(intro)

 

Gared: Welcome to a very sleepy...

Pi: Eye to eye...

Gared: With...that's Pi.

Pi: Hi.

Gared: Like last year, we are in the night train from Moscow to St.Petersburg.

 

[0:34]

Gared: When did you apply for your passport?

Pi: Um...I applied for it in...It's not that long ago. It's still quite new.

Gared: I see that here. 14.September 1993.

Pi: That's when I was born, yeah.

Gared: Yeah. You were born in Speyer

Pi: I was born in Speyer, that's right.

Gared: Why?

Pi: Oh, I do in fact know that. Cause my mother didn't manage to get all the way to Baden-Würtemberg, to Heidelberg I think. And there..

Gared: Otherwise you'd be a Homo Heidelbergensis. The...the um, what's that called what Indiana Jones does too? The Archeologists among you might know that that's a genus of human. Pi almost became one of those.

Pi: Almost. Yeah luckily I didn't, and since she didn't want to..

Gared: No homo.

Pi: ...give birth to me in the taxi, it had to be in Speyer.

Gared: (laugh) Our camera man has to laugh!

 

[1:31]

Pi: Yeah I don't actually know where you were born. 

Gared: Me? In Grossburgwedel.

Pi: Grossburgwedel...

 

[1:39]

(looking out the window at the noisy track)

Gared: Shhh! We're filming here!

Pi: Shhh!

Chris: Shhh!

Gared: That has the simple and yet so abstruse reason that my dear Madam Mama expressed the wish..

Pi: Maman? Are you half french?

Gared: No. I do actually affectionately call her "Muddern"...That my mother didn't want to hold her birth in the birth clinic of the nearest small city but...

Pi: Dude.. (probably cause Gared used particularly high-brow vocabulary to describe that)

Gared: (laugh)..but somewhere else. The nearest was Grossburgwedel, although my parents already lived elsewhere.

(Cameraman pretends to fall asleep)

 

[2:18]

Gared: I've been told it was nice there.

Pi: I believe you. I have no memories at all of my...

Gared: Grossburgwedel also has a nice Ikea

(Chris behind the camera, Gared and Pi (and Nasa) laugh)

Pi: I don't know of a single beautiful Ikea. I would like to...

Gared: What?? Well, the one in Hannover Langenhagen, uhm no, Messe-Laatzen is wonderful.

Pi: Nah, I don’t believe it...

 

[2:42]

Gared: Weren't you ever in Ikea Altona, the first European inner-city ikea?

Pi: Yes I was

Gared: That one's pretty. You can eat breakfast there. We'll eat breakfast there (holds Pi's hand) I'll invite you. But only the small breakfast. 

Pi: Why? And if I‘m hungry?

Gared: I can't afford more.

Pi: Yeah sure, I was in there before. But I already hate the fact that you HAVE to go in one direction to get THERE, even though you could go here, but you can't go there because..

Gared: There are shortcuts. 

Pi: Yeah but few. That's crap. 

Gared: But they exist.

 

[3:15]

Gared: You know what we'll do now? We'll eat funny bread croutons with caviar...smell. Not necessarily taste, but mostly smell (laugh. Puts one in his mouth, sort of chokes)

Pi: Don't chew. You're not supposed to chew them Gared.

Gared: And it would have been better if I hadn't.

Pi: Exactly. You took one, so I'll take three.

Gared: Okay I raise. No I call and raise. (laugh) Let's do crouton-poker. (both laugh)

Gared: I fold. Man I'm about to puke. Those things are so disgusting. 

Pi: No, caviar is noble, isn't it? Red caviar.

Gared: Yeah...maybe in Heidelberg. Or Speyer, sorry.

Pi: I don't know, I was never there.

Gared: Once I've finished this beer I'll also become a "speyer" (sounds like spitter, as in "puke")

(both laugh for a while)

 

[4:21]

Gared: At this point I'd like to take up a question we already had last year with Chris: What's your weirdest sex experience?

Pi: Ooh. Straight to the point. My weirdest sex experience? It's actually not that weird.

Gared: Weird, or gross, or funny. Feel free. Have you ever had sex at all? Can you even play the guitar? (laugh)

Pi: First: yes. Second: no, actually not. So far actually everything's playback.

Gared: At least you already had sex.

Pi: Well it wasn't actually really sex...I'll come to the point of why I didn't want that in a minute.

Gared: Heheh, I'll come soon too.

Pi: ...why I didn't want that, but...yeah, greetings to my mother incase she ever sees this.

(laughter)

Gared: Wrong context! Completely wrong context! That would have been my line at this point. Okay so: Mrs. Stoffers..

Pi: (???)

 

[5:23]

Gared: Sorry..we'll edit that out.

Chris: Mrs. Speyer.

Pi: So, first time my parents were away, at home, I made a party, like you do as a 17-year-old. In other words, yesterday. And I lay in bed, with..to my left a woman, to my right, a buddy of mine. 

Gared: Oooh.

Pi: The buddy also knows when he sees this that I mean him. 

Gared: You know who you are. 

Pi: The girl..

Gared: So where was she? Left or right?

Pi: On the left. Where the..

Gared: Stage-left.

Pi: Here. Yeah. She lay stage-left of me. Stage: my bed. And she wanted something from me, and at some point I also wanted something from her. 

Gared: What?

Pi: Affection. And...(laugh)..I wanted to caress her.

Gared: Mount her.

Pi: No. But then I noticed..I don't know, do you know those Maine Coon cats? The fluffy ones? (they laugh)

Gared: This isn't getting better. First the greetings to your mother, now the..

Pi: As I went further down, I found this stupid cat. And I completely didn't want anything anymore. I.e. no sexual activities happened. In the morning when I woke up..

Gared: I asked for a funny sex experience and you..

Pi: Listen, listen! When I woke up the next morning she was still lying next to me, my buddy still to my right. And I look to the ground a see a pair of boxer shorts there. I lift the cover. My buddy has been lying next to me naked all this time.

Gared: Were you still able to sit on that day? Or did you have any strange..

Pi: I could definitely still sit. But at some point I forbade him to sleep next to me naked, cause he kept doing that. I told him: "Dude!.."..

Gared: Did he have any..well that's no problem of course....

Pi: You can't talk yourself out of that now.

Gared: Damn. 

Pi: I thought it was quite weird, to lie in bed with a woman I didn't know that well, and my buddy who was next to me naked..

Gared: AND a Maine Coon cat.

Pi: And a cat. The poor cat must be totally confused.

Gared: Did she purr? The cat?

Pi: No. But she didn't scratch either. Well a little. 

Gared: I thought it was already so long that it was fluffy.

Pi: Badly combed

Gared: L'chaim

Pi: L'chaim

(they touch beer cans)

 

[8:10]

Pi: What is one of your biggest fears? Or your biggest fear?

Gared: Are we talking about irrational fears or what you carry around with you your whole life which at one point...Yeah um...spiders. 

Pi: Really?

Gared: Yeah. I'm extremely arachnophobic. Well not extreme. I have to specify. A little digression.

Pi: Are you metal or what?

(they laugh)

Gared: Yeah sorta. When there's a small spider on the wall, a daddy longlegs, then I don't care at all. I hit it with the newspaper and that's it. Greetings to Peter at this point. 

(something falls to the floor)

Gared: Bye coke. But those dark house spiders which are about this big (~3cm) and everything that goes beyond that...oah!

 

[9:11]

Pi: A buddy of mine told me..he was the typical guy who went to Australia after school, and did..

Gared: Work-travel.

Pi: Work-travel. More travel than work. And they slept in the car. And there are these spiders there that are called huntsmen, or huntsman or something..

Gared: Do I want to hear that story or do I..

Pi: Who cares, you haven't got a picture to go with it. 

Gared: Um...asterisk mental image asterisk heehee lol.

(they giggle)

Pi: No, they slept in the car because...

Gared: Want some cat food? (pokes a piece of food close to Pi's mouth)

Pi: No thanks. 

Gared: (Puts it in his own mouth) I'm just trying to shut you up somehow. But okay. 

Pi: They slept in the car.

Gared: Mm-hmm.. (holding his head in anticipation)

Pi: And these huntsman aren't small. They are this big.

Gared: Mm-hmm..I'm not looking either.

Pi: Fist-size.

Gared: Mm-hmm, just don't say it. It's okay.

Pi: Yeah. And they were sleeping there. And, when his buddy woke up, and shortly afterwards he too because the buddy roared so loudly.

 

[10:10]

(Pi stares into the camera dramatically. Gared yells into it)

Pi: Directly next to his face...

Gared: Oh dude..(claps hands and takes beer)

Pi: On the B-Pillar of the car, there was this spider. And they kinda smashed the spider out of the car. And they hit and stomped on the spider multiple times and the spider wasn't dead.

Gared: At this point also greetings to Peter.

Pi: They took their water kettle, their water canister which was full, and put it on top of the spider. There was a cracking sound.

Gared: Ohhh man!! Okay, that's enough, thanks.

 

[10:48]

Gared: My question to you Pi: where are we here? 

(they look out the window)

Pi: We are in...(looks at sign)..I can't read cyrillic.

Gared: It's Russia here. It's Russian, not cyrillic. (laugh)

Pi: Oh, thanks.

 

[11:00]

Gared: I'd like to give the question back: what is your greatest, deepest, most irrational or lifelong fear?

Pi: Mmm...

Gared: Now don't give me some hippy-crap like "Dying alone".

Pi: Nah. I can't...that might even be more comfortable, also for all the non-present people, when I die alone.

Gared: Exactly.

Pi: Um...no...my...my biggest fear I have...it's not something like spiders or snakes or whatever.

Gared: That's nonsense anyway. That's baby-stuff. 

Pi: Well let's be honest.

(both laugh)

Pi: It is in fact loss. But not in the sense of "Oh my loved ones will die one day". That's obvious. Well, for me. A very strange type of loss, cause as a little boy I was "alone a lot" (makes a mocking sad face). No, my mother raised me alone, and she often had to, when she had to work --she also had to work in the evening-- and so she left me alone. And actually I knew exactly when she would come back. But I always believed that she wouldn't come back. Because I...

Gared: Then you're like a dog. 

(both laugh)

Pi: Dude!

Gared: No, seriously. I heard this at least. I'm not very good with dogs, but it's what I heard: that you should always say good bye to dogs in a way like "I'll be right back." even when you're gone for half a day. That in the end, when you come back dogs react as if they had thought you wouldn't come back, and they're extremely relieved. That's the reaction that dogs show you. Cause dogs, as soon as you are out of their sight, they feel like "He's gone. He'll never come back. Or she, or whatever."

Chris behind camera: (whispers) Can I say something? That explains why he doesn't like Maine Coon cats. 

Gared: Because he's a dog?

Chris: Yeah.

 

[13:17]

Gared: That is a quite understandable fear. It's more comprehensible than an irrational fear of spiders or something.

Pi: Well okay, my sister also has a real..a fear of spiders. 

Gared: Well she's a girl. Oh wait. 

(laughter)

Pi: Exactly, she's ALSO a girl.

 

[13:33]

Gared: I'd like two mixtures with vodka

Chris: With what?

Gared: With VODKA!

Gared: Dónde está la biblioteca?

 

[13:45]

Gared: We have a dark display again I assume.

Pi: Let's just keep talking.

Gared: Yeah I'll just keep talking. You can add a few nice pictures. 

(weird picture of Gared)

 

[13:58]

Gared: How did you start playing the guitar? Or more rather, what's your history? Did you just start with the e-guitar and decide "Hey I wanna play Metallica" or did you also...did you have lessons, did you maybe have an acoustic guitar before..some crap like that.

Pi: Um, I got to the guitar through the fact that I at some point, on a trip to France, met a guitarist who liked "Sum 41", an ugly high school pop-punk band, just as much as I did back then, when I was...14..

Gared: So the day before yesterday.

Pi: The day before yesterday. Yesterday..hmm..who cares.

Gared: Yesterday it was 17.

Pi: ..and I thought that was cool, and in that combination, Sum 41, at some point I saw a video of the band Guns n'Roses, to November Rain.

Gared: Oh, that's with..Mick Jagger, right?

Pi: Exactly yeah. And..

Gared: Kirk Hammett.

Pi: And John Lennon, exactly. Where John Lennon stands in the desert and play the Les Paul like crazy.

Gared: Exactly. With his jacket and his glove and stuff. 

Pi: With the lightning flash over his face.

Gared: We understand each other. 

Pi: And I wanted to be like that. I then bought myself a Fender Stratocaster...no, I did not...

Text on screen: And then our camera died.

Pi: Yeah, that was actually the most banal reason why I wanted to play the guitar. Cause I wanted to be that cool. So I first borrowed an acoustic guitar from a buddy, and learned songs via internet videos. Then I decided to take lessons. For two reasons in total. But who cares. And I did get lessons for two years, but from there I became self-learning.

Gared: Auto-didactic! As the experts say.

Pi: Yeah.

Chris: Well, we have no more picture, but..

Pi: Who cares.

 

 

Translation: Manuela Lütolf

 

Proofreading: Elizabeth Czermack