis for the Lord Of The Lost fans, Missglückt is Swiss’ rap solo album, the first one back then, right?
Swiss: Exactly. And that was a song with Buddy Ogün, it made quite a wave at the time. And I also heard from various sources that it left the guy a bit… well, not in need of therapy, but it left him speechless. Like, “why?” And then I actually thought, I’ve been thinking about it more often recently, it was so unnecessary. I don’t know what was going on, he didn’t do anything to me, nor was I in the position where Mehrzad was my best friend. You know, if I have to take any kind of position. It was just pointless stress, from my point of view, it was definitely someone whom I don’t know if he deserved it. I would like to say that for once. So S.T.A.T.I.C., if you’re listening to this today: bro, I’m sorry. Very, very unnecessary on my part. I hope you can forgive me. Especially since then, for example, you know Grillz FM, you did your grillz there too, right?
Chris: No, I had asked about it. You have these black teeth, I wanted a full golden row, but then I wanted some that I could leave in. I had my dentist put the gold teeth on me. So many thanks to Dr. Christian Lampe, here at the St. Pauli dental practice, he gave me really cool golden teeth.
Swiss: OK, no, the colleague who does that also was with VIBEKINGz back then. Also a super nice guy, of course, we talked about it, no accusations at all and all that. I just wanted to say that, in hindsight, when I look back on my younger years, I have to say that I was really quite a bully at times. I was. So I was very—of course, evil tongues from our environment would say that’s still the case, but, of course, I would reject that right off the bat. But back then I was already very… I was already very argumentative. Very argumentative and I somehow needed this conflict, but I can tell you exactly where it came from: I grew up with two old '68er[2] parents, and I was really the punching bag as a young boy in our neighborhood. Bullied, belittled, etc. And at some point I got to an age where I really realized for the first time that if you don’t let yourself be hit, if you don’t let yourself be pushed around, but do it back, you’ll be respected. And then it turned into the opposite, it became too much, I had the feeling that I always had to go in very aggressively everywhere and always demand, challenge, and push people to the wall so that it wouldn’t happen to me. Of course, I didn’t see it that way back then, but now I see it that way and I have to say, looking back, it was… Sometimes, when I meet people from the past, I think, “Wow. That wasn’t really right”, and they are then quite surprised that they can suddenly have a relatively normal conversation with me. What kind of child were you, Christian?
Chris: I was actually an extremely peaceful child, and even as a child I was rather afraid of conflicts and physical confrontations, I always ran away and I was never embarrassed to run away. I’m not embarrassed today either, because I always thought I needed my fingers to play instruments somehow before I broke them. That changed for a few years when I was in my early 20s and had this tough phase, even in this short drug career that I had, where completely different aggressions worked their way out of me. I had the feeling that I somehow had to catch up a bit. And sometimes, I wouldn’t say that I welcomed physical altercations, but I was more provocative in some cases and took my chances. Because I somehow had the feeling that I had to experience it, which in hindsight was completely stupid. But maybe I needed it. I don’t know why. I somehow needed to know, a few times, what it’s like to get hit, to somehow tick it off for myself, and realize that I think it sucks. And from today’s perspective, completely stupid. Where I think to myself I could have just left it so peacefully, because I hurt people, people hurt me, it didn’t do me any good, and it didn’t make me stronger or tougher or stronger in character or anything.
Swiss: It turned you into a strapping German.
Chris: Yes, just like that. But no idea. I had such a beautiful and positive childhood where I somehow had the feeling that I had to consciously let dirt, and broken things, and a broken attitude towards life into my life for a while afterwards in order to tick it off for myself. As if I needed that.
Swiss: But I think that’s also so important. There are always those people, for example, who always want to protect their children or themselves from everything bad. They don’t go there, they avoid it, and everything should always run as smoothly as possible, and I always think that you’re not doing yourself or other people any favors, children for example, if you try to protect them from everything. Because at the end of the day, I think it’s really important for people to get to know each other in different situations. So, if you don’t know what shit tastes like, then somehow even the good, I’ll say steak… Then you don’t know how good it tastes. I always think I’m so grateful that I grew up the way I did. That I somehow saw drug addicts very early on, punks bumming around. People who got into fights. Because, of course, that’s also part of our lives, it’s somehow existential. I don’t know. I think it’s part of it and I haven’t always thought that violence is wrong. So nowadays, I don’t like violence at all. I really try to avoid it. Sometimes it works more, sometimes less, but basically I think it’s great because, as you say, there’s a lack of words when you hit. Or it’s pure oppression. But it also always depends on whom you’re dealing with. For example, I was in Neugraben (a suburb of Hamburg) at the weekend and there was an anti-fascist fight event. Muay Thai gyms from northern Germany and even from Copenhagen, a friend of ours was fighting there. And it was such a friendly crowd.
Chris: But that’s something completely different. For me, MMA (mixed martial arts) has nothing to do with violence in the conventional sense.
Swiss: I’m just saying, of course, it also… so you know, of course, it also attracts certain circles.
Chris: But you know what I mean.
Swiss: If you go to a normal kickboxing fight night or to a boxing con, you’ve got some kind of biker outfit, you’ve got that environment, you know? That’s a super uncomfortable atmosphere, and it was such a nice crowd, I felt really comfortable there. Even though they were beaten up.
Chris: What you’re saying about kids and protecting and all that. Just wait a few years. Because the thing is, for example, I’m right now in my role as the father of a child who’s about to turn 13 and is moving more and more freely, you’re much more confronted with what it actually means to let go of your child. They say, “Yeah, um, we’re having a LAN party there, it’s in that part of town, and I’ll get there somehow, and I’ll get back somehow, and it’s really cool.” And you think that when you were 12, you also went on the S-Bahn through Hamburg and that was all cool, and now you’re suddenly a parent, and you see your 12-year-old, and when you look at a 12-year-old, you still see a 5-year-old. Because that’s your baby. And you have to let go and not be uptight, and just say nice and cool, “Hey, Digga, but if you want me to pick you up, I’ll do it. No problem. Otherwise, have fun!” and you just let it go. And I tell you, when Rosa is at the age where you say you have to suck it up sometimes and you have to let her go, that’s a completely different feeling. When Mika was as old as Rosa is now, I also thought, “Yes, all freedom later. Very easy.” As soon as you’re confronted with the fact that you really have to let go of your child, it’s not easy, dude. And we’re not talking about anything bad. We’re talking about “I’m going to a friend’s house in another part of town”. And you’re like, “Fuck!”
Swiss: Rosa will always go out with a butterfly [knife], Christian. I can already tell you that, yes.
Chris: *laughs*
Swiss: Also, accompanied by a cousin of hers or two, then it’ll all be good.
[32:13]
Chris: But you… I once… I don’t know if you… a really, really serious topic that concerned me and also shocked me extremely, because I… and I really need some help with that… what I mean is that I need help with forming an opinion. I need another opinion, and it’s probably one of the worst topics ever, especially as a parent, if you think about it. In the last few days, I’ve been confronted with a lot of documentaries about pedophilia, hebephilia, child pornography, etc., and there have been arguments in comment sections, and also links to certain articles about: “What about AI child pornography?” To what extent should pedophiles who have not become perpetrators—because there are also many pedophiles who never harm a child, but simply have this inclination—to what extent should it perhaps be legalized to make AI-generated child pornography, which is therefore not real, where no real children suffer, to make it available to them in order to perhaps prevent them from becoming perpetrators at some point by getting their satisfaction from it?
Swiss: Wow, eh.
Chris: Yes, so you realize where I’m getting at: should you—
Swiss: What a topic, seriously, dude?
Chris: —should sex toys—Yes, well… we can also cut that off, but I… the topic, but I-I need to—because I have… because I’m totally indecisive about it. It got to the point where I thought: so crazy. What do you think about it?
Swiss: That is now very… my first thought on this, which I somehow… I have to say, probably out of a kind of self-protection, I’ve honestly never really protected, no, dealt with this topic and the discussion about it before.
Chris: I only have a little bit because I always had to tell my child that there was such a thing so that he would be able to recognize people who started to talk to you on the street and to realize what they wanted.
Swiss: Mm-hmm. So I actually think—so, I always have a basic understanding for mental disorders and mental illnesses. So, do you understand? Like when people say to me, “I have depression” or “I have anxiety disorders, I suffer from schizophrenia” and so on, these are things that I—well, not schizophrenia, but depression and anxiety disorders, I can totally understand that, you know?
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: Been there, done that.
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: And I’ll probably still go there a lot—to these places. It’s part of my life, at least, that I have to face this inner hell from time to time, and I can always do that very—when people tell me that, first of all, they always have my greatest support, you know, because I just realize: wow, I can do a bit… so, I’m not suicidal now nor have I ever been, but I can understand to some extent what kind of “place” you’re in right now.
Chris: You know the abyss.
Swiss: Exactly this. I’ve probably never been as close to it as you, but I know what we’re talking about and I know the darkness that reigns in that place.
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: And I also know that the most important thing in such situations is to talk to people. Do you understand? So, in my opinion, locking yourself away even further and dealing with it alone leads you closer and closer to the abyss, and I believe that if people have this tendency to somehow realize that they are attracted to small children, then that is a psychological disorder where I first and foremost have to say: I can’t empathize with that at all. Do you understand?
Chris: Me neither.
Swiss: You don’t have my support because I… I can’t understand that. Nevertheless, I don’t have to, and if science says, and medicine says, “Yes, this is a disorder”—
Chris: I must also say that I am completely unempathetic towards child sex offenders, i.e. towards—
Swiss: Totally!
Chris: Completely.
Swiss: So I think it’s your job—well, I once heard of a case of a woman who had a brother… she became a mother and her brother confessed to her that he was attracted to children. Like in your example, he had never done anything before, but he had to say that he felt—yes, very uncomfortable being with this child.
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: Then they went into therapy together—as far as I know now and remember correctly— and it was a transparent exchange about this matter, so to speak, and in the end they benefited from the fact that he took the first, right step and didn’t deal with child porn—whether it was… and that’s my point, whether it was AI-generated or not, you know—didn’t withdraw from it, but talked about it and treated it like a disease, you know?
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: Well, if you have AIDS and meet someone, then it’s your duty to say, “Listen, I’m HIV-positive…” Well, you don’t have AIDS yet, but “I am HIV-positive, but my numbers have completely decreased thanks to the medication, but I want you to know…”, do you understand? That’s a form of transparency that I think is important.
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: Of course, I think… talking about “better” or “worse” here sounds very cynical at first, but—
Chris: I know exactly what you mean, with this topic you generally don’t know how to choose your words, it’s super difficult.
Swiss: Of course, in my opinion, if someone consumes something like that anyway, it’s better that they consume something where no children have been victimized, you know?
Chris: The question is: when faced with the decision to say, should something like this be criminalized if, on the other hand, it might ensure that real children are protected? That no more children are kidnapped and forced to film child pornography and so on, because the demand is met differently, or is it so fundamentally wrong that you shouldn’t “feed” this urge in someone at all?
Swiss: Bro, what a topic you are tackling here!
Chris: Well, because I… I’m kind of… on the last days off and also yesterday I just—I’m just clicking through reports, and I like to be alone with myself on days off, and I stumbled from one to the other, and it stuck with me, and I’m kind of alone with my thoughts, you’re the first person I can ask how they see it, because I just don’t know either, I don’t know. Should you say, it’s not harming any real children in the process, maybe it’s a preventive measure so that fewer children suffer from it as well, or should you not “feed” it at all? This went so far in some articles and arguments that it was said, well, for example, you can also… Bestiality, for example, is also illegal. But you can buy a horse dick dildo. Then someone said, “Yes, what is it”—there are also sex toys for men with imprints of porn actresses’ vaginas and so on, “if you do something like that with a nine-year-old, should it be banned?” Not of a real one, but a modeled one. I know the topic is super super bad, just talking about it makes me sick. If you imagine now that someone has a sex toy that looks like a nine-year-old’s [vagina], and it prevents them from actually assaulting one… if horse dicks are allowed, should these be allowed, too? Everything in me first screams, “NO!”, and then I think, “Yes, but… maybe it helps?” And I can’t get my head around it. It doesn’t matter, you know, I always try this “point of view” thing, I always try to see perspectives and different sides, and this… I can’t manage to see it from a different point of view, it’s like thinking about the universe being infinite and what’s beyond that? I can’t get my head around it.
Swiss: Of course these are also… They always say that taking a person’s life is the… is the worst thing you can do. That may be true, but I think there are things that are far worse than death, you know? And for me, that’s living a life that, at a certain point, has actually already died… so, you know, killed you, and you have to drag yourself along until you actually physically die.
Chris: As you just said, the “taking someone’s life”, you can take people’s lives without killing them, and that’s exactly what happens in child abuse.
Swiss: You know, doing something like that to a small, defenseless creature just because you can and because it somehow gives you pleasure or gives you lust, that just really makes me… I can’t do that… there’s no point at which I can say, “Yes, that’s just an urge”. You know, I think at the end of the day, we, humans… what makes us different from animals or primates, although they’re often better than us, is that we have a—the ability to control our impulses. And no matter how absurd your… you know, how disgusting and how abysmal your dream sexuality is, whether it’s with animals or with children, you’re still a human being who knows that’s the worst thing you can do to a little creature that’s just starting to get a foothold in this world. Bro, that’s… you know that! And then it doesn’t matter what you… you know, you have to take one for the team and say, “I just don’t deal with sex!” Do you understand? “Yeah, that’s what I’m drawn to, but I…” I don’t know. So—
Chris: It’s honorable that you see it that way, and that makes you—that shows what kind of person you are, that you say, “We are all human, and there must be a point where we realize that!” I once had a similar discussion with Dr. Mark Benecke, you probably know him from listening to him.
Swiss: Exactly. A cool guy. I’m a big fan.
Chris: Exactly, he also deals a lot with the fact that he has solved murders that mostly had something to do with sexual fantasies, almost all the murders in this direction that he solves were somehow instinct-driven, and he actually says that there are people who have either been dehumanized to such an extent or have distanced themselves from it so that they can no longer feel what you have just told us, i.e. that they no longer have this feeling of right and wrong. Mark would actually be a good guest for our podcast, I have to say. Because that’s a question I’d really like to ask him, “What about AI child porn?”
Swiss: Yes, there is—of course, there’s always the question of evil, you know? So I think—I don’t know if there’s a person who is consistently evil in everything they do and everything they—well, I think that evil always has something to do with… with incredible egocentrism and, you know, narcissism. That you naturally have the feeling that “this world revolves around me, and if that’s my sexual desire, then that’s what has to happen, I need it!” Do you understand what I mean?
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: And that’s already a trait—not in this form, for God’s sake, but you can see that in a lot of people yourself. I also used to be a bit more “unsound” *laughs*, I’ll call it that, when my circles were still a bit more “unsound”—
Chris: *laughs* That’s a nice word, too.
Swiss: Yes, a bit of “unsound circles”, guys who have experienced things in the area of violence and, yes, oppression, and simply taking advantage of “might makes right”, and had no idea how wrong that is. And simply justified it by saying, “Yes, bro, but that’s my goal. If I don’t do it, HE will do it to me.”
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: “If I don’t set an example here, the others won’t understand. Everyone will laugh at me.”
Chris: Yes, sure, but that’s a completely different issue with—sorry to put it this way—but that’s a completely different issue with child fuckers, you can’t say, “If I don’t fuck the child, it’ll fuck me!”
Swiss: No, but I just want to say—what I’m getting at: everyone somehow finds a narrative to justify their actions in such situations.
Chris: Yes, I understand.
Swiss: So, nobody is— even the child fucker doesn’t wake up in the morning and tells himself, “I am a bad person”, but he says, “Hey, of course, what I watched there wasn’t very good” or whatever, “and that I—” You understand? But somehow he justifies himself, like you’re saying, and that’s a fact. Well, “fact”, for my understanding as a crime podcast listener, that many people—there is this nice saying, “Hurt people hurt people”.
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: You understand? And there we are at that point again. And many of these people were abused in their childhood, not always sexually, but also physically, and the only thing that brings them joy, and where they feel like they’re somehow taking back something from the world, is when they can wield power over those who are just as innocent as they had been back then. They try to resolve the same system, the same problem, differently for themselves somehow, you understand? And—well, I’m saying that with my cracker-barrel psychology, but—
Chris: Well, but that is what a podcast talk is there for! We don’t claim to be experts, but we try to assess different perspectives, and to somehow discuss even such a difficult topic as humans; I think nobody—neither do I expect it of you, nor [does] anybody, to actually come up with an expert opinion and to solve the issue. Not even the experts manage to do that.
Swiss: It’s horrible. It’s definitely horrible.
Chris: If someone were to ask themselves, “Is it actually possible for it to be worse than doing that, actively abusing children?” What shocked me even more was the case—there are several of them, but there is one that was described very explicitly, of a mother who provided her children or her child, partially during infancy, to child fuckers.
Swiss: Hmm.
Chris: So, [who] gave them the children. Voluntarily or for money.
Swiss: Mmm.
Chris: Where you’re thinking, “Dude, what—”
Swiss: No, there are—
Chris: That tears me apart! If you know how it feels to have your newborn child in your arms, and to notice there is someone for whom I would die on the spot, and then to know there are people who are able to do that—
Swiss: Yes.
Chris: —all pity is failing me there, I am getting the urge to kill there, really.
[49:30]
Swiss: There are people who are just so dilapidated emotionally, ethically and regarding their moral compass, you have to say it and—
Chris: It’s a good word for it, yeah.
Swiss: Yes! It’s a dilapidated life, and of course, at the end you have to say that actually we also—I don’t want to indulge in capitalism critique here, like, Heiner Müller[3], I think it was, said, “The holocaust was the altar of capitalism”. Humans virtually reduced to their dental gold.
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: That is the final consequence of capitalism. And… I don’t know, when I surf on the internet and watch what people are broadcasting there, what people are doing sometimes I am—To whom people look up, as well, you know? Recently we were at Enis… how is he called? He isn’t Turkish, Devin, Deven! … Schuller (Deven Schuller is a self-proclaimed finance expert).
Chris: *Laughs* Deven Schuller…
Swiss: Well, the role models of our time are just not people who have read, often. Of course not all of them, I’m talking about the broad teen audience. About those whom we would call our future. I don’t see any superstars who read, who show the importance of having a good education, who exemplify that it is not very important to be rich and to outperform everyone else; it’s a son of a bitch of a word, “to outperform”—
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: —but that it’s important to be a valuable part of the community. And that in the end, the most valuable and the most beautiful thing we have is always the community that we live in. And that in a healthy community people also tend to be healthier. And that in a healthy community people help each other, and give to each other, and listen to each other. And we are living in times in which helping others is considered a weakness, in which it is about outperforming everybody else, that are about being better, cooler, richer, more famous than everybody else, and who isn’t a loser anyway, and… do you understand? That is kind of the zeitgeist, and the kids look up to people who can’t do anything! There are always these discussions, “content versus form, what’s more important?” Today it’s just the form! Like, we are watching some people there, with millions of clicks, bro, who don’t even—I mean, you understand? Talking about this musical…—who can’t do anything!
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: They can’t do anything. Of course you can say they sell themselves well, they entertain people in a way; yes, but it is only about that nowadays. It’s not about being awesome at something anymore —and most of all, being an awesome human being too— but it’s about being at the top, you know? In a sense of a cap—
Chris: It is much form, little content, lately.
Swiss: Exactly. It’s being at the top in the sense of a capitalist spirit, and where is that supposed to lead to? It is, I don’t know, I am in a 1920s mood the whole time anyway, and… something dystopian. And in parts I like it too. For example, Maddin and I, we want to go to Kiev.
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: Soon. After the tour. And there it’s also like—hey, that’s actually pure baroque again. Like, hey, they are living on the edge there, a bomb can drop anytime, anywhere, a few hundred kilometers further the war is on fire, many houses are bombed, but they are celebrating their life so much. You understand? And they are raving and having parties and so on, and I have to see it. You know?
Chris: Yeah.
Swiss: This—it has— to me, the apocalypse also has something very—in English it would [be called] “thrilling”, you know? It’s somehow—I like it! And sometimes I think “yeah, if the thing is going down I want to be there, I want”—You know? I want to be there, dancing in a rave, and not to rot on my couch.
Chris: I can comprehend that from the outside, when I imagine you as a person in a movie, a bit like the person in—the woman in Independence Day who stands on the skyscraper and stands exactly underneath the first spaceship that fires the laser beam and says, “Yeah, take me, take me!” but I, myself, as a person, can’t—well, I can’t see any romanticism at all in this apocalypse that we are already inside of.
Swiss: Yeah, oka—
Chris: Not at all. It destroys me.
Swiss: Really?
Chris: And I also wouldn’t [go] to Kie—Yes. And I also wouldn’t go to Kiev, as long as there is a war going on in that country, I wouldn’t have the heart to do it. I once promised it to me and to my child, I couldn’t do that.
Swiss: Now stop dragging your child into this! You are a father!
Chris: Yes, it is like that. It is like that. It is like that. It is like that.
Swiss: Am I a bad [father] now—?
Chris: Or else we would have already played a concert there. No, you aren’t. Not at all.
Swiss: The people can write it down here! “Swiss is a bad father. If he goes to Kiev.”
Chris: No, it is just too much—I probably just don’t know—I don’t know, I probably just have to—there are so many cities in Europe that you go to and have a knife in your back faster than having a bomb falling onto your head in Kiev, of course. But I wouldn’t have the heart to do that.
Swiss: Hm, OK.
Chris: But Kiev will be one of the first—will be the first concert, as soon as the war is over there, that we will play. So, we were—shortly before the war—
Swiss: As long as you can still hold a guitar then; tell me.
Chris: Yes. That can take an eternity. So we—that’s really crazy, I also have many acquaintances, friends, colleagues, there are many of our fans, shortly before the pandemic, we went to Ukraine for three concerts, and it was—Ukraine-Russia tour, one after the other, you know. And many of the cities where we have been, they don’t exist anymore.
Swiss: Yes, yes, yes.
Chris: Something like Kharkiv, it’s virtually razed to the ground.
Swiss: Really, did you play in Kharkiv?
Chris: We played in Kharkiv—
Swiss: Yeah.
Chris: —and we contemplated going there again and shooting a music video, because directly next to the venue was an amusement park, which we thought was closed!
Swiss: Yes, yes!
Chris: There was a completely rusty roller coaster and rusty carousels, it looked like, I don’t know, Terminator 2, after the bomb struck, we thought it was closed! But then, there were people sitting in the ticket booths, they took money, and you could take a ride in these things—
Swiss: Yes, yes.
Chris: —we said, “We want to shoot a video in this freaky, busted amusement park”, then the pandemic came, then the war came, and now there probably won’t be anything left of the place as well.
Swiss: (sarcastically) Surely it was all TÜV[4] certified.
Chris: Of course. No, for us it’s really crazy, it’s a completely absurd situation, we have a profile for Lord Of The Lost on the so-called Russian Facebook, VK, VKontakte. And there we have got two admins, two girls, one is Ukrainian, the other is Russian. They are best friends. And…
Swiss: Hmmm.
Chris: … the Russian one fled from Russia, she is living somewhere else now, and the Ukrainian one lives somewhere near Kharkiv, still.
Swiss: Hmmm.
Chris: That means I actually have—If I want, the front report is a Telegram message away.
Swiss: Hmm.
Chris: And every time when I ask, “how are you?” what I get to hear completely pulls the rug from underneath my feet. It is still the same now as then there.
Swiss: Yes, it has—hey, so, don’t get me wrong, OK? I— my drive is less… how is it called, dark tourism? Right, like a “I’m going there as a westerner, renting the fanciest hotel and, you know? And watch their misery for a week and piss off again”, but—
Chris: I didn’t take it that way either.
Swiss: I—well there one has—hey I have met such awesome people there, dude, like so awesome—
Chris: You’ve shot [a video] there, too, right?
Swiss: Yes, we’ve shot “Linksradikaler Schlager” there! And—
Chris: You also have—2019— no, 2020 was it, right?
Swiss: No, 2021, hey, one year before the war. About exactly one year before the war.
Chris: Right, you have been there too.
Swiss: And I still know, I’ve also asked, there was a Martha, man, such a nice young girl! And it’s not just like that there, it’s like that in the whole world! You always get to know what’s happening in the countries and between the countries. And then you go there, and most times you just meet people who also have dreams, you know? And…
Chris: All the same dreams…
Swiss: … wish the best of life for themselves and their family, simple as that! And that’s the core of human existence, really, to wish for a nice life. And that all got destroyed now, just like that! And somehow I have the urge to [missing word] this situation—I have to go there, I want to see that; the places we had been to, we had really been all over the city. And Kiev got to me big time back then!
Chris: It’s an awesome city.
Swiss: It has …… me—I don’t know, I didn’t go to Berlin in the eighties, I was too young then, but—or rather not born; but it [reminded] me a bit of Berlin in the eighties, that’s how I imagined it.
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: You know? Very young city! Just started becoming very international! Young people—there are still free spaces everywhere to create art, people are raving, they—you know? I was in such awe! I was really, really, really in awe, and I have the feeling that this atmosphere that’s prevalent there now—I have to experience it! You know?
Chris: Yes, I understand.
Swiss: Alright. Yeah, let’s see. So, it’s definitely a thing that—when Madding suggested it to me, where I instantly went, “Yes man. Definitely.”
Chris: For me it’s still super weird to see Klitschko as a mayor—
Swiss: *Chuckles* Yes!
Chris: —I think I have already told you, but when both of the Klitschkos started training in Hamburg, I was a teenager, and I lived in Hamburg-Wandsbek, and always went on a stroll with our dog, a really nice golden retriever, and they always went jogging in the same park.
Swiss: At the Universum Gym, right? [It] was still there back then.
Chris: Exactly. And at that time the first Klitschko had just gotten his doctor’s degree, and I still know that I went through the park there with my father and the dog, and my father said, “Congratulations, doctor”; he [replied], *doing a Ukrainian accent* “Thank you very much!” And that was when they had just started with their world career, and then to see them in the boxing rings everywhere, and now to suddenly see him as a mayor in this—with this completely changed expression and with his face seemingly aged by ten years in one day before the background of what’s happening there; for me that is still a super weird picture where I think, “Hey, he petted my dog Balou.” Like…
Swiss: Hmm.
Chris: Now he is a mayor and gets bombed by Russia. Dude. Hey, such serious topics today, we’re already over an hour here!
Swiss: Yeah. It is—we are just… two emos. Right?
Chris: Yes!
Swiss: It is—we probably could [do] a funny pod—but hey!
Chris: I wanted to rap something German to you! By Eminem! I wanted to rap Eminem to you in German.
Swiss: Yes, rap Eminem, please.
Chris: And this for the last thing. Listen. Alright, “Slim Shady” in German. So “der Schmächtige Zwielichtige” (literally “the lank shady one”). Listen.
Swiss: How, the what, again? *laughs*
Chris: The lank shady one.
Swiss: The lank shady one, just the title’s cool already.
Chris: It’s super difficult. I will send you the text later; I will send it to you, and then you can practice it, because you are better at it, you can speak faster—speak fast better than me, occupationally. So, “Ich bin der schmächtige Zwielichtige, ja, ich bin der echte Zwielichtige, alle anderen schmächtigen Zwielichtigen sind nur am imitieren. Möge der echte schmächtige Zwielichtige bitte aufstehen.”[5]
Swiss: Boom.
Chris: “Bitte aufstehen. Bitte aufstehen.”
Swiss: Boom.
Chris: “Möge der echte schmächtige zwielichtige bitte aufstehen.”
Swiss and Chris: “Bitte aufstehen. Bitte aufstehen.”
Chris: Oh!
Swiss: Dude. Hey, that is amazing!
Chris: Savage, right?
Swiss: Theoretically we’d have to—“der schmächtige Zwielichtige”, that’s a—
Chris: With the original beat *does that beat/melody* Dip bip bip bip bip.
Swiss: Yes!
Chris: Dip dip, Dililip dip dip.
Swiss: I find that—well—
Chris: *Laughs*
Swiss: The lank shady one. And you instantly picture it, you know?
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: You know exactly, you know them all, these lank shady people who request you to stand up, whether they are on the train or—
Chris: Yes. “Please stand up! Please stand up!”
Swiss: —wherever, “please stand up, please stand up”. I’m like: “Ah, that’s the train conductor, this lank, shady one; because I have no ticket I’m supposed to stand up”, that’s cool.
Chris: *Laughs*
Swiss: OK, it’s very, very cool.
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: Christian, eh!
Chris: Yes. Well, where—when—
Swiss: Where are you going to play next…? Frankfurt!
Chris: We will be playing Paris tomorrow, then Luxembourg, then Frankfurt, Cologne, Amsterdam and then, uuuhhh, fuck, dude, I don’t even know when we’ll see each other. Then Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Stuttgart, Eindhoven, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Leipzig. Ummmmm… We definitely have to shoot an episode somehow, in two weeks. Shoot. Record.
Swiss: We’ll manage. We’ll manage. I am also—no, in two weeks, I won’t be on tour yet. Depends.
Chris: Then I am—in two weeks I am here for one day, on the 15th of April, maybe we could even do that in the Lost Place.
Swiss: Yes, we can do that, we have—yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Chris: Cool, right?
Swiss: Let’s check that.
Chris: Yes, do that.
Swiss: Exactly, it’ll be the beginning of a tour for me as well, then, but we’ll manage. Hey, again, it was really—
Chris: Cool.
Swiss: Even if—you really caught me off-guard with the topic of pedophilia.
Chris: I am sorry about that, too, but I really had to talk to someone about it. So… *laughs*
Swiss: No, and I am noticing, as well, that it is something that I very much block out and, like—
Chris: Yes.
Swiss: —don’t let into my energy cycle. But hey, very good to talk about it, and I’m wishing you awesome shows, stay healthy—
Chris: Yes, you too! So, I hope you won’t get sick, and if [you do], then [I wish] that you are healthy again before the tour.
Swiss: Yes, it will work out.
Chris: Yes? Alright.
Swiss: Alright, till then.
Chris: All the best.
Swiss: Ciao.
Chris: Till then.
[1]: The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. It tells the story of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, and of the revenge of his wife Kriemhild, which leads to the death of all the heroes of the Burgundians and of Kriemhild as well.
[2]: Protests of 1968 - Wikipedia
[3]: German author and dramatist - Wikipedia
[4]: The TÜVs (“Technischer Überwachungsverein”, meaning “Technical Inspection Association”) have to certify the safety of rides, vehicles, certain machines, etc., for them to be allowed to be used.
[5]: This is a literal translation of the text “I’m Slim Shady, yes, I’m the real Shady, all you other Slim Shadys are just imitating. So won’t the real Slim Shady please stand up?”, but it rather sounds like “I am the lank shady one, yes, I am the lank shady one, all other lank shady ones are just imitating. May the real lank shady one please stand up”.
Translation: Margit Güttersberger, Elisabeth «Kurojuki» Czermack, Jari Witt
Proofreading: Gaëlle Darde