Latest / Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences / The Art of Becoming: A German's Entrepreneurial Journey in the US #0051

Transcript

The Art of Becoming: A German's Entrepreneurial Journey in the US #0051 · Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences

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  Hey everyone, and welcome to Whereabouts Sales.
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  Today I've got one of the most intriguing journeys I've
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  encountered. My guest today is Max, and as I
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  just learned, even his name has a fascinating story behind this
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  change, all tied to his move to America.
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  Max takes us back to 1989 or without Internet or Google as he
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  left Germany for the US to pursue journalism.
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  It's an incredible tale of immigration, a dream come true
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  and embracing a new life. We dive deep into his career
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  from writing a best selling book on Route 66 to his profound love
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  for the 20th century's American culture, especially music and
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  the iconic diner scene. I love that we share.
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  Plus hear how he went from 1:00 making to creating a unique non
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  alcoholic sparkling grape drink. This conversation explore
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  cultural shock, the audacious spirit of America and what home
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  truly means. You won't want to miss this
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  authentic and inspiring chat. I'm Paul and this is where about
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  stairs. Enjoy
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  Max Thanks so much. I appreciate a lot of the time
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  that you take for this. I have to ask you something
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  about the about your name, because I always call you Max,
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  but the name in your e-mail is a different one.
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  Yes. Is is it Max?
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  No, so my, my legal name is Holger Herzler.
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  So. So now you come to America and
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  you spend the first days as a journalist.
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  You work a lot on the phone and spell that name over and over
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  again and nobody can pronounce it.
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  And I said, you know what? I got to do something about
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  this. And so I grabbed the the the a
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  name that I found most likely works in any language.
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  And I had just read a biography of a German film composer in
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  Hollywood, Max Steiner. And so I said I'm going to use
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  that name. I'm going to be Max from now on
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  so. That makes sense.
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  That makes sense. I'm.
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  But it is just like, you know, when you and then you pronounce
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  you like that, there's a terrible coffee in America
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  called Folgers. So your name becomes so your
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  name becomes Holger. And I'm like, I'm not going to
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  do that. That's terrible.
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  OK, your story was for me fascinating because I never, I
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  never met someone that is living it's in so long in a different
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  country. And I think the story of an of
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  an immigration in a world where you have no Internet, no Google
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  to search for details, no, no idea how to how to get the
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  information. It's it's it makes it more
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  interesting. First question, where Where were
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  you born? I was born in a small town in
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  Schwaben called Heidenheim, Underbrands and Sheba, but my
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  parents lived in Carlsworth, so I was born there.
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  I spent, I don't think, a week there, and then was raised
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  mainly in Carlsworth and another small town where my parents
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  moved when I was a little older called Itlingen.
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  It's all kind of the outskirts of the northern black forests.
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  Very, pretty, beautiful. Yeah, very, I would say very
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  dreamy. It's it's a, it's a beautiful
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  there. And you know, but obviously not
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  something as a it's a, as a young person, you know, like,
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  yes, that's what, you know, you've, you know, born, born in
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  Shavan. And as a kid and I was to this
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  day, I still identify with a lot of foods from that area.
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  I really, really love foods from Schwab and and I I I play with
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  it a lot in in baking and cooking at home.
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  As a guy who moved here, I can say yes.
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  What did? What is part of your interest to
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  to live abroad expect then? So I in, in my teens, I, I also
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  was a musician my, my whole life.
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  I played guitar. I was very much interested in
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  Blues and then got interested in bluegrass music and fell in love
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  with the banjo of all instruments.
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  You're talking about this mid 70s where there is no real
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  teachers, there's no books, there's no YouTube where you can
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  learn anything. And I, I, I started teaching
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  myself this, this American instrument just from listening
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  to records and writing down all the notes and then subscribe to
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  a magazine, Bluegrass Unlimited. That's bluegrass is that kind
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  of, is the music I, I, I loved. And, and so now I had to read
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  everything in English and kind of like I, I very much
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  identified with this music. And at the same time, I was a
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  reader of American Mysteries. So I loved the, you know, 40s
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  Raymond Chandler, then later Dashiell Hammett.
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  Everything that played in this in the the noir films and also
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  the noir literature was very close to what I was really into.
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  I was interested in that. That was kind of larger than
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  life. It was.
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  It was very exotic, but also the epitome of cool, you know?
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  OK, so it was that age, Smoking, let's call it like this.
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  It was. It made everything cool.
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  Exactly, exactly, exactly. OK.
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  And so, so there was this interest in, and I have to say
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  that to me that is still, I'm very much in love with the 20th
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  century and the, the music and everything that came out of
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  America in the 20th century. Culturally to me is, is, is
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  eternally fascinating. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I read
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  biographies. That's kind of my, at this
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  point, most of the last 10 years, musicians biographies.
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  And I'm talking about from classical composers that came
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  from Germany or Austria in the 30s and settled in, in
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  California to Blues musicians, jazz musicians to his I'm, I'm,
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  I'm, I'm really trying to put all the pieces together
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  musically. How, how did this whole
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  landscape of music evolve? And really interesting little
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  side note. So one of the people I read a
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  lot about was his name is Arnold Schoenberg, who is the inventor
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  of 12 tone music change the history of music came from
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  Austria to from Vienna to LA. And actually his son, grandson,
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  sorry, Randy Schoenberg was the one who was instrumental of me
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  meeting my my now wife. And he he ended up marrying us
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  so. That's an interesting story.
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  But there was always this, this real interest in OK, jazz,
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  Blues, American literature when I went.
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  So I went to University of Tubingen, also to Freiburg and
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  Humbug. I graduated from Humbug and I
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  Americanistic or American literature was my, my major and
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  my thesis, my, my master's thesis was about the Private Eye
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  in films of the 70s. So what happened to the mythical
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  figure of what happened to Philip Marlowe once we enter the
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  70s in the post Vietnam, post Watergate world, You know, so,
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  so I was really fascinated with films and for and, you know, and
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  literature, everything American seemed so exotic and larger than
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  life, you know. I heard, I heard and I have to,
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  we have to go on this small rabbit hole because I, I also
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  like the, the 60s music, the 60s, sixties, 70s US music and I
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  think the, and also the movies from that area.
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  And I heard two theories which I find both interesting, but
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  they're of course theories that the first one is that this,
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  because of that the, let's say the, the discovery of, of, of, I
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  want to say drugs, but it sounds bad.
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  But of, of funny substances. That was the first theory
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  because they expand the creativity.
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  And that's what everyone is saying that the, the, at least
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  the, the, the mushrooms that they discovered back then, they
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  expand the creativity. And the second one, which is a
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  theory which I heard recently, was the fact that they didn't
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  have data to know what people like, because everyone is saying
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  now Spotify has all our data, Netflix has all our data.
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  They know exactly what music we prefer, They recommend always
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  the same. We don't, We're not pushed to
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  errors that we don't know. And back then they were just
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  creating music out of pure creativity.
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  They didn't want to aim to an algorithm, they want to aid to
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  aim to a public or what? Why do you think the music was
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  so and the creativity was different back then?
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  Well, I definitely think that. Really, really good question.
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  Why was it different? I'm I'm it's almost like you
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  have to think backwards and think why?
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  Why is it now what it is and what was the situation back
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  then? I feel recorded music was not as
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  prevalent and I think I mean I have this theory that record
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  that the the process of recording music ended up
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  destroying music. The question is, should how does
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  music change when it gets recorded and when we as an
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  audience can repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat?
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  Live music is a completely different thing.
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  We have no rewind button. That means in, in, in a live
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  situation. We have to be present, we have
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  to be there, we have we have to be witness to this and only then
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  can we participate and and experience it.
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  But the, the more we recorded and refined the recording
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  process. And now my theory is that music
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  will survive, but it will only survive as live music.
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  It, the recorded music is it's, it's, it's in many ways it's,
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  it's an artificial product that's already dead.
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  Because it, a lot of it, I mean, I see a lot of friends being
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  replaced by AI, that AI can record a much better solo guitar
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  solo than the greatest guitar players, but AI cannot interact
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  with an audience. It can't be in a room.
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  It can't feed off the power of the audience.
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  That and that's what artists do. I feel the music was so much
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  better than that because I, I feel that that the, the, the,
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  the performance aspect was so much more important.
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  Recording it was an afterthought.
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  Oh, we got to record that and, you know, we got to make some
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  and then became capitalism. OK, let's make money of it.
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  Let's you know, so it became a business.
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  I think as well that whenever I think that music is something
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  which is not a finished product and should never be a finished
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  product because because the creativity is always parting new
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  ideas during singing, during racing it and I think that makes
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  it that's it. That's an interesting aspect to
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  to think about. I never thought about it.
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  That is dead after it's recorded, which makes sense
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  because there is no more, there's no more expanding to
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  that and. I mean, I have to, to lie if
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  that, if I wouldn't say that I, I, I'm so glad music is recorded
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  because I'm, there's all these old things that we can, you
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  know, it's just, but if you listen, say you'd listen to
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  these old miles records where these guys rehearse for an
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  afternoon and then go in the studio and play that thing.
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  And there's some engineers who know how to mic it and how to, I
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  mean, if you could look at the, the records and that's just
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  amazing. It is still capturing it's it's
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  capturing a, a live performance more than OK, we're gonna
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  engineer this little bar and then we're gonna create a little
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  solo and then we changed it. It's different so and I'm glad
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  that this recording process obviously exists.
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  So we have, you know, we have, we have that we can listen to
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  Miles Davis today, you know. Correct, correct.
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  I mean, I mean engineering back then was an art Max, we have to
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  say it. So now it's a we have a lot of
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  help from techniques. So you don't have a lot of
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  manual, but back then was an art to match everything together.
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  So to start them with the perfect that we talk about
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  tapes, right, So we don't talk about anything digital.
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  It's amazing. It's amazing.
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  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that I have one more
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  thing on the repertoire and we come back to the story because I
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  find this music rabbit hole. I'm also a huge music fan and
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  that's why I like this rabbit hole.
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  I think the focus that we have today on chorus only is
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  destroying a bit of creativity because everyone is singing,
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  everyone is pushing to create this 30 seconds, 60 seconds or
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  maybe 20 seconds chorus that is, that is repeatable that everyone
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  can sing and nobody's focusing on the actual music.
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  And I think back then the focus not was not that much on the
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  lyrics, was the focus on the music all.
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  Right. Both.
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  Yeah, both. It depends where you in, in what
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  kind of genre you're in. If you're in in jazz, obviously
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  it's more like an exploration, harmonic, melodic exploration.
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  How do you develop themes? It's almost very close.
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  In many ways, jazz is, is classical music, but you compose
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  in the moment you compose and everybody composes that place
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  and on on that stage. Then you have the, the, the
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  storytellers, the music of storytellers, where you have,
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  where the lyrics are very important, where it's almost
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  like, like poet. It's it's like a poem.
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  It's like literature to music. So I I would, you know.
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  But the difference makes it was the whole lyrics was important.
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  They only the chorus is important.
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  That's why I think. It's can you create a hook that
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  gets under people And like I remember that.
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  I heard that before. I wanna play.
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  Let's play that. Good.
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  And it's really interesting rabbit hole.
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  I'm sorry for dropping. Yeah.
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  But I, I could talk about music. I mean, I'm, and I was also so
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  lucky after coming to America, I have met so many of my heroes
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  and I, you know, I was able to play with some of them.
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  So I've been really lucky that, that, that the music is, has
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  been, even though I was never a professional musician, I never
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  made money. I mean, a couple of times, but
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  you know, it wasn't really my profession.
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  I always was surrounded by really, really amazing
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  musicians. So once in a while I could also
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  do something real fun. And so it's really, and now I'm
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  married to an unbelievable soprano.
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  It's really one of the great voices in my in my book.
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  That's that's amazing. That's real amazing, Max, to
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  come back to the story because yeah.
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  Yeah, yeah, let's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  You leave. You leave me because it's hard.
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  I will go anywhere. I'm so curious about everything,
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  Max. So it's hard.
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  So to come back to the story you said.
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  So we, we talk about, if I remember correctly, the, the,
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  the, the 80s, right? When, when the, when you, when
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  you end up when you finish university.
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  How do you, how do you, did you already try to get to US or did
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  you were you looking for opportunities or?
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  I was looking, I was looking for an, for an opportunity, but it
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  wasn't really clear how I could get there.
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  And so after I had finished my my studies at Hamburg
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  University, I applied for an it. It's almost like a trainee
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  program for at the spring of a log.
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  I was living in Hamburg and I had some friends and said, well,
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  why don't you apply there if you want to learn to be a
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  journalist. They have an amazing program
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  where every three months you go somewhere else.
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  You have to work at Develd for three months, you have to work
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  at at Bilsaitong for three months, you have to work at the
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  new state at a local. Springer at the time owned all
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  these local papers and on radio and T all kinds of stuff.
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  And so there was I knew there was an office in New York,
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  Springer Ozlundstein it was called.
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  So basically that was an office that would supply all the porn
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  news stories back then, no Internet like we know it.
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  So there was still journalists kind of collecting stuff,
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  getting stories that are interesting for German readers.
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  And so I, I was lucky enough, I also kind of maybe had the
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  right, you know, sometimes not sometimes I think in life, most
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  of it is right place, right time.
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  I, I, you know, I was, I was awake when other people slept
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  and, and, and said, Hey, I want to do this.
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  And so they sent me to New York and I was 1989, the wall was
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  still up and I so Schwenger sent me was in May.
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  So I think on Mother's Day 1989, I flew to America or landed and
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  they had rented a little apartment.
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  It was in the in the 50s in Manhattan and the house was
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  right next to Katharine Hepburn's house.
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  And so I would greet her when she was gardening, when she was
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  watering her flowers, and she was always friendlies.
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  And I no more than that. But it was just really at that
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  moment, I was kind of like, oh, my God, I arrived in this city,
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  you know, I mean, New York is just, you know, I, there's no
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  words for it. It's an amazing place and I, I,
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  I could not believe that I saw that, but that was my that I was
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  there. But that was my entry into kind
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  of so. But at that point it was clear
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  that was only three months, you know, that I had I was supposed
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  to go back, you know, I had obviously already gotten rid of
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  my apartment in Hamburg, put all my stuff in my parents house in
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  in the South. And this had decided I will not
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  go back. I will find a way.
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  And you know, I, I actually didn't have to find a way
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  because the, the Bureau chief in New York, very well known German
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  journalist by the name of Walter Unger, who had worked at Stan,
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  was one of the great, great Stan reporters, like really old
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  school, like a fantastic journalist.
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  He, he was the boss there and he really liked my writing.
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  He liked what I did. And he said, you know what, I
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  want that guy. He, he, let's give him a
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  contract. And so he kind of made it
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  happen. And I, I didn't have to go and
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  said, Hey, can I find an American girl?
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  You know, I'm, I really want to stay.
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  I so I could do it the legal way.
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  So I had a journalist's visa and, and in in many ways that
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  gave me a chance to really fly. Because if you're a journalist,
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  the amazing thing about that job back then at least was you have
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  access to anybody's life. You know everybody.
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  If, if you, you know, you got to get the story, you talk to
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  people and you know, you can learn about anybody.
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  And to me that's, that was just amazing.
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  I've, and I've done crazy stories.
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  I, I, you know, Develd gave me a chance to do some really obscure
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  stuff on, on the weekends for the weekend editions where I, I
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  did a story about the shoeshine man in front of the Brooklyn
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  courthouse who for 40 years, that's what his job was.
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  He was a shoeshine man. And I, I love, I love to write
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  stories about real common people and they'll, you know, their
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  lives and, and what they, what they did.
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  You know, it's, I got very early on.
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  So I came to New York and, and then had this idea and I
• 22:35
  proposed it back then to, I was out of build.
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  I think I said, you know what, I should to get a Harley-Davidson
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  and drive Route 66 from Chicago to LA and and they said, well,
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  why don't you do it? OK, We, we, you know, we want
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  that story. So I did that and I ended up
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  doing it four times because I wrote a book about it in that
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  was published at Olstein and became was printed four or five
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  editions called Strata Dezenzel Route 66.
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  But it was a big, big seller in Germany and I think 91 or so,
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  92. And so I again, I got to meet
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  all these people on Route 66, the guy who I mean, I met a
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  Barber in, in Arizona who, who was there already when, during
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  the Dust Bowl in the 30s. So, you know, it's and it's all
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  so the eye of a German who comes to America.
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  It's all for for me, it was so exotic.
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  The neon lights, the, the diners, the, the, the stainless
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  steel buildings, the, the sound. And I think we talked about it
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  for the sound of the telephone that sounded exactly, exactly
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  like in the Rockford Files. You know, that TV show.
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  I to me, it was just like magic. It was just unbelievable.
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  They actually supported all your dreams.
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  Let's let's go this way. So and you get to you got to
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  write about them. OK, a dream come true.
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  I mean, the, the funny story is that I was not even a motorcycle
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  rider. I, I, what do I know?
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  I'm like, I, I had no driver's license.
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  So I went to the Bronx, took two lessons on a little the
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  Kawasaki, got, got my license, flew to Milwaukee to the factory
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  where Harley was built and picked the Harley up.
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  I mean, it, it drove it out of their warehouse and drove on
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  Route 6, you know, tried to find my way on Route 66.
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  It was just crazy, but it was. But back then, it felt back then
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  journalism was also not still something where people were
• 24:53
  really interested in a longer story that you were able to.
• 24:58
  I think detention span was different and people were just,
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  I feel there were still magazines, you know, There was a
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  time where the magazines was something everybody.
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  Magazines were everywhere. There was no Internet, you know.
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  And subscriptions to magazine and you were waiting for your
• 25:14
  monthly monthly magazine to see which is the new top 100 in
• 25:19
  music or I don't know all all kinds of stuff you it's.
• 25:24
  So I, so I wrote that book and then that my publisher in, in
• 25:28
  Berlin said back then the, the new thing was Cd-roms.
• 25:34
  How about we take all your pictures, all everything from
• 25:37
  the book and we put it all on on a CD-ROM and it's like an
• 25:41
  adventure where people can navigate and you.
• 25:44
  Then we, we put you in front of a green screen and you drive
• 25:47
  your Harleys through your own pictures.
• 25:51
  So we did that and that CD. The CD-ROM Route 66 won a prize
• 25:57
  in Cannes for the best travel, whatever approach to do.
• 26:02
  You still have it. Yeah, I have nothing that I
• 26:05
  could play it on because there's no system anymore that that that
• 26:10
  supports that, you know? I get I just to see it.
• 26:13
  I can offer you to digital to digital.
• 26:16
  So yeah. It's, but it was, you know,
• 26:20
  remember these early CD-ROM games where people spent like
• 26:23
  days and days going, you know, it's mystery games.
• 26:27
  What was, I forgot what the name of it was, but it was kind of
• 26:30
  like, how can we do a travel thing on the CD-ROM?
• 26:33
  And real fun by publisher Michael Fleisner and from
• 26:41
  Woochtein. He was very much into it.
• 26:43
  And yeah, we, you know, we partnered for a while on, on, on
• 26:47
  different kind of projects. And these became basically my
• 26:50
  side projects during my time as a, as a journalist in in New
• 26:55
  York. And I mean, we had Springer had
• 26:58
  an office above Radio City Music Hall.
• 27:00
  Just imagine that, you know, you.
• 27:03
  So you walk into that building. Like living, living.
• 27:07
  Living. Living Coast Coast to had the
• 27:10
  airport and working above the the the like dream come dream
• 27:15
  come true dream come true. You know you have your jacket
• 27:18
  because in you work in jeans and T-shirt, but in in New York
• 27:22
  everything if you want to go out at night or to a really nice
• 27:25
  bar, then you always need a jacket.
• 27:27
  And so you go up to the rainbow Room and have a cocktail and you
• 27:31
  look at the lights of Manhattan from the top floor.
• 27:34
  It was just, it was really a dream come come true.
• 27:39
  And I really, really loved writing in New York.
• 27:45
  I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed working with this Bureau
• 27:50
  chief, Walter Unger. He was really an amazing mentor
• 27:54
  for me. Usually I have AI have a
• 27:57
  question which I always ask, but in your case, you actually
• 27:59
  answered this question because I always ask expectation versus
• 28:03
  reality. But I think for you, it's it
• 28:05
  topped the the reality topped expectations, right?
• 28:08
  Yeah, 3D 40. It was just like, wow.
• 28:14
  So everything that you did, you did expected you didn't had the
• 28:17
  the I think you there had the hustle of of doing all the
• 28:21
  bureaucracy someone did for you, which was complicated because
• 28:24
  back then to get the information was almost and I would not say
• 28:27
  impossible, but it was hard and much harder.
• 28:29
  They have the forums. You have to have the pre the
• 28:31
  Internet place that you have can't search for.
• 28:33
  But someone went through this hustle for you.
• 28:36
  So I think it's it was just a jackpot, but like you said.
• 28:40
  And I had Paul, I had this list to say, OK, when you get to New
• 28:44
  York, OK, my top five list of who I was going to hear first
• 28:49
  music, you know, and I got Leon Russell was the first one Lone
• 28:53
  Star Roadhouse. I heard Leon Russell, which was
• 28:55
  like one of my still one of my all time heroes.
• 28:59
  I got to hear Albert King. I went up to Harlem a lot and
• 29:03
  listened at the Apollo Theatre to B.B.
• 29:06
  King and to all these artists. It was just was it, it's really
• 29:12
  wow. It's it's, it's amazing.
• 29:16
  But also The funny thing is, you know, so obviously then you
• 29:19
  befriend New Yorkers who grew up in Upper West and they never
• 29:24
  ventured past the 90s because that's not our place up there.
• 29:29
  You know, we're not supposed to be there.
• 29:32
  And the German is obviously very naive and like, I'll go
• 29:36
  anywhere. I don't care.
• 29:37
  I, I, I want to, you know, and I had some of the most amazing
• 29:41
  experience at that way. And I took and took New York, NY
• 29:45
  friends who hadn't seen part of New York that they because they
• 29:50
  were too worried about being there.
• 29:52
  And it's like, that's where we're going to go.
• 29:54
  Let's go to La Familia and you have soul foods and listen to
• 29:58
  some music there and have let's have fun, you know, And I think
• 30:02
  as a, as a, as a foreigner, you, you're naive because you don't,
• 30:06
  you haven't experienced crime in that way.
• 30:09
  And you're just, you know, and obviously, but there's also
• 30:13
  personality. I, I, I always felt I can, I
• 30:16
  can, I have been in some very strange situations, or maybe
• 30:20
  also dangerous situations, but I always find a way to talk to
• 30:23
  people to. I mean, I, I think maybe groups
• 30:29
  of people are harder when they gang up on you, but a single
• 30:33
  person I always find a way to talk to to someone.
• 30:37
  I'm just. I think, I think it's also a lot
• 30:41
  of prejudice when we talk about people going in certain areas
• 30:45
  and there's a famous code which says that the cure for prejudice
• 30:49
  is travelling. And if even if we talk like
• 30:51
  small travelling, like New York from from the exactly in the old
• 30:55
  city, it's still the cure to prejudice because you go and
• 30:57
  see, OK, it's not that bad. So everything that I heard was
• 31:00
  interesting. I was the someone in in
• 31:02
  Marseille and Everett told me don't go.
• 31:05
  It's an awful city, the criminalities.
• 31:07
  No, it's not. I was there for for today.
• 31:10
  Nothing happened. So if you go and visit it,
• 31:12
  nobody will kill you. Nobody will rob you.
• 31:14
  No, no, that's I think it's a lot of prejudice involved.
• 31:17
  And I think this is this when when you go there and check it,
• 31:21
  check it out. I think that's the that's the
• 31:23
  solution. That's how you can you can fix
• 31:24
  it. Then besides that, Max, I think
• 31:26
  living in the new in New York, it's always the the thought I'm
• 31:30
  always there. So it's not special, but for US
• 31:34
  coming from outside and seeing everything in movies with
• 31:37
  everything is special. Everything that you see, there
• 31:40
  is something that you want to touch.
• 31:41
  Everything this everything is is not new, but it's new.
• 31:44
  Like it's not new because you know it, but it's new because
• 31:46
  you get to experience, like you said, in 4D.
• 31:50
  Yeah, and then food is amazing. So you you discover all these
• 31:54
  places like say bars and back then Dean DeLuca, all they have
• 32:00
  and then all these there was and Sullivan St. was a guy who who
• 32:05
  cooked mozzarella every day and like it's just just so amazing.
• 32:11
  And I and I, I, I felt real authenticity at that point, you
• 32:18
  know, that it was real, you know, and I, I feel today we
• 32:23
  looked at America very much and a lot of things that feel very
• 32:28
  manufactured. And I, I feel when I came then
• 32:33
  to me there was real, it was real visceral and just, you
• 32:37
  know. It's a lot of marketing today.
• 32:40
  It's a lot of marketing. Everyone was trying to sell
• 32:42
  something. I think that's something that
• 32:45
  maybe didn't happen on this level back then, right, Max?
• 32:49
  Even though you knew everything from the movies you there was
• 32:52
  still a culture shock when you arrived there, right?
• 32:56
  Yeah. I mean, I think I, I think for
• 33:01
  European, it's very complicated to realize how men and women
• 33:05
  interact in America. They they, they socialized very
• 33:08
  different than we are. You know, you can't be really
• 33:11
  friends with women in I, when I lived in Hamburg, I mean, you
• 33:17
  know, I had a lot of women that I had no, no romantic
• 33:21
  relationship with, but they're friends in America.
• 33:23
  That's possible. You don't do that.
• 33:26
  It's and I I feel there's a lot of different.
• 33:31
  That's a real dance that the whole dating dance is that I
• 33:34
  don't even know what that is. It's like I fall in love or I
• 33:37
  don't, you know, and if I fall in love, I go for it.
• 33:40
  But this whole I did, my friends tried to explain my American
• 33:44
  friends what what dating is that what you do and what you don't
• 33:47
  just like what that's crazy stuff.
• 33:52
  So that was kind of a, I felt that was kind of a culture shock
• 33:57
  to me, like how how men and women interact in in here in
• 34:02
  this country was kind of like, that was strange.
• 34:05
  I was like. It's interesting that this makes
• 34:09
  it so funny for for me because coming the coming the, let's say
• 34:13
  the feeling discussion from a guy from Germany and discussing
• 34:15
  with Americans and say no, there are rules.
• 34:17
  No, there are no rules and the discussion is going the other
• 34:20
  way. Exactly.
• 34:24
  No, I, I, I, I at least in my time in Germany, when I still
• 34:28
  lived in Germany, I, I felt, I mean, women and men had a lot of
• 34:32
  ways to casually meet with two friends and like, and then you
• 34:35
  kind of got a feeling this is something maybe, but there
• 34:39
  wasn't really this the stance of how, how relationship have to
• 34:44
  evolve, you know. But Max, I have to say that
• 34:48
  this, this, this friendship that I see between man and woman is
• 34:51
  mostly in Germany. So I don't know it as also from
• 34:55
  my culture, I can tell you it's not happening on the same level
• 34:58
  really. So you have it.
• 35:00
  But I so here is normal. Like it doesn't matter if you're
• 35:04
  married or not. You go out with your friends and
• 35:06
  your friends group. It's also there are also 231
• 35:10
  that have no no sentimental relationship with any of the of
• 35:14
  the guys. And I don't know it from Romania
• 35:16
  like this. I have to be honest.
• 35:18
  Yeah, yeah, but I mean, coming to America, that was definitely
• 35:22
  it for me. Like, oh, OK, you gotta.
• 35:28
  And then I, I didn't end up with, I'm obviously now I'm
• 35:32
  married to an American woman, but that American woman lived
• 35:36
  for 18 months, 18 years in in Berlin before she came back to
• 35:39
  the US So she's very, she has a very European mindset and is
• 35:44
  very open about yeah. So you mentioned food at the
• 35:51
  beginning. You mentioned food, food a few
• 35:54
  times during the discussion. So you, you arrived and of
• 35:57
  course, I, I, I, I think you had something on your bucket list.
• 36:01
  You read about something in the newspaper.
• 36:03
  What was the first thing that you wanted to try in in New
• 36:05
  York? In terms of food.
• 36:08
  Yeah. I mean real American hot dogs
• 36:12
  and, and if you want to eat a hot dog, I think New York is the
• 36:15
  best place because there is no bad hot dog.
• 36:17
  Because I my, my feeling is the rents are so high.
• 36:21
  If you have a shitty hot dog, then you're going to be out of
• 36:24
  business within within a day, you know?
• 36:27
  So yeah, everything in New York has to be somehow good because
• 36:32
  the the stakes are so high. You can't, you can't survive on
• 36:35
  some kind of lackluster. Whatever you do in New York, you
• 36:39
  have to do it really well to make it to survive, correct.
• 36:44
  You know, so and so that was definitely, I mean, you know, we
• 36:48
  don't have this hamburger culture.
• 36:50
  You know, we, we had this McDonald's and stuff like that
• 36:53
  at that time in Germany already. But that was, I'm talking about
• 36:56
  like real American hamburgers. You know, I, when I came, there
• 37:06
  was something that I and I don't even know.
• 37:08
  We don't have that. It's called a prime rib.
• 37:11
  Every time I would go and leave New York and go into the Midwest
• 37:15
  or so, I always order. I love to order these.
• 37:19
  You know, obviously America is very obsessed with the beef.
• 37:23
  You know, it's very much yeah. There's a there's a culture
• 37:27
  there. And I think also the the steak,
• 37:30
  the steak houses in the South S Midwest S Yeah.
• 37:34
  Also, I mean amazing, amazing as I forgot what's what's the name
• 37:41
  again, forgot the name is going to come back the steakhouse in
• 37:45
  New York where in the Brooklyn edition of it they had sawdust
• 37:50
  on the floor, you know, expensive restaurant sawdust on
• 37:57
  the floor is fantastic. So yeah, I wanted to experience
• 38:02
  that. And then I very closely after I,
• 38:08
  after I had written that book on Route 66, I started research on
• 38:14
  a book about diners, Dr. Ins Motels.
• 38:19
  So and so again, imagine so this is before Internet, so you can't
• 38:25
  really research. There was something called
• 38:28
  LexisNexis a it was kind of like an, an archive that you could
• 38:33
  log into for a fortune and get newspaper articles if you put
• 38:39
  the right search words. And it was originally conceived
• 38:43
  as a legal database, but it was, it also had journalism in it and
• 38:48
  I had access to it, but that was, and it was too expensive to
• 38:51
  do real research anyway. But so I was trying to find all
• 38:55
  these old diners and Dr. insurance and, and, and, and
• 38:59
  most of that is around the, the New England States and
• 39:04
  Mid-Atlantic states. So I spent, I mean, you know, as
• 39:07
  a German, you have working for a German company, you've got six
• 39:10
  weeks of vacation. So you know, what do I do?
• 39:13
  I'm just like I get into my car and then try to find diners and
• 39:16
  Dr. Insurance and and then I was very I found the diner cuisine
• 39:22
  very endearing obviously, you know and found out that the the
• 39:27
  what was served was in many ways with every wave of immigrants it
• 39:34
  changed a little bit it you know so at the core there was
• 39:39
  hamburgers and BLTS and sandwiches and stuff like that.
• 39:42
  But the first wave was Jewish. So that was it that there was
• 39:45
  that kind of food was made its way into the diner cuisine.
• 39:50
  Then the Greeks came and then there was Greek food in the 60s
• 39:55
  that made its way into it and but it always became it was kind
• 39:59
  of that point on Main Street where all.
• 40:03
  Immigrants met and people from all walks of life, the I called
• 40:07
  it the Democratic restaurant of the New World because the
• 40:12
  attorney was sitting next to the blue collar worker and they had
• 40:15
  their morning breakfast there. Hash Browns and eggs and bacon.
• 40:18
  And so, you know, I, this may be a fantasy that I'm hanging on to
• 40:27
  because I love that whole idea of like, we are all the same.
• 40:32
  You know, we are, we are big, you know, if you're, and maybe
• 40:37
  that's kind of the idea. We go to America to as Germans
• 40:41
  or back then we did that, you know, doesn't matter.
• 40:45
  You're, you're, you're a Carpenter.
• 40:47
  I'm an attorney. And we sit there, we have a
• 40:49
  breakfast together and we, you know, we are maybe not friends,
• 40:53
  but we, we kind of respect each other.
• 40:55
  We we live with each other and we go to the same place and.
• 41:00
  We talk about the powerful middle class because I think
• 41:02
  that's something which was back then the case.
• 41:04
  And I think this is what this thing, it's getting thinner and
• 41:09
  thinner these days. Yeah, 100.
• 41:10
  Percent and I'm I'm there with you.
• 41:12
  I understand exactly these three.
• 41:14
  I also see it like this and I still remember I was in New York
• 41:17
  first in 2022. I was before that in US, but New
• 41:21
  York I was first in 2022 and my first diner experience in New
• 41:24
  York it was it was like a dream come true.
• 41:27
  Like you said, the all the complicated things like driving.
• 41:29
  You had bigger dreams than me or you could you find people to
• 41:35
  help you realize the dreams are there?
• 41:39
  Again, I feel it's right time right place.
• 41:43
  Have have somebody who says, Oh, I know someone, you know the I
• 41:48
  also feel, you know, I mean, I became pretty clear pretty quick
• 41:54
  that I'm not going to go back anytime.
• 41:57
  So obviously, you know, generally they rotate you if you
• 42:01
  work as a writer or after three years, they say that's kind of,
• 42:05
  you know, you're supposed to come back and have the career
• 42:08
  over back in Germany. And I kind of could not wrap my
• 42:13
  head around going back and I and I just, you know, stayed on.
• 42:19
  And, but I feel, I think the secret to life is that not look
• 42:27
  at life as, oh, this is my career.
• 42:30
  This is what I look at life like an exploration of all, all the
• 42:36
  stuff that's out there that you, that, you know, staying open is,
• 42:40
  I think the key kind of just like, I mean, I am, if there's a
• 42:44
  path over there that looks interesting, I'll walk down that
• 42:47
  path and and see what's over there.
• 42:49
  You know, to this day, I'll do that any, any day.
• 42:53
  I'm I'm still as curious as I was 40 years ago.
• 42:58
  So, and, but that what, what happens to you.
• 43:00
  Then you meet someone and that person says, Oh, I know this
• 43:04
  guy, you know, things and suddenly everything starts.
• 43:07
  The older you get, the more things start connecting, you
• 43:09
  know? I think this, this curiosity
• 43:12
  makes the difference between people that are living their
• 43:15
  tribe because I call it always their tribe.
• 43:19
  I don't necessarily mean the village or something, I just
• 43:22
  mean the area. Because also if you live in a
• 43:23
  big city of your tribe, we have the people that you know, we
• 43:25
  have the comfort areas, comfort zone, comfort groups.
• 43:29
  And I think this is what the curiosity push us.
• 43:31
  I'm, I'm also in the same, in the same group, let's say, push
• 43:34
  me also to, to go outside to experience something new to see.
• 43:38
  Oh, what is, what is if I take this way, what, what will happen
• 43:41
  if I take the other way? What's what?
• 43:43
  And I think that's, that's somehow I think we are different
• 43:47
  groups. And I'm not saying, I'm not
• 43:48
  saying that one of those is bad. I'm just saying or good or bad.
• 43:52
  I'm just saying that we are different and we are feel
• 43:54
  different. I think that's that this
• 43:57
  curiosity, it makes us take different path and discover new
• 44:00
  things and meet new people. I think meet new people is the.
• 44:03
  And so so I also want to say that what I really to this day
• 44:10
  love about America is that everybody roots for you.
• 44:15
  If you try something new and you said you can't change your mind,
• 44:18
  said, OK, I'm going to do this. I'm going to now I'm going to be
• 44:23
  in my case, a wine maker. I'm going to be I I want to
• 44:26
  learn something. I want to start something.
• 44:28
  I want to start over. America is the country where
• 44:30
  everybody you fail find you tried it.
• 44:37
  You know that's everybody will compliment you on on that day.
• 44:41
  Americans still, they do love that.
• 44:43
  And I feel that Europe is a little bit more stifling.
• 44:49
  And I'm not even talking about the bureaucracy, I'm talking
• 44:52
  about in the mindset. It's kind of like, what are you
• 44:56
  doing now? I mean, I, I feel if you change
• 44:58
  your mind too often in Europe that people think you're
• 45:01
  unsteady and you're not, you're unreliable.
• 45:03
  And what, what is it? If you started as a Carpenter,
• 45:06
  why you want to be a shipbuilder?
• 45:09
  Now you know why. And we talk a lot, we talk a lot
• 45:13
  in Europe about the especially in general in the late years
• 45:17
  that we talk a lot, a lot about fail culture.
• 45:19
  So the the culture of failure, but it's not really lived.
• 45:22
  So everyone is talking and promoting it.
• 45:24
  But the first thing that someone when someone made the mistakes
• 45:27
  is like. Yeah.
• 45:29
  Like you, and this is like, it's hard to, and I think this is the
• 45:32
  big discussion about, about innovation, right?
• 45:35
  Because it's the US, the US culture is, is supporting
• 45:40
  innovation. It's promoting innovation.
• 45:42
  Like be crazy, be drift different, come with a different
• 45:44
  idea. And also this discussion about
• 45:46
  how the AI is growing in the US in comparison with Europe.
• 45:49
  And I think here it's hard because you have a lot of rules
• 45:51
  and you have to respect all the rules and you cannot go left
• 45:53
  because it's dangerous, because it's not allowed.
• 45:56
  You have to always go straight. And yeah, this is a big
• 45:59
  discussion. Absolutely, absolutely correct.
• 46:02
  Yeah. I, I want to ask you because I,
• 46:07
  I was mentioning my, my first time experience in New York,
• 46:10
  which I will, I think remember for all my life, there was some
• 46:15
  somewhere close to, in Manhattan, close to Wall Street.
• 46:19
  And there was an, like an old style diner on a back street.
• 46:23
  And there was a small Christmas lights because it was, it was
• 46:26
  before Christmas and it was exactly as I expected to be.
• 46:30
  And I want to ask you what was the best the the best diner
• 46:34
  experience that you have had in the USI?
• 46:38
  Think it was in a town called Worcester in Massachusetts and I
• 46:49
  think it was called the capital diner, but I I'm very partial to
• 46:55
  the so that there's the the diners are restaurants that
• 46:58
  built in factories and then wheeled on on site.
• 47:03
  You know, they actually initially mobile and then they,
• 47:06
  they can moveable and the Wooster dining company made
• 47:12
  these enameled diners, not the stainless steel ones.
• 47:16
  And I, I'd love the look of those diners.
• 47:20
  And I, I feel the capital Diner in Wooster was the one that I,
• 47:26
  you know, I, I just felt like right, right at home.
• 47:30
  There's another one that I really loved.
• 47:31
  I don't think it's there anymore.
• 47:33
  It's called the Salem Diner in Salem, very close to Boston.
• 47:38
  That was also, but I just, you know, so, so many, you know, you
• 47:43
  know, you've, you learned so many things.
• 47:45
  You know, I always wondered, why are the ketchup bottles always
• 47:47
  full? They're always full.
• 47:51
  So do. You do that.
• 47:52
  So I'm every night the person who closes down the diner takes,
• 48:00
  fills the bottle up with the with the next half empty 1.
• 48:04
  So in the morning all bottles are full, they're just they're
• 48:07
  dumping the one bottle into the next bottle.
• 48:09
  So there's never empty bottles in the morning, so.
• 48:14
  That's so I didn't do that. Yeah, so, so it's it's also
• 48:20
  fascinating to to meet these people in this diner book.
• 48:23
  I literally interviewed people who became diner owners or
• 48:28
  waitresses and let them speak in the first person about their
• 48:32
  life, as in in the diner being a being a waitress.
• 48:35
  What what what's it's so it's it's hard to say which.
• 48:41
  But yeah, I would say the Capital Diner and then the one
• 48:43
  in Salem was really amazing. Rhode Island had some really
• 48:47
  cool diners to, but great, great people.
• 48:51
  In many ways, it's the people I met who made this so
• 48:57
  fascinating. Not as much.
• 49:01
  Not the building, the building great, but the people.
• 49:06
  Correct, Correct. Like the social interaction?
• 49:08
  Yes. Yes.
• 49:09
  I see the diner in the American culture as the center of the
• 49:13
  social life, right? It doesn't matter if it's a
• 49:16
  small city or big city, the central of the social life of
• 49:19
  the group, social life. I see that in Germany at the
• 49:22
  bakery, right? And maybe you can correct me if
• 49:24
  I'm wrong. Yeah, but I see that the bakery
• 49:27
  at the local bakery at the local butcher, if you have a good
• 49:31
  local butcher, then also they they tend to.
• 49:34
  I live in a in a village as well.
• 49:36
  And I I see that happening, right.
• 49:38
  I know it from, for example, from Turkey is the Barber shop
• 49:41
  in every village. When when you go in Turkey and
• 49:43
  you want to find a good restaurant to go at the Barber
• 49:45
  shop and ask where's the good restaurant?
• 49:47
  Where's the best? I think this is what what you in
• 49:49
  the US is the diner for. It's like the center of the
• 49:51
  social life, right? Yeah.
• 49:57
  How big was the difference in between the the pace of Germany
• 50:02
  with the pace of US that you would discover when you arrived
• 50:04
  there? I don't think I, I didn't.
• 50:11
  So I, when I moved to the, to New York, I, before I'd lived in
• 50:16
  Hamburg, but I, I had worked. So I, they moved us around a lot
• 50:21
  in during this training program. So I was in Berlin for three
• 50:27
  months and then Munich. So that was kind of this, a lot
• 50:30
  of stuff happening. And then because you're a young
• 50:34
  journalist just trying to prove themselves, you work around the
• 50:37
  clock. And do you know it, it, it was
• 50:39
  kind of pretty fast-paced. I would say during my time as a
• 50:44
  student, things were quite a bit slower.
• 50:48
  I mean, I, but I'm, I'm, I'm always, I, I feel like I'm a
• 50:53
  person who always tries to keep things moving.
• 50:56
  At that time I worked as an assistant in in my free time for
• 51:01
  a back then very well known German photographer.
• 51:04
  His name was Hans Verhofen did a lot of stand, beautiful big
• 51:09
  features, amazing stuff. And I, I was his assistant.
• 51:14
  And so I, I was always somewhere.
• 51:18
  So, so for me, New York was the, the, the speed, the, the, the,
• 51:22
  the quake, the pace. It wasn't really, I was taking a
• 51:27
  bath in it. That's that's says a lot.
• 51:38
  That says a lot, you know, kind of I, I did prepare a storyline
• 51:44
  before, before, before the discussion and you, you kind of
• 51:48
  kill all my questions. Well, that makes a lot of fun
• 51:51
  for me. No, no, no.
• 51:52
  It makes a lot of fun because I I have to come with different
• 51:55
  with different topics and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:57
  Interesting. But one of the things that they
• 52:00
  want to ask you is that what did What did America promise you and
• 52:03
  what did America gave you? I mean, it is so is so hard,
• 52:14
  hard to say. What did America promise?
• 52:17
  It promised me access to to the music and the I could have it
• 52:25
  for real, you know, I, I could be there, I could listen to it.
• 52:31
  I could be, you know, so all of that and America somehow, but I
• 52:37
  didn't know back then if it was really a promise that I could do
• 52:41
  all these things and everybody would say cool, you know, I, I,
• 52:47
  it evolved like that and it became clear.
• 52:54
  I mean, America has given me, you know, and I know we, we're
• 52:59
  going through some pretty rough times here and in the world and
• 53:04
  in America. And I still feel America has
• 53:09
  given me this amazing opportunity to do a lot of
• 53:13
  different things and learn so many different things that I
• 53:19
  feel I would not have, you know, for 10 years of my life, after
• 53:23
  my journalist career, I was married to a fashion designer,
• 53:25
  Danish fashion designer. And, and what are we going to
• 53:29
  do? And she had started this, we had
• 53:31
  three kids and she had stopped working.
• 53:33
  And for 10 years I ran a children's apparel company.
• 53:41
  This stuff. I I was a real kind of like what
• 53:44
  you call. I became the journalist becomes
• 53:46
  unta NEMA entrepreneur. So now I had to learn how, how
• 53:51
  do you make this work? How do you how do you actually
• 53:53
  make you got to make the math work?
• 53:56
  How do you make money doing this?
• 53:57
  What we're doing, you know, designing and not selling it
• 54:00
  distribution. So did I like all of it?
• 54:05
  Not really. I some of it I really just in,
• 54:08
  in, in hindsight, I don't even know why I did it that long, but
• 54:13
  I learned so many things. And you know, and I feel in
• 54:19
  Germany, if you start something, you have to have your layer and
• 54:25
  this and everybody has to be a state certified expert.
• 54:28
  You know, here, you know, you can just if you're smart to this
• 54:34
  day and if you're maybe not even the smartness is not even it.
• 54:38
  It's kind of if you have enough tenacity, you want to figure it
• 54:43
  out, you can't figure it out. It's it sounds like a it sounds.
• 54:49
  Will you succeed necessarily? Maybe not, but you have a chance
• 54:52
  to, to do it, You know, and, and I feel, I still feel this
• 55:02
  promise that this country holds and it's and it's best ideas is,
• 55:10
  is amazing. You know, again, even though
• 55:13
  I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, beginning of the year, I was so
• 55:17
  depressed about the whole situation, political situation
• 55:20
  here. I said, you know what, you have
• 55:22
  to find a deep rabbit hole to climb into.
• 55:25
  And I had a coffee roasting built in Norway.
• 55:31
  And now I'm spending, I mean, a lot of time figuring out how to
• 55:36
  become a coffee roaster. I have a coach that I'm sending
• 55:39
  samples to. I, I'm, you know, just so you
• 55:45
  know, but again, that's also, that's also America.
• 55:48
  Again, you know, you can't. But it's, it's more mindset.
• 55:52
  It's a mindset that you can, I can learn all of this.
• 55:55
  I can't be that I want to be that.
• 55:57
  I'll be that 60. 6 I think that I think that that America is a
• 56:03
  country where audacity is, is kind of encouraged.
• 56:06
  So I, I think it's a bit exaggerated the statement, but I
• 56:08
  think everyone has the audacity to try anything is and it's,
• 56:13
  it's, it has a, they have a good, a good benefit out of it.
• 56:16
  I, I recently reread a book that I love.
• 56:20
  It's a, it's a small book, but it's, it helps always when you
• 56:23
  are facing with, with, let's say with, with challenges.
• 56:28
  And it's called Home of My Cheese.
• 56:30
  I don't know if you know the book.
• 56:32
  It's, it's written by us. I hope I'm not butchering the
• 56:35
  name. It's Spencer Jones.
• 56:37
  It's a short story which gives you, tells you exactly I see it,
• 56:43
  I keep seeing it from the American perspective, like it
• 56:46
  tells us the story of, of how to deal with change, how to deal
• 56:49
  with, with things not going your way, right?
• 56:52
  And try to be the first mover out of it.
• 56:54
  And I think this is the, the, the American mentality.
• 56:56
  Like I, I, I want to try to make the best of it.
• 56:59
  I don't know how, how the political situation is, but I
• 57:01
  want to try to make the best of it.
• 57:02
  Let's see what I can, I can deal with it, right?
• 57:05
  I think it's something which is not possible in Europe, as
• 57:07
  mentioned before. And I think this is this is
• 57:09
  something which is 100% US typical a mentality, right?
• 57:17
  Do you think that being being a foreigner, having these these
• 57:22
  opportunities to write about things that you could not have
• 57:27
  been written in Germany made you a better journalist?
• 57:35
  I, I don't know if that's, I mean, it gave me, I mean my, I,
• 57:43
  I, I feel that my work here as a journalist because I was so in
• 57:48
  love with the people, but that with everything, you know, with
• 57:53
  the music, that enthusiasm opened so many doors for me to,
• 58:00
  to, to write. And I feel that Americans are
• 58:03
  overall very forthcoming telling their stories.
• 58:06
  They, you know, like you're we in in Germany especially we
• 58:11
  value our privacy. Just get me hit next.
• 58:13
  I'm not just getting out next on.
• 58:17
  So in, in, in America, everybody tells you like if you want to
• 58:21
  hear it or not. I'm sorry I have to say
• 58:24
  something. There's never is not nothing
• 58:27
  harder than to get the guy from Germany to do this podcast with
• 58:30
  me. And you are the first one that
• 58:32
  was so open, and I think that the American experience helped
• 58:35
  you. No, I mean, like Americans
• 58:39
  really love talking about their stories and the stuff what they
• 58:42
  do in their family and like, so it, I'm not saying it made it
• 58:46
  easy because he also kind of then have to dig a little
• 58:49
  deeper, you know, and to to to get the good story, but made did
• 58:57
  it make me a good journalist? I don't know.
• 58:59
  I mean, I, I hope, I hope I was truthful and I, I did right by
• 59:04
  my subjects and by the stories. But you know, I did, the whole
• 59:10
  thing ended for me. And because I, I could not, you
• 59:15
  know, I don't know if you did a little bit of research on, on,
• 59:18
  on me, but I, and I don't even know when this was.
• 59:22
  It was the beginning of the 2000s.
• 59:24
  There was a Swiss journalist by the name of Tom Kumo and he
• 59:30
  wrote all these amazing stories. At that point, I had already
• 59:33
  lived in Los Angeles and I ran the LA office for Burta Media
• 59:37
  and, and he wrote all these stories about hanging out with
• 59:43
  Tom Cruise and going hunting with Bruce Willis and Courtney
• 59:47
  Love in the, and he had the most amazing access, the best
• 59:53
  stories, amazingly written. I mean, the stuff was so good.
• 59:57
  It was literature, you know, And I was just like, what, why I'm
• 1:00:03
  here? I I think I'm pretty good at
• 1:00:05
  what I'm doing. It's like, why does this guy
• 1:00:07
  have all these? And then at one point I read a
• 1:00:11
  interview he did with Courtney Love, and I'm reading Courtney
• 1:00:14
  Love quoted and I said, I just read that quote in the Andy
• 1:00:17
  Warhol book. That's not, that's not, that's
• 1:00:22
  not Courtney Love talking. So I took all the interviews
• 1:00:28
  that he had published in Suito Chit Saitong magazine,
• 1:00:34
  translated them back into English, sent it to all the
• 1:00:37
  press agents of those stars and and found out that all of this
• 1:00:43
  is fake. No way.
• 1:00:47
  So but it's really the story gets actually really
• 1:00:51
  interesting. So back then those guys get
• 1:00:53
  fired. The guys who run Brandon Sweet
• 1:00:56
  Duchess title magazine, they, they, there was big scandal.
• 1:01:00
  I published that story in Focus magazine.
• 1:01:03
  It was a big expose and it was a it, it really rattled people in
• 1:01:07
  Germany, but at least that's how I look at it today.
• 1:01:12
  Everybody was mad at me for destroying.
• 1:01:17
  For showing it the idea. That this is not because people
• 1:01:21
  want to believe, because it was really good what he wrote.
• 1:01:25
  And now he, he even justified it and said, Oh yeah, this is
• 1:01:28
  borderline journalism. And he called it borderline
• 1:01:31
  journalism. He invented this new category
• 1:01:34
  and he and he, he still is out there doing doing that.
• 1:01:38
  And he still he came back. They let him write again.
• 1:01:41
  Did all the editors who got fired got all they work at major
• 1:01:46
  magazine. It's forgiven.
• 1:01:48
  You know, it's like a little. But for me, I, I, I just didn't
• 1:01:52
  want to do this anymore at that time.
• 1:01:54
  I'm like, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm done with this profession at
• 1:01:59
  least. And I have honestly not written
• 1:02:01
  since then. I mean, there's, I just felt I
• 1:02:06
  don't want to do it anymore. But it's also a tough one
• 1:02:12
  because obviously the Internet and on all the, the, on the,
• 1:02:17
  the, the spread of online gossip news, you know, but when you, if
• 1:02:22
  you're in Hollywood, that's what you do.
• 1:02:24
  It's just, it's not real. What I had experienced as
• 1:02:29
  journalism, what, you know, in, in New York and in the 90s.
• 1:02:34
  So, you know, it, it, it ended. And I'm kind of, you know, today
• 1:02:41
  I look back at the time that I, that I really loved and I, I'm
• 1:02:47
  really grateful for what I learned in terms of skills
• 1:02:52
  because as a journalist, you, you very easily sift through
• 1:02:56
  information and say that's bullshit, that's good.
• 1:02:58
  That's what this person. OK, so I can find great
• 1:03:02
  resources to any skip me, any subject I can find.
• 1:03:05
  And it helps me with the businesses I've started.
• 1:03:08
  And I always find some real smart people that I can hire
• 1:03:12
  that can teach me something. So.
• 1:03:17
  That's the most important, right?
• 1:03:19
  I tell you that the secret to everything is to not be the
• 1:03:22
  smartest person in the room. You always you want to surround
• 1:03:26
  yourself with people that are better and faster and smarter
• 1:03:31
  than you. If you have the feeling you're
• 1:03:33
  the smartest person in the room, you have to switch rooms because
• 1:03:36
  you're in the wrong room. Absolutely, Absolutely.
• 1:03:38
  Yeah, I I have the same. But this story is is is is
• 1:03:42
  crazy. I haven't.
• 1:03:43
  So I did the research, yes, but I haven't.
• 1:03:45
  Found yeah, look, look up Tom and Kummer.
• 1:03:49
  KUMMER that that's the guy. And he's still he's still still
• 1:03:53
  there. I mean he's, you know, I mean.
• 1:03:58
  But next, this is just this is just a question of this is you
• 1:04:02
  are trying to, to say that the world is not fair and it's
• 1:04:07
  absolutely not fair. And this is how one of the
• 1:04:09
  biggest disappointment that I had when when I started to live
• 1:04:12
  the grown up life after finishing university and so on.
• 1:04:15
  And I realized that this hard working bullshit that everyone
• 1:04:18
  was selling. And if you do the right thing
• 1:04:20
  and if you learn, nobody gives a crap.
• 1:04:22
  So you just have to find the ways you have to find to to push
• 1:04:26
  left and right. And I think in this in any kind,
• 1:04:29
  in one way, this guy was doing exactly this is how what if I
• 1:04:32
  write crazy story? We had the we had a journalist
• 1:04:34
  in in Romania, interesting story who was were was the guy doing
• 1:04:39
  the F1. So the Formula One broadcasting
• 1:04:43
  and in every he was the commentator of the of the race,
• 1:04:46
  right? In every race, he was referring
• 1:04:48
  all the pilots on their first name like I met.
• 1:04:51
  I'll just give you an example. I met Louis yesterday and we
• 1:04:55
  worked for A and everyone knew he was lying.
• 1:04:58
  Everyone knew he was lying. Everyone was making fun of him,
• 1:05:01
  right? Keep doing it on the for the
• 1:05:02
  national television. I know for how many years.
• 1:05:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy this is.
• 1:05:07
  Just people just want to believe it because it sounds so
• 1:05:11
  interesting. It's on, yeah.
• 1:05:12
  There are less people who are questioning it and there are lot
• 1:05:16
  of people who are wishful thinking it like.
• 1:05:19
  Yeah, because. It has to be real.
• 1:05:20
  Yeah, and they and it gives them a feeling of access.
• 1:05:24
  I'm, I'm, I'm and closeness. Yeah, so.
• 1:05:29
  Nobody searching for the truth, nobody searching for the real
• 1:05:31
  story of a guy who was running a diner, because that's not so
• 1:05:35
  interesting like like hanging out with Tom Cruise.
• 1:05:37
  Even for I have to be honest, for me, it's more interesting.
• 1:05:40
  One of the reason why I started is because I like to find these
• 1:05:44
  stories. I like to talk to people that
• 1:05:45
  are not famous. I, I think it's, I don't want to
• 1:05:49
  say boring, but it's, and you always hear the same stories
• 1:05:53
  about the same people, right? And there is one point in time
• 1:05:56
  when you think, Oh my God, again.
• 1:05:58
  I mean, I was just talking the other day with my wife because I
• 1:06:02
  think a few years ago, I don't know if you are watching the
• 1:06:05
  modern world, but a few years ago Shakira divorced her husband
• 1:06:09
  and now they got together and this is a way to get five years.
• 1:06:12
  Always had had news like you divorce, then you get together
• 1:06:16
  again and divorce again then you fight again and this is sorry
• 1:06:19
  but this is not interesting anymore so.
• 1:06:22
  It. Is at least not for me.
• 1:06:25
  I mean most probably for the others, but not for me.
• 1:06:28
  But I I agree Max one, one thing which for me, for me was quite
• 1:06:35
  complicated with each countries, the humor, because the humor has
• 1:06:38
  a has a, let's say it's a language thing.
• 1:06:44
  It's you have to understand the the backgrounds of the language.
• 1:06:46
  And I have to say, I have to say the story.
• 1:06:49
  I don't know if you know the book, the Kangaroo Chronicle,
• 1:06:53
  the German, the German book it's in.
• 1:06:57
  It's an extremely funny book. And that was the first real
• 1:07:01
  humor that I experienced in Germany.
• 1:07:03
  And it was, it's pure German because there is no other,
• 1:07:06
  there's not translator. Something is written by a, by a
• 1:07:09
  German author. And the, the audio version of
• 1:07:12
  it, it's, it's him reading the book in front of the live
• 1:07:15
  audience, which makes it even more interesting because he's
• 1:07:18
  reading like it was in his, in his creative, in his mind.
• 1:07:22
  The King, which makes it a lot of chronicle.
• 1:07:25
  The Congo in Germany. Is the Kangaroo Chronicle OK in
• 1:07:29
  the meantime? Sorry, I'm going to order this,
• 1:07:32
  I'm curious. It's so if you I, I, I listened
• 1:07:36
  on audibles and I have to say I'm laughing every time, every,
• 1:07:40
  every time. There is a chapter with Alice's
• 1:07:44
  henshin. It's called Alice's Henshin.
• 1:07:46
  So sure, the story the kangaroo is moving in the apartment in
• 1:07:51
  front of the author writing the book and they are getting to
• 1:07:54
  interact with each other and they talk about different
• 1:07:57
  things. Like he's he's attacking a lot
• 1:07:59
  of things from the real world in a in a funny and humoristic way
• 1:08:04
  through this kangaroo who's having all the crazy ideas,
• 1:08:07
  who's going on all the conspiracy theories in this
• 1:08:09
  world, like every every kind of meeting, every package is
• 1:08:12
  replacing with chicken. So this is the chapter Alice's
• 1:08:15
  Hensions or everything as everything is chicken except
• 1:08:18
  chicken because that's tofu. Like, OK, it's a small snap out
• 1:08:23
  of it. But that was for me, the biggest
• 1:08:25
  piece of humor of German humor that I managed to understand and
• 1:08:28
  laugh about tonight. I want to ask you what was the
• 1:08:32
  language barriers that you faced when you arrived first, because
• 1:08:35
  for sure you did the investigation in English, but
• 1:08:38
  you you also had the, the social life in English.
• 1:08:42
  I, I, I, so my English was because I, you know, sue them to
• 1:08:47
  the music. And so I grew up in a town.
• 1:08:51
  I mean, the last five years in Itling, we had a, an Army base
• 1:08:56
  there. And so I had met some musicians
• 1:08:59
  and so I was hanging out with some GIS and I feel that gave me
• 1:09:05
  pretty much access to a conversational American,
• 1:09:09
  conversational English. So I didn't just have the school
• 1:09:16
  school English, you know, or university where you read
• 1:09:19
  Melville, Moby Dick or, you know, So I, I, I feel my English
• 1:09:24
  was, but obviously you, you're right, you know, the, you're
• 1:09:28
  the, it's a language that has so many words and everything is
• 1:09:32
  contextual. So that is something you learn
• 1:09:37
  over. It takes you quite some time
• 1:09:40
  because an expression could mean anything in any kind in
• 1:09:45
  different contexts. And it could be funny, it could
• 1:09:47
  be insulting, could be, you know, So to read in between
• 1:09:51
  that, I mean, I think when I was there at first in New York, I
• 1:09:55
  didn't feel disadvantaged or alienated by it.
• 1:10:02
  But I, I obviously appreciate it.
• 1:10:05
  The longer I lived, the more I understood what things.
• 1:10:10
  But I mean, there's still things today where I have no clue what
• 1:10:13
  I mean, especially youth, youth language.
• 1:10:15
  You know, if you talk to kids, it's like they're throwing 48 at
• 1:10:19
  you and you're like, I don't know what 48 means.
• 1:10:22
  It's so, but it's really, you know, it's really interesting.
• 1:10:27
  So I still come from, and this has changed to a generation of
• 1:10:32
  Germans where so I go, I come to America.
• 1:10:36
  One of the first jobs I that my boss gave me said, Hey, can you
• 1:10:41
  go on a whistle stop, right, Which means whistle stop right
• 1:10:46
  as you go on a train from the north of Alabama to the South of
• 1:10:49
  Alabama, the governor of Alabama is still doing a it's it's kind
• 1:10:55
  of like a campaign. And I want you to portrait this.
• 1:10:58
  How, how is it? You know, one of those, these
• 1:11:00
  rallies, how is that? And was like in a Deep South,
• 1:11:04
  you know, and one of my colleagues was a, a Jewish
• 1:11:09
  writer from the New York Daily News.
• 1:11:11
  His name was Buddy Bash, and Buddy Bash turned around when he
• 1:11:15
  realized that was from Germany. He's like, do you know the
• 1:11:18
  shortest book? And I'm like, I don't know.
• 1:11:21
  No, no, I was like 100 years of German humor.
• 1:11:25
  And I'm like, oh, OK, so we, so we again, it has, I'm sure
• 1:11:32
  changed, but back then, I think Germans still have that
• 1:11:35
  reputation of being a fairly humorless society, you know,
• 1:11:40
  and, and I one of my favorite, I mean, I'm trying really hard
• 1:11:46
  with my kids and my family. I'm, I'm, I'm really working on,
• 1:11:50
  I'm, I'm trying to be funny. I'm trying to be play, play with
• 1:11:52
  words. And, but I have always a way
• 1:11:56
  out. And that is that quote from that
• 1:12:00
  Pope movie where the German Pope says to the Latin American Pope,
• 1:12:06
  it was a German joke. It doesn't necessarily have to
• 1:12:08
  be funny. I know the this girl, 2 pops I
• 1:12:13
  think. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:12:16
  No, that's when when things don't hit at home and everybody
• 1:12:20
  looks at me like Dad, then I'm like, well, then that's my line.
• 1:12:25
  That's my way out. You mentioned something which is
• 1:12:32
  really interesting. I think if if I've never seen it
• 1:12:37
  this way, but I've seen it in a slightly different way.
• 1:12:40
  When I first came to Germany, the language was a big issue for
• 1:12:43
  me because I couldn't understand the length of the word.
• 1:12:47
  I couldn't understand why we combine the words, however,
• 1:12:50
  right? But there are also sentence
• 1:12:52
  which I there was a thing which I find out late in the language
• 1:12:57
  learning process that you have a small baggage of words.
• 1:13:00
  So you have the base of the German language.
• 1:13:02
  I think it's a small baggage of words which you combine in any
• 1:13:06
  ways that you want. And I think that's not really a
• 1:13:09
  property for any language. Like you said, English has a lot
• 1:13:11
  of words and a lot of different understanding for different
• 1:13:15
  things. And Germany is so straight.
• 1:13:17
  But if you need another word, you just combine 2 words
• 1:13:20
  together. I keep, I keep saying the same
• 1:13:23
  story of the first we moved into a house and it was, we moved in
• 1:13:29
  October. And then in November, I got the
• 1:13:32
  paper in my, in my, in my mailbox saying that the, the
• 1:13:36
  Schoenstein figure comped and there was a huge word on the
• 1:13:40
  paper written like this round. And I said, so who's coming?
• 1:13:46
  It took me a while to to understand who's going to come,
• 1:13:50
  what that that that job means and so on.
• 1:13:52
  I mean. Germany is very literal, you
• 1:13:55
  know, exactly like hunt shoe, OK, it's a shoe you put on your
• 1:13:59
  hands. It's like, oh exactly, but
• 1:14:01
  pretty clear, you know? Exactly.
• 1:14:04
  So, so that makes life, you know, a little easier.
• 1:14:08
  And it's, it's also, it's really funny.
• 1:14:11
  I I I'm to my I I just became a father again five months ago and
• 1:14:18
  to my, to my youngest daughter. I'm speak I'm that's my plan.
• 1:14:23
  She's the one who's going to get all my German and I'm, I'm, I'm
• 1:14:27
  so I'm right now I'm site reciting.
• 1:14:30
  I'm also working on my memory. So reciting a lot of poetry to
• 1:14:34
  her in German. You know, from go to to the
• 1:14:38
  funny stuff, Heinz Earhart, 60s German humor, poetry.
• 1:14:43
  And I don't know where I'm going with this, but I Yeah.
• 1:14:47
  So since my wife Sarah lived in Berlin for almost 18 years, so
• 1:14:53
  she understands German. And we feel today that there is
• 1:14:57
  a way that Germans throw shade on situations that is no culture
• 1:15:03
  can do it as well. They can be very, very, the, the
• 1:15:08
  criticism can be just so hard hitting.
• 1:15:10
  And so it's just like, you're like, oh wow, that hurt.
• 1:15:17
  Without saying the bad words, without saying the.
• 1:15:19
  Bad words, just. This because you know, I have
• 1:15:23
  this discussion coming from Eastern Europe, we, you have a
• 1:15:26
  lot of bad words, a lot of bad words.
• 1:15:28
  We are literal there. And I keep realizing that in
• 1:15:32
  Germany there is no, of course there are, I mean.
• 1:15:34
  Like you said, they don't have to use those.
• 1:15:37
  They don't have to use them be really mean not using the words
• 1:15:41
  exactly 1 of the sentences that took me a while to understand
• 1:15:46
  was a friend of mine. I don't know what he has done.
• 1:15:49
  And then he said, yeah, clever is for Sanders.
• 1:15:54
  OK, man, you're fucked up. Exactly.
• 1:15:57
  And to explain this sentence to someone to someone in in
• 1:16:01
  English, it's complicated because it doesn't mean the
• 1:16:03
  same. No, when you translate it, it
• 1:16:05
  doesn't mean the same. The Germans are just masters,
• 1:16:08
  masters of that. I, I actually, I, I come to
• 1:16:12
  really enjoy it and, and, and try to, I'm actually working on
• 1:16:17
  my German again now and have, have, have a lot of fun, a lot
• 1:16:22
  of fun doing it because I have not used it that much since I've
• 1:16:28
  stopped writing and working for as a journalist, you know, so,
• 1:16:33
  but it's a, it's a great language.
• 1:16:36
  How often, how often you went back and forth from Germany?
• 1:16:41
  So at the. Beginning.
• 1:16:43
  In the beginning, maybe twice a year and then once a year during
• 1:16:49
  the last 5-6 years, sometimes three years.
• 1:16:52
  The three times because my dad was very old and he died last
• 1:16:57
  year and so, but now I'm actually my, my, my plan for for
• 1:17:05
  next year is I will be in Germany and I take my daughter's
• 1:17:09
  my from 3025 and five months old.
• 1:17:14
  So we were taking them to and if my son wants to come, but he's
• 1:17:20
  always travelling on his own so but my girls want to go and see
• 1:17:24
  Boden see in Berlin, so I'll do that.
• 1:17:29
  How did your your relationship with Germany change in all these
• 1:17:33
  years? Right.
• 1:17:34
  I, I feel in the beginning you kind of are suddenly you think,
• 1:17:42
  Oh my God, America is so much better.
• 1:17:44
  Everything is better here. So you kind of like Germany,
• 1:17:48
  like, and the longer you live in America, the more you do
• 1:17:53
  appreciate the great parts that German culture has, the more you
• 1:18:01
  appreciate the language, you know, I mean, it's so, you know,
• 1:18:10
  sometimes I've, I feel we have to step away from the day
• 1:18:15
  politics and, and, and, and, and the misery of all of that.
• 1:18:20
  And, and that's miserable in Germany and that's miserable in
• 1:18:24
  France and that's miserable in America.
• 1:18:26
  And we have to look past that and see what a long history we
• 1:18:34
  have of, of, of good things too. You know, like, I mean, we have
• 1:18:38
  great literature, we have great music.
• 1:18:40
  We are, we've, there's so many, you've got amazing food, great
• 1:18:45
  cakes. So there's so many things.
• 1:18:49
  I mean, I do really appreciate the first thing I do when I go
• 1:18:54
  go to Germany. I go to Germany to me is kind of
• 1:18:57
  like, OK, it's 5:00 or whenever they open, I'm get my first
• 1:19:02
  Brazil. And then at 4:00 or 3:00 I I
• 1:19:06
  find a nice conditory and then I have coffee on cooking and I
• 1:19:13
  just love that. I know some people consider this
• 1:19:16
  specific and, but to me it's just amazing.
• 1:19:21
  I love it. The, you know, the the culture
• 1:19:25
  of the Butterbritzer. Yeah, that.
• 1:19:27
  Was something which was the best.
• 1:19:28
  Oh, my God. You know, So this is I live in
• 1:19:32
  general since 10 years, man, Butterbritzer is the biggest
• 1:19:34
  finding of my life. So I never thought that two
• 1:19:38
  simple things mixed together can give that feeling.
• 1:19:41
  Yeah. And.
• 1:19:42
  What do you, what do they do in America?
• 1:19:43
  They put mustard on their pretzel.
• 1:19:45
  And I said, guys, you, this is disgusting.
• 1:19:48
  I mean, the, the, the problem is that the pretzels here are
• 1:19:51
  terrible. So I mean even the ones, and we
• 1:19:54
  have a local Baker that makes actually very good bread and
• 1:19:57
  good croissants and everything. You start mixing some pretzels
• 1:20:00
  and I said, you know what this is somebody read the recipe but
• 1:20:03
  never really ate a German. And then the things you also
• 1:20:07
  have to know where you are in Germany.
• 1:20:09
  So in, in Bavaria you will have a pretzel that has like the
• 1:20:14
  heavy arms mud clear. You probably have a pretzel that
• 1:20:18
  has even a little butter to make it softer inside the.
• 1:20:24
  Inside the dough, then in Barton Wilkenberg when Barton then you
• 1:20:28
  have the thin arms, so you get the crisp the.
• 1:20:31
  Crunchy. The crunchy and the soft, you
• 1:20:33
  get a good cut, you know, so it, it opens clear, where is a
• 1:20:37
  Bavarian pretzel kind of cracks open.
• 1:20:40
  So there's a whole world of pretzels to discover in Germany
• 1:20:43
  and it's, and every region is really proud of the way they do
• 1:20:47
  it, you know, as they should be, you know, I mean.
• 1:20:50
  There is no right or wrong. Way unfortunately, there's
• 1:20:53
  obviously a lot of bakeries that don't even bake anymore because
• 1:20:58
  it gets it's all deep frozen from some other countries and it
• 1:21:02
  gets just put into ovens. But if you know where to go,
• 1:21:07
  every town has great artists and bakers and amazing breads and
• 1:21:12
  pretzels, you know, so I do. I still have, I still have my
• 1:21:17
  small bakery in my village and they are, they are local.
• 1:21:20
  I love them and I will go there. Now, because I want to do what I
• 1:21:24
  miss most of, especially in German foods, I would say
• 1:21:30
  sparkle site. There's no, you can't buy them.
• 1:21:33
  Buy the sparkles in America. I mean, they sometimes they send
• 1:21:37
  something over from Peru, but it's just inedible.
• 1:21:40
  And we don't have the, you know, the climate or the discipline, I
• 1:21:44
  don't know, and the soil to grow white asparagus.
• 1:21:49
  To me, it's just a delicacy. And there was a short time when
• 1:21:53
  I had an office in Santa Monica. There was a German restaurant
• 1:21:59
  called Wreckenbagner in Santa Monica.
• 1:22:01
  And he was from Baden. And he, during sparkling site,
• 1:22:04
  flew daily. He flew Sparkle in to serve it
• 1:22:09
  from Germany. Wow, that was unbelievable.
• 1:22:13
  And you just need some brown butter and that's it.
• 1:22:16
  And it's just so I, I still, those are things I, you know,
• 1:22:21
  but then, you know, that's just, it's also nice to miss
• 1:22:24
  something, you know? Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:22:27
  You know, a few years ago I was in, I was in Northern North
• 1:22:32
  Carolina because due to work doing a business through there
• 1:22:37
  and I there was the German community somewhere there.
• 1:22:43
  And the guy from the warehouse told us, no, I'll take you to
• 1:22:45
  have the pretzel if you're Mr. Pretzel, the real German one.
• 1:22:49
  Of course, the poor guy never had the German pretzel.
• 1:22:51
  So of course somebody told him that that's the real German guy.
• 1:22:54
  I ate him. I didn't want to disappoint him,
• 1:22:56
  to tell him, you know, man, that's.
• 1:22:59
  It's no, it's OK. I mean, I I actually started
• 1:23:02
  making it myself and I had to find lie because nobody tries to
• 1:23:08
  nobody uses lying in in, in food context here.
• 1:23:11
  That's why there is no loud and Brazil in America, because most
• 1:23:15
  bakers are terrified to to deal with, you know, even like a 4%
• 1:23:20
  solution of of lie. But so you have to make it
• 1:23:23
  yourself, you know, and learn, which is absolutely.
• 1:23:28
  Yeah. So I made my, you know, you
• 1:23:30
  can't. It's really interesting.
• 1:23:32
  So our social media, the Germans found out that there is no
• 1:23:36
  quark. You can't buy quark in America.
• 1:23:38
  It doesn't. It really.
• 1:23:40
  It's not available. Nobody has it.
• 1:23:42
  And so I've started making that myself so I can make a good
• 1:23:45
  German gazekuhen. Maybe now now as a Side Story,
• 1:23:50
  the way in which I discovered you and I want I saw that I want
• 1:23:58
  to know your story was when I saw the Instagram video of you
• 1:24:02
  making Beanenstalk. Beanenstalk.
• 1:24:07
  Sorry. And that's that's something
• 1:24:10
  would fascinate me. The the I saw a happiness in a
• 1:24:14
  guy that managed to to bake something.
• 1:24:16
  And I I still remember that phrase that he said I'm trying
• 1:24:19
  to bake a feeling. Yeah.
• 1:24:20
  A memory. A memory exactly.
• 1:24:22
  Sorry. Yeah, I'm trying to bake a
• 1:24:24
  memory and this is something which is it's, it's hard to
• 1:24:27
  explain, but it like you said, it's nice to miss something
• 1:24:30
  because when you miss it makes you create things like can make
• 1:24:33
  you it, it, it, I think it increases your creativity
• 1:24:37
  because you want to get the thing that you are missing and
• 1:24:42
  you try to not only the the food, but also the memory that
• 1:24:45
  you had back then. Can I tell you my memory?
• 1:24:49
  Please, I I wanted to ask you that I told you to take all my
• 1:24:52
  questions. So my my grandmother in this
• 1:24:56
  town where I was born in Heidenheim under brands had a
• 1:24:59
  little pancione. We we call it in German like a
• 1:25:03
  bed and breakfast. And just right next to it was a
• 1:25:06
  Becker Baker, Keim. And there was a window and there
• 1:25:11
  was a window sill. And whenever I could, I was
• 1:25:14
  sitting in the window sill and the windows were open.
• 1:25:17
  I would watch him bake and he had a binge dish there that I
• 1:25:22
  absolutely loved. And once in a while, my
• 1:25:24
  grandmother gave me 50 pennies back then, you know, and I was,
• 1:25:29
  and I could buy a binge dish. But watching that Baker I've
• 1:25:33
  tried, that's the memory I was trying to bake sitting in this
• 1:25:36
  window sill looking at him with, with his machines and working.
• 1:25:40
  He was really working hard, you know, to, to make all these
• 1:25:44
  different baked goods and the, and the smells that came out of
• 1:25:49
  that bakery. Just this.
• 1:25:51
  Yeah, that was the memory I was kind of trying to bake.
• 1:25:58
  It was an amazing video and that's why when I when I started
• 1:26:00
  telling that story, I said I need to talk to that was the
• 1:26:04
  word, the word rich. I said I need to talk to you.
• 1:26:06
  That sounds like an amazing an amazing.
• 1:26:08
  Story And I'm still I'm still, I mean, with most of the cakes I I
• 1:26:12
  do, I mean, obviously a lot of my stuff is based on, on, on
• 1:26:17
  Swabian or German, German, German cakes.
• 1:26:21
  I mean, because we have that amazing culture.
• 1:26:25
  So I mean, I do a little bit of French stuff too, but I'm
• 1:26:29
  mostly, I mean, the last thing I surprised my my girls with was
• 1:26:35
  what you know, or I don't know which.
• 1:26:39
  Are you in the middle of Germany or in the South?
• 1:26:41
  I'm in South. I'm I'm really close to, to, to
• 1:26:45
  Schwartzfeld. I'm really.
• 1:26:46
  Oh yeah, I'm super. So you know what a toilet coupon
• 1:26:49
  is. Absolutely.
• 1:26:51
  OK, so and that's something nobody ever ate that in America
• 1:26:55
  unless somebody baked some at home who knew it from from
• 1:27:00
  Germany. But so I actually literally flew
• 1:27:04
  Johannes beyond red Currans in from bought it at a little farm
• 1:27:08
  and they froze them down in Washington because they don't
• 1:27:11
  grow here and in a lot of states they're illegal because they
• 1:27:15
  spread diseases. And so Johannes Bien a very,
• 1:27:21
  very not easy to find. Very, very so.
• 1:27:27
  But I bake the droplets cool, and that mix of sour and sweet
• 1:27:33
  and crunchy on top is just one of those very, very specific to
• 1:27:40
  me. It's very it's like I love.
• 1:27:43
  So for whomever is visiting Germany, I have to say this and
• 1:27:46
  I have to support all this thing, Go go to in in a bakery
• 1:27:50
  and try to get a kuhan. Yeah, it doesn't matter which.
• 1:27:54
  It doesn't matter. No, it's important.
• 1:27:56
  It's an experience. It's an experience 100%.
• 1:27:59
  Then, especially in the summer, you have the the the the fruit
• 1:28:05
  oriented Cuhon. Yeah, like any try any.
• 1:28:08
  They're extremely tasteful. Raspberry.
• 1:28:12
  It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
• 1:28:14
  It's it is and raw Barber. Raw Barber.
• 1:28:17
  Ababa is amazing because it's also so much high in acid.
• 1:28:20
  Really fun, yeah? Exactly, exactly.
• 1:28:23
  Yeah, makes the the switch from from journalist to to wine
• 1:28:31
  making. Was it was it triggered by the
• 1:28:36
  story that you mentioned or was it triggered by some kind of a
• 1:28:39
  burnout? Yeah, I kind of burnout and I, I
• 1:28:42
  didn't, you know, I think my main feeling was I didn't want
• 1:28:50
  to write about things anymore that other people do.
• 1:28:54
  I want to, I didn't want to be on the outside of things and
• 1:28:58
  then just tell a story about it. I wanted to be in the inside of
• 1:29:01
  it. I, I wanted to and I want to do
• 1:29:05
  it. I don't want to write about it.
• 1:29:07
  And I was, I had done a story in the 90s, was it late 90s?
• 1:29:13
  One of my last stories I think was if I remember correctly, but
• 1:29:18
  it was Robert Mondavi had written a biography and I got to
• 1:29:22
  visit him and Napa Valley and I spent like 3 or 4 days up there
• 1:29:27
  and, and I was always very much into wine.
• 1:29:31
  And so, you know, in the back of my head was like, you know,
• 1:29:35
  that's something you would really like to learn to figure
• 1:29:38
  it out. How, how do you make wine?
• 1:29:40
  How, how? And so I 2013 I kind of had like
• 1:29:48
  personal changes, divorce and all that stuff and said, OK, now
• 1:29:54
  my kids are out of the house more or less, you know, I can
• 1:29:59
  maybe go and explore this. And so I went to a Santa Ines
• 1:30:03
  Valley, which is about two hours from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara
• 1:30:07
  County, very unique growing region in California because it
• 1:30:13
  has literally the climate all the way on the coast is like
• 1:30:19
  burgundy. So you can grow high quality
• 1:30:21
  Pinot and Chardonnay. Then if you come a little bit
• 1:30:25
  land in, we have all the Roan varietals, a little land.
• 1:30:29
  If you go further into Happy Canyon, you can grow Bordeaux.
• 1:30:33
  So you have all of these different microclimates in one
• 1:30:36
  county. It's really interesting.
• 1:30:41
  It has very cool night temperatures here because along
• 1:30:45
  the coast of California, we have the only mountain range that is
• 1:30:51
  has a east West direction. It doesn't block off the the
• 1:30:55
  ocean cool air. So we always get cool air coming
• 1:31:00
  at night from the from the ocean coming in.
• 1:31:02
  So even if it gets hot during the day.
• 1:31:04
  So it's a very unique growing region.
• 1:31:05
  So I came up here and really became an apprentice at in the
• 1:31:10
  winery and I said, OK, you know what?
• 1:31:11
  I'm, I'm, I'll do anything. Well, just, you know, show me
• 1:31:15
  how it works. And two years into it, I started
• 1:31:19
  making my own wines in that winery with their equipment and
• 1:31:23
  all that, you know, open the tasting room like a poppier
• 1:31:28
  stouple and started selling wine.
• 1:31:31
  And that lasted pretty much into 2020 COVID where we were open
• 1:31:41
  and closed and open and closed. And I, I became really, really
• 1:31:46
  disillusioned with the retail part of, of wine.
• 1:31:50
  I just didn't, I mean, I still loved it, but I, the making is
• 1:31:54
  so fun, growing grapes is so fun, but the selling it was
• 1:31:59
  really not. And I did most of my business
• 1:32:01
  was direct to consumer business. So because it was a boutique,
• 1:32:04
  very small, I didn't have like a big distribution.
• 1:32:08
  And so end of 2020, a very, very close friend of mine.
• 1:32:15
  So we all went to this first COVID year and everybody's like,
• 1:32:20
  what are we going to do with our lives?
• 1:32:22
  So what is there? Is there anything left?
• 1:32:25
  I mean, especially at my age. And so my friend Scott said,
• 1:32:31
  man, we've been looking for a project for 10 or 15 years.
• 1:32:35
  We've known each other for 25 something.
• 1:32:39
  At one point we wanted to build a new restaurant or a theater.
• 1:32:42
  Like we always had ideas, but so we, I, I found out I was living
• 1:32:48
  right next to a winery that was owned by Gallo.
• 1:32:51
  Gallo is the biggest wine producer in the world.
• 1:32:54
  And I know it was lying there. They, they weren't really happy.
• 1:32:57
  It was very small in their portfolio and always closed
• 1:33:01
  because of COVID. It looked pretty rundown.
• 1:33:04
  And so I said, you know what, if we asked them, they might
• 1:33:07
  actually be willing to part with it and sell it.
• 1:33:12
  And so my friend Scott ended up buying this property and he
• 1:33:17
  lives in Lai live here and I've spent the last four years
• 1:33:21
  completely rebuilding it and changing the farming of the
• 1:33:25
  grapes here from the conventional chemical farming
• 1:33:29
  into organic regenerative farming with sheep in the
• 1:33:33
  vineyard and a completely new practices.
• 1:33:36
  And but what, what happened then was also unforeseen.
• 1:33:42
  I, I did a dry January 3 years ago and the dry January became
• 1:33:49
  dry February, March. And then I tried to drink again
• 1:33:52
  and I just didn't like it anymore.
• 1:33:54
  And I was like, no, what, what you're going to do, you know,
• 1:33:57
  you live on a vineyard, you have all these grapes you spend all
• 1:34:01
  your energy doing and you don't like wine anymore.
• 1:34:04
  So, and that's kind of that's where that's the bird, the, the
• 1:34:08
  birth, that's where glass rose. My, my newest project was born
• 1:34:13
  where I said, OK, what can we do with, with, without grapes?
• 1:34:17
  I, I was very disenchanted with, I don't like the alcoholized
• 1:34:21
  wine because the process generally robs the wine of all
• 1:34:26
  the information that makes wine really interesting.
• 1:34:29
  But that it's, I know that the Germans have developed
• 1:34:32
  technologies that are better than what we have in America,
• 1:34:34
  but I still want to, I still haven't tasted a de alcoholized
• 1:34:37
  wine that I really like. And so my idea was like, OK, why
• 1:34:42
  not unpick these grapes much earlier?
• 1:34:44
  Let's say two months before harvest, I pick my grapes,
• 1:34:48
  they're not even ripe yet. And presto.
• 1:34:51
  So I have like in Germany you would call it maybe 50 extra
• 1:34:55
  here it's my 1213 bricks, very low sugar content.
• 1:34:59
  I found a way to stabilize that because if you have no alcohol,
• 1:35:03
  it's not stable. So yeast once you so bacteria
• 1:35:07
  will ruin it. So I found a way to cross filter
• 1:35:11
  it through membranes and I used what it's in the French, call it
• 1:35:15
  veggie or green juice. And, and I used that as a base
• 1:35:20
  for a sparkling drink where I layer elderflower tea, yuzu, all
• 1:35:26
  kinds of different interesting components into the drink and
• 1:35:32
  then add a little bit of CO2. And so it's a sparkling drink.
• 1:35:36
  And that's kind of my newest baby.
• 1:35:38
  I'm, I did, I did develop that together with my wife Sarah, who
• 1:35:43
  was never a big drinker, but, and that's been, that's how you
• 1:35:49
  found us on, on social media because my oldest daughter
• 1:35:54
  started this glass rose farms. I, I don't know anything.
• 1:35:57
  I don't know how to do social media really, apart from posting
• 1:36:02
  a picture of me somewhere in the beach or what.
• 1:36:06
  But she knows how, how to make this interesting.
• 1:36:09
  She's a great storyteller. And so she started this social
• 1:36:13
  media account and it, and that became somehow became viral.
• 1:36:19
  I mean, it has now 125,000 people that are following it for
• 1:36:24
  cakes and all these other stories that we tell.
• 1:36:27
  So, and, but Glass Rose is kind of so our, our goal, but this
• 1:36:31
  is, so how can we make interesting, fascinating
• 1:36:36
  beverages, drinks that are based on organically grown grapes that
• 1:36:40
  are not fermented, You know, so that's kind of where there's
• 1:36:44
  some companies in Copenhagen and, and in Australia that are
• 1:36:48
  doing similar things, not as much with grapes, but with teas
• 1:36:51
  that they use. So, but, but we have already
• 1:36:57
  talked to some Germans actually and next year are investigating
• 1:37:01
  how we can do the whole thing in Germany with German grapes.
• 1:37:07
  Nice, nice. So it's expanding, it's
• 1:37:09
  evolving. It's, it's definitely evolving
• 1:37:11
  and it's so fascinating. You know, when you again, when
• 1:37:14
  you work in the wine industry, there is a lot of rules.
• 1:37:18
  So you learn all the rules and then you break the rules.
• 1:37:21
  But it's everything. It's like it's traditions that
• 1:37:24
  are hundreds and hundreds of years old, which is beautiful,
• 1:37:30
  but it's also constraining. So what I'm doing, I can just
• 1:37:35
  I'm just inventing this. This is a blanket.
• 1:37:37
  Say, OK, I'm gonna use a green grape juice.
• 1:37:40
  So now what I'm gonna do now, Now I'm gonna, you know, so I
• 1:37:44
  can, you can paint, you know? Creativity again.
• 1:37:47
  Creativity again. And so the great thing is that
• 1:37:51
  our, the response has been, obviously this could have been a
• 1:37:54
  complete failure because only I like it, but we were really
• 1:37:56
  lucky. In two months, we sold half of
• 1:37:59
  our production without having a distribution in place.
• 1:38:02
  Literally just word of mouth and social media, people, social
• 1:38:06
  media and people and people are being so excited.
• 1:38:09
  And you know, sometimes, and that's also true in life, you
• 1:38:12
  can start something at one point and it's maybe too early or too
• 1:38:15
  late or, and people are maybe not interested.
• 1:38:18
  But I, this is somehow I have a feeling this has wings and
• 1:38:23
  people, there's so much support. I don't know how you how the the
• 1:38:28
  German, we call it the NA scene in America, non alcoholic scene
• 1:38:33
  is but there is a lot of movement of young people don't
• 1:38:38
  drink as much or they drink half as much or I mean, we used to
• 1:38:42
  drink every day. If you're a winemaker, you'd
• 1:38:44
  start drinking in the morning. You kind of have a buzz all day
• 1:38:47
  long. It's, and it's kind of normal.
• 1:38:49
  That's just how it is. You know, it's kind of, and, but
• 1:38:54
  this young, younger generation is, is not doing that.
• 1:38:58
  They drink sometimes and sometimes not and read.
• 1:39:01
  I'm, I'm not an advocate for, for anything.
• 1:39:04
  It's everybody's business what they want to do.
• 1:39:06
  You know, it's like, if you want to drink, it's totally fine with
• 1:39:09
  me. But I, I, I find it really
• 1:39:12
  interesting meeting all these creative young, this young
• 1:39:17
  generation that's looking for different options and different
• 1:39:20
  possibilities. And I mean, we met through,
• 1:39:24
  there's a lot of stores here now in, in California especially and
• 1:39:28
  in New York, NA, they have like up to 500 different beverages
• 1:39:32
  that are all interesting artisan non alcoholic beverages.
• 1:39:36
  And it's, it's great. It's just fabulous.
• 1:39:42
  It's, I think it's the people are slowly realizing that also
• 1:39:48
  there is a long term side effect of alcohol that nobody was
• 1:39:51
  really mentioning until now besides the like this, this bus
• 1:39:55
  that you constantly have and so on.
• 1:39:57
  And I think This is why people are more aware of the fact that
• 1:40:00
  maybe it's not the smartest thing to do.
• 1:40:02
  This story hit home for me as well.
• 1:40:03
  I was not never a big drinker, like you said, casual drinker
• 1:40:06
  and so on. But I realized more and more
• 1:40:09
  that it's affecting the quality of my life.
• 1:40:11
  And I saw I saw a nice quote of. Of Jimmy Carr, one of the other
• 1:40:18
  weeks or months, I don't know if you know Jimmy Carr, he's a
• 1:40:20
  stand up, stand up comedian who said that you are without
• 1:40:24
  drinking alcohol, you are borrowing happiness from
• 1:40:28
  tomorrow, right? And this sounds, it sounds so,
• 1:40:32
  so interesting for me because it's kind of real.
• 1:40:35
  My my my favorite quote that I I heard, it's not even that.
• 1:40:39
  It's not even that I would say poetic as the quote of yours is
• 1:40:44
  from John Mayer, who stopped drinking and said, you know
• 1:40:49
  what? I at one point I had to realize,
• 1:40:51
  do I want to be 100% as an artist or 70?
• 1:40:55
  And it's also OK to be 70 and the rest of the time you groove
• 1:40:58
  off. And if that's what but I for
• 1:41:01
  myself, I want to be 100% of what I can do.
• 1:41:05
  And I think, I think alcohol doesn't help you do that.
• 1:41:09
  Absolutely, Absolutely. So before we before we wrap this
• 1:41:14
  up and before we. So for sure the teaser is there.
• 1:41:16
  I want to do the next session. I want to ask you that the last
• 1:41:20
  questions for today, Max, if you would have the opportunity to
• 1:41:26
  choose again and you would be again in your youth finishing
• 1:41:31
  university, would you still be doing the same thing?
• 1:41:38
  Yeah, yes, I mean, maybe the the, the what I think I'm the,
• 1:41:45
  the, the directions would be or the path would lead me
• 1:41:49
  different. I think my personality is kind
• 1:41:52
  of like to be so open to that. I I will follow, I will follow a
• 1:41:59
  path and and and walk down and say what is there.
• 1:42:02
  So I, I feel it's part of my personality to just be, yes, I
• 1:42:06
  would do, I would do, I would do the same thing.
• 1:42:09
  I would be, I would come, would come here.
• 1:42:12
  And I feel, and it's something maybe I, I would really
• 1:42:18
  emphasize, I feel when I came to America, I feel actually
• 1:42:23
  liberated by the language that I was using because I was not
• 1:42:28
  constrained by the norms of the German language that I grew up
• 1:42:32
  with. This is how you say things.
• 1:42:34
  This is why you say this is how you behave.
• 1:42:36
  Suddenly I was speaking in a in a language that I knew pretty
• 1:42:39
  well, but I didn't grow up in the conventions of this
• 1:42:42
  language. And I feel completely liberated
• 1:42:45
  to say things that I would have been maybe embarrassed or to,
• 1:42:51
  you know. Yeah, I felt liberated.
• 1:42:56
  Also emotionally, you know. That's that's a nice, but I
• 1:43:00
  haven't thought about this, but this makes so much sense like
• 1:43:03
  this, this feeling of not having any constraint when speaking
• 1:43:06
  because you don't know what are the actual native rules because
• 1:43:10
  you never never use them. But that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:43:13
  Max is home Is home a feeling or a place?
• 1:43:17
  Because you mentioned the the memory that you are trying to
• 1:43:19
  bake. And I keep saying before I
• 1:43:23
  before you, I get, I give you just to answer.
• 1:43:26
  I keep saying one thing that for me home is AI think it's a it's
• 1:43:31
  a feeling because the place that was used to you are searching,
• 1:43:35
  always searching for a place that doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:43:37
  You are searching for, for a memory that doesn't necessarily
• 1:43:40
  exist. And when I try to reproduce it,
• 1:43:41
  that's why I'm always trying to ask this question.
• 1:43:44
  Is it a feeling or a place? Yeah, for me it's, yeah, it's an
• 1:43:46
  emotion. It is a feeling and an emotion.
• 1:43:51
  It is definitely not, not a place.
• 1:43:53
  I, I, I don't have a place I want to go back to.
• 1:43:57
  I've never in my life. But I, I, there's these, you
• 1:44:01
  know, when I say I bake this memory, I, I, I want to visit
• 1:44:04
  that memory. And then that's, that's kind of
• 1:44:08
  home to me. That's I, I've to be able to
• 1:44:11
  visit that and to, to recreate that for myself.
• 1:44:13
  But it's not. It's not a place.
• 1:44:18
  Max, thank you so much for the first session.
• 1:44:21
  It was so much pleasure. It was.
• 1:44:23
  So great meeting you here, so fantastic chatting with you,
• 1:44:27
  really enjoying it. It's just.
• 1:44:29
  Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that a lot for
• 1:44:32
  having me. It's it's it's thank you for
• 1:44:35
  taking the time. It's, it's such a pleasure to
• 1:44:37
  talk to you and it's such a pleasure to know all these
• 1:44:39
  things and to realize that someone has has lived his dream
• 1:44:43
  life. Somehow the dream experience is
• 1:44:46
  that he planned something, which I think it's really good for
• 1:44:48
  people to know that there is this option and there is this
• 1:44:51
  option. If you want something, you just
• 1:44:53
  have to try it because there are big chances that you realize.
• 1:44:57
  Right, all right. Thank you so much and looking
• 1:45:00
  forward for the next one.