So the first few days in Cannes have been crazy.

Like us, getting all the stuff prepared for the students from all around the world, the whole city was getting prepared for the most important film festival. Every day more and more pavilions, temporary theaters and stands popped out of the ground and the city got filled with countless people.

I work for Adobe who is a sponsor for the American Pavilion during the festival. The American Pavilion is part of the International Village, where several countries have their own pavilion. In general, it’s a place for press conferences, meet-and-greet, networking, business-talk, hang-out or maybe even a hide-out for people with access to this area. It’s the second time that Adobe a sponsor of the AmPav and while the festival takes place, selected students from all around the world, make a documentary on a self-chosen theme in groups of four poeple. I mentor these students and help with any issue that occurs. Mainly technical and organisational stuff. To follow up what is happening visit the page to the projects: reelideasstudio.com

So, I arrived at the French Riviera after a 900 km drive in a total of 12 hours, crossing the Alps, passing three country borders and experiencing various climate changes with no major problems.

Haven’t ever really been driving my Fiat, it was great that my journey started in Stuttgart, a location I’m very familiar with. It was also perfect getting used to the car by first traveling on the German Autobahn south to the German-Swiss border at Lake Constance (Bodensee), before entering a not so familiar country. During the journey, I saw some incredible things.
The Autobahn I used passes Rottweil, the oldest city in Baden-Württemberg, which was new to me, as well as the river Danube, that I know from my home town. But it was just a small creek there – weird for me to see. Some amazing ruins on hill tops from mid evil are near the border, which would have been worth visiting, if I had more time.

Passing the border was no big deal. The Swiss customs even let me in with a keg of original Bavarian beer from Weltenburg that I brought along for the Adobe crew. Officially you can only enter Switzerland with a max of 2 Liters alcohol. I entered with 10. Next on the route was passing Zurich (Zürich). Zurich is the only city on my trip that doesn’t have a by-pass for cars. So a lot of traffic goes through the city itself. I lost a little bit of time there, but at least my car got a lot of looks from the locals. So, basically I had to travel completely through Switzerland from north to south using the St. Gotthard tunnel as the pass through the Alps. But that was still a few hours away. Getting there I passed some of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

After Zurich there is this really nice lake called Lake Zug and the cute town Arth directly at the south end of the lake. But really mind blowing is central Switzerland. The impressions around the Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) were just too surreal to be true. High mountains with snow peaks and cliffs directly hitting the surface of the crystal clear water and powerful south winds blasting through this steep valley creating perfect conditions for the wind surfers, who were out that day. According to the numerous and other bad ass cars I saw, like two 1960s Ford Mustangs and a AS Cobra, real estate prices must be really high in this area. The nature in this area was just too breathtaking to put into words. Soon after I arrived at the Gotthard Road Tunnel (St. Gotthard Tunnel), a 17 km long tunnel that records over 800 accidents in 20 years and 30 deaths. So knowing this, it’s a bit scary driving trough this tunnel with a car that could break down any minute. But all went well.
The crazy thing was that the side I entered had completely different whether conditions, than the other side of the tunnel. Driving into the tunnel it was nice sunny and going out there was rainfall and it was a bit cold. But it cleared up very fast and then more indescribable impressions waited for me: The rain created waterfalls dropping off mountain cliffs that every base jumper is dreaming of. From there on it went down hill.

Shortly after that, I hit the Swiss-Italian border. It was very crowded there and I had to wait a bit in traffic. With the car been running constantly well for hours, the strong sun and warm temperatures the wait was quite comfortable. Not so enjoyable was that the temperature of the coolant rapidly climbed from 190° F t0 250° F. I assumed that either a hose of the coolant broke and therefore the coolant didn’t cool the motor any more. But that wouldn’t have the effect of the fluid constantly getting hotter. So the coolant isn’t being cooled down anymore. The only reason for that is that since the car is standing now and not moving anymore, the air stream to cool down the coolant, produced by a forward movement, wasn’t existent any longer. So the best I could do is to shut off the motor as often as possible to stop creating more heat. That worked out fine and after the border the car was moving again and the temperature went back to normal. Lucky me.

Driving through Italy wasn’t much of a blast. There’s basically just a lot of agriculture around Milan and south of that. But a lot of Italians recognized my car and I could see a lot of smiles on the Italian faces in the cars that past me. Especially the women in the 50s like it a lot. I guess I released some memories.
It felt kind of nice bringing a Fiat back home, which was build 1979 in Turin, which is just around the corner, and then directly exported to another continent and stayed there for 15 years.

The last part of the trip from Italy to Cannes was a bit exhausting. A lot of dried out vegetation and hills and not much to see. When you travel for hours, mostly on highways over mountains and hills, through numerous tunnels it is really weird to exit a tunnel and all of a sudden there is nothing in front of you. Because there is was: the Mediterranean See. All I had to do now is follow the cost of the Italian and French Riviera, past Nice to Cannes to finally arrivea at my destination. All went well the last part, but it really take a bit traveling the cost highway…

So I arrived in Cannes and all the preperations are running on full speed to make the 60th Cannes Film Fesitival one of the best ever. I really wish I had found my camera. That’s why I don’t have pics. But Mel has a camera here in Cannes so some pics are to come.

The first big adventure I’m posting here, is my trip to the Cannes Film Festival starting tomorrow morning. I was invited by Adobe USA to help at the American Pavillion, where they are located, during the festival. Check out their web site made for this year’s festival. I especially like the movie “Cannes-o-Ramma: Tales from the French Riviera” from the privious year emerging director award winner Melody Mayer. You can find that in the section “At the Theater”.

Now the adventure will already begin by getting there. I’m neither flying nor taking the train. I’m actually driving down there with my car that just passed the strict German inspections and the time consuming registration process. It’s a 1979 Fiat Spider that I bought a few years ago on ebay.com. I had it shipped from L.A. to Germany and then did many repairs to it, to actually be able to drive it legally on German soil. I still couldn’t drive it today, if it weren’t for my friend Daniel Winter, with whom I had in exciting road trip getting the car at the harbour in Bremen, my brother Martin, who got the car after the gear box destroyed itself on the travel from Bremen to Baveria. And especially my Dad, who I have spent many hours with fixing the baby and he actually did a lot of extra hours to get repairs done, I didn’t have time for myself.

Eventhough I got new rims, this is basically the car I will be driving for about 10 hours through 4 countries (Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France) until I arrive in Cannes. What will happen there is yet to come…

Alright people.

So, as you can see, I decided to start a blog. Not just for the fun of it and to be trendy. Mainly because I don’t want to keep on bugging my friends on what I’m up to by sending spam to them. And hey, maybe these people who don’t care in the first place. Usually there is so much going on that I can’t keep up writing the emails anyway. So If you’re interested in what crazyness is happening at the moment, just subscribe the rss-feed or visit this site every once and a while. Whatever.

later.