Hubert Schaub

To sleep is a necessity and a powerful medicine. To sleep anywhere is an attitude which, with practice, develops into an art form.
As kids, we spent our summer holidays camping in home-made tents of bean sticks and plastic tarp, sleeping on bails of straw. As we grew older, we would just crash around the campfire, tranquilised by alcohol, sometimes waking up in the morning to sobering sound of pouring rain, whilst lying in a puddle of mud. Though it wasn’t until I went backpacking on a shoestring budget, that I developed and refined the art of sleeping out. True to the saying “you have a nose for it”, the most important task was finding a suitable place to roll out your sleeping bag. The beach was sufficient in fine weather and so was the roadside, especially when hitchhiking. Inclement weather drove us to seek shelter under bridges, in semi enclosed bus stops, or the roofed entrance of some building among other facilities, such as public toilets. I have wistful memories of the night in Brussels in 1980 when my girlfriend, Anita, and I shared a bottle of Johnny Walker with another backpacking couple followed by a good night’s sleep, on the well sheltered front steps of a bank.
Now my mind drifts back to 1977;
After a long dusty bus trip we are rewarded with a phenomenal orange coloured sky at sunset directly to the west and a full moon rising in the east – a group of us hippies lay our heads to rest in the desert at the Iranian/Afganian border.
Fate assured, the weather God decided to turn on his heavenly tap around midnight, sending me wandering to locate the roofed entrance steps of the only building far and wide. Park benches, the trade-mark bed of the homeless, travellers and drunks, always made for a good sleep, depending on climatic conditions of course. In big cities, we had to compete and score one before nightfall. Then there was the railway station. In Venice we globetrotters would snooze on the floor until the railway guards ordered us to leave but kindly let us sleep on the steps outside. Munich central station had its own special touch. We would doze off on some bench in the cosy waiting room to a rude awakening at 1am, and the shouting of the guards in rhythm with the barking of their German Sheppard dogs moving us on across the road where we dispersed into the old botanical garden, and continued our slumber party under a bush – I liked to call it my second home since it was familiar surroundings for me when I visited Munich! Water fountains and ponds came handy when sleeping out. It was a place where we ‘bush people’ met for our morning wash and a chat. It was one of the busiest spots I found during my travels the other being ‘En Gedi’ beach by the Dead Sea in Israel. The unexpected often plays a role when sleeping out. For example, one night in 1976, after a long day’s travel, my friend ‘Otz’ and I arrived in Tehran late. The cheap backpacker’s dormitories had shut-up shop for the day, leaving us to find some alternative patch of soil to sleep on. In the dark of night, we found what seemed to be some kind of a park, sheltered from the road by a large building, the ideal ‘open air accommodation’ on a warm summer night. ‘So far-so good’, until we woke up to a foul smell and hordes of rats basking in the warm morning sun. Our ideal resting place had turned out to be a rubbish tip, “lucky breakfast wasn’t included in the deal”. Rats of course, weren’t the only vermin we had to tolerate when sleeping out. Mosquitos and an array of other creatures paid their nightly visits. One night in 1979, unable to afford to stay in the only hotel around, four of us decided to spend the night under the stars in the ancient, abandoned desert city of Petra in Jordan. Later, as I woke up for an ‘open air toilet visit’, something slimy slid over my hand. Thinking ‘snake’, I jumped out of my sleeping bag and shook it out, the next morning, to my relief, I found a dead giant centipede nearby. Later a local Bedouin told me it was highly venomous. Needless to say: when sleeping out, security and vigilance is of utmost importance. When you travel, all your belongings are in your backpack, valuables on your body, hidden and zipped-up in pockets and belts, 24/7. The backpack double-functions as a pillow and an alarm, should anyone try and steel it. In certain situations, it may be wise to sleep holding a knife in hand, concealed or visible. This worked for me but don’t take it as gospel. One night in 1977 in Nanital in the Indian Himalayas, I planked down under a tree, next to a ‘Holy Cow’ with her calf. The place was riddled with howling wild dogs, so I decided to sleep ‘at the ready’ holding my pocketknife. My dreams were interrupted by a batten poking my ribs. There were two policemen on patrol, inquiring what the knife was for. They accepted my explanation, ‘protection from the dogs’, hung around for a friendly chat then moved on letting me sleep in peace without any more interruptions. On another occasion in 1980, Anita and I, returning from three months in Africa, arrived in Gaza City late afternoon. Wandering the streets, several locals warned us to ‘get out before nightfall’ if our lives were dear to us. Following the motto ‘always listen to the locals’ we managed to make it to the Israeli border by dusk. We made our bed on a sand dune across the road from the floodlit, sand bagged border station, re-assured by the heavily armed Israeli soldiers, should we get into trouble. True enough, during the night we woke up to find a Palestinian had creeped up and was rubbing his hand over Anita,s sleeping bag. After ignoring my repeated threats to ‘Fuck-off’ (I guess he didn’t understand English), the sight of my branding knife conveyed the message more clearly and made him bolt off into the dark.
Of course, not all sleeping out happens at ground level. For example, circa early 1980, the semi enclosed lifeguard tower on the beach in Eilat at the Red Sea in Israel provided an elevated level of comfort for Paddy the Irishman and me, later joined by two Israelis who had walked the length of Israel from north to south. We made it our dormitory for a week, then moved on trying to score a job on a yacht bound for Djibuti. When, walking up the jetty, Paddy told me he couldn’t swim! A few months later and still on solid ground, I was travelling with Anita in Africa. We hitched a two-day lift in a truck from Kenya all the way to Kampala, the Capital City of Uganda, a country in turmoil, suffering in the aftermath of Idi Amin’s tyranny. Ours was one of the last few trucks to pull into a designated truck depot at the outskirts, just before the night curfew. Nightly killings and looting were the norm, so for a small fee, the place was protected against insurgents by guards carrying the good old AK47. The tiny, high velocity insurgents known as bullets however, called for a different method of protection. With no shielding fixtures around, we slept under the truck, the two drivers, Joseph, Raffael and us, taking one wheel each for partial cover. We dozed off to the rattling sound of machine guns, which we were well used to from our travel through Israel. Next morning as we walked into the city, they had just finished the daily task of removing the corpses. Now, I could go on telling countless other stories, such as sharing the night and a smoke of dope with some visiting Iranian Kurds on the footpath in Tehran, or sleeping in the company of leppers in the streets of India etc. Not to forget the comfortable accommodation on conveniently booked third class, overnight trains, busses and ferries, and of course, the dirt- cheap, indoor and open air Backpacker dormitories throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Well, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the life of the ‘Humble Backpacker’ in the 1970’s and 80’s.
Mastery of the ‘art of sleeping out’ coupled with other survival skills I have acquired during my travels, has liberated my mind from worry about loss of property, possession or lifestyle. Metaphorically speaking: “I have slept under bridges before, and I can do it again”; anywhere, anytime.
Recommended reading: Real, Bold & Simple
Chapter 3 – born to be free
E-Book Download from this

Alias has decided to embark on yet another time travel adventure. Since everything significant and spectacular happened in 2050, he thought it best to let things settle and make 2070 his destination. He bumps into his old friend ‘Alas’, who had made the same decision. Alas is an on-line con-artist who follows in the footsteps of his father, a bank robber, who was made redundant when the cashless economy kicked in. Together, after a night on the booze in a robot operated pub, Alias and Alas embark on a fact-finding mission exploring their new world, which appears to be plodding along in crime and corruption much the same as the old one. Nothing much has changed in the USA and Russia. Both are still ruled by the financial elite. China is now a flourishing democracy following a turbulent era of regime changes. All its surviving ‘wolf warrior diplomats’ are now working as shepherds! The Tory party in Britain has been replaced with the Islamic party. In Germany, the MDU (Muslim Domination Union) has taken over the ruling position of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and North and South Korea are happily united. A vast middle class has emerged globally, but sadly, human life is still the cheapest and most dispensable commodity in various regions. Alias and Alas are delighted and thankful for the new universal super vaccine ‘Astrapfizamodernica’, pandemics are now a thing of the past. On the other hand, and to Alas’ financial demise, the most valuable crypto currency, toilet paper, has crashed and become worthless; ‘good for nothing’, except for wiping people’s backsides.

The best conflict resolution is prevention i.e. before being offended by a remark ask yourself is this an over-reaction on a simple comment where no offence is intended. Do not appease troublemakers, authoritarian people, or rogue regimes. Appeasement only makes them feel empowered to become more aggravated and violent, thus it instigates conflict. Do not surrender when you are acting or fighting in defence. Surrender will not resolve the conflict but allow the aggressors to ‘cut you up slowly’. Some conflicts, such as the ones in the Middle East will never be resolved, so long as profit driven foreign interference exists. Profitable, in this context, may be financial, lifestyle focused or political. Mysteriously, whenever the president of some superpower is running for re-election or some dictator is trying to re-assert his/her diminishing leader status, there usually seems to be a threat of war in the Middle East, the south China sea, or elsewhere, uniting their country under the banner of security, based on comfort in ‘the familiar’. This is traditionally backed up with some form of provocation, the likes of a missile launch or an incursion into another’s territory, making it appear more real. War profiteers may also be so-called ‘peace activist’ campaigners, the likes of the humble high school or university drop-out intellectual, ‘NGO angels’, or failed presidential candidates, all who have found a second calling for a comfortable taxpayer and charity funded expat lifestyle!
I wonder why NGO’s generally target free democratic countries, criticising their leadership’s mistakes and failures, while lacking the courage to protest against rouge regimes and their ruthless despotic leaders who, in violent breach of international law, commit genocide and other horrendous atrocities. Locking back at the 1970’s, when Western European anti-government campaigners and terrorist gangs such as the ‘Red Army Faction’ were financed by East Germany to try and destabilise the democratic West, it makes me think; are today’s rogue regimes supporting the often radical and biased ‘peace and human rights activists’, in an effort to create division and conflict in the free world, thus paving the road for their imperialistic ambitions?

Lacking self-confidence, people often endeavour to build empires and they spend the rest of their lives defending them by keeping their gates shut whilst indulging in self-praise, trying to silence any challenge. ‘Closed shops’ (workplace empires) are plentiful, where bad organisational and behavioural habits are guarded with passion. This phenomena appears in all sorts of fraternities, cultural institutions such as sports and the arts, various action groups and in exclusive clubs, where rank & title are misused to the point of emperor status. The most deranged of them all would have to be those who form gangs or cults, criminal or terrorist, including state terrorist, empires. The purpose of an empire is to conquer, rule and exploit. This is an ambition born of mental weakness, suffered by those who cannot even conquer their own mind. The desire to rule signifies fear and insecurity. Imperialistic establishments operate like a virus. They return in various forms of disguise, from the socially intimidating, via economically oppressing, to militaristically violent and are led by fake angels posing as saviours and heroes. Imperialistic dictators often meet a miserable demise, as in the case of Caesar, Hitler, Saddam Hussain, Bin Laden, Gaddafi and others. Yet today we have people following in these tyrants’ footsteps, approaching their ‘D-Day’.
On a non-violent plain, we’ve seen emperors suffer a slow psychological death in complacency, accompanied by progressive incompetence, unaware their empire is crumbling around them.
Dictators habitually grant themselves extraordinary rights and powers out of fear of exposure, because they are unfit to govern under democratic and moral law. It doesn’t require much skill, courage or knowledge to seize power in deceiving the masses. Therefore, dictatorship and imperialism are a form of weakness and incompetence.
The wise conceal their capacity to strike. Only the weak and powerless feel the need to impress or threaten with displays of force, hence a dictator’s military parade signifies nothing more than a teenage monkey dance, in short, it is pure bluff.

Cut the bullshit. Talk is cheap, to fulfil a promise is what counts. It seems most politicians have never progressed from their bragging teenage years when the buck stopped with the rhetoric. The Roman emperors provided the people with bread and circuses trying to win their support. Our contemporary politicians withdraw the bread to help pay for more circuses whilst failing to deliver the goods. Pay your debts and don’t excuse crime. Excuses lead to impunity. Impunity creates repeat offenders, from the humble petty thief all the way to the political tyrant. If you genuinely want to do something, e.g.travel, study or join a club, don’t waste your time talking about it. Unless you actually commit to it you are not genuine.
If you run a shop, keep your shelves well stocked. If you run a restaurant, have what’s on the menu, if you are unable to do so, take it off the menu. If you work in the trades, turn up on time and finish the job. Forget the fancy ads and surveys. Most of all, be fair to the customer, your employees and yourself. The written word is powerful, though it only has value once materialised. A teacher or an author who doesn’t do as he/she preaches is an imposter. Philosophy in itself is useless – it only has value once implemented and cultivated.
“Use words only when necessary” (St. Francis of Assisi).