Most of my friends already know him. But let’s start from the beginning:
From October 2008 to February 2013 I lived in an apartment in Eisenstadt. One evening, it was at the beginning of summer 2012, I can’t remember the exact day, it knocked on the door.
I came home a few minutes before and warmed some soup onthe stove in my kitchen. I opened the door and without saying a word he passed me and went into my apartment. He looked around and walked directly into the kitchen. As you can understand .. I was really astonished. I followed him to the kitchen to see how things would develop.
He opened the fridge, looked around, mumbled a little bit “Hm Hm”. He shook his head, turned around and asked me if this is a *** freezer.
I said: “Yes.” He was looking again, reached into his pockets and took out a bunch of banknotes. He said: “I need a cool place during summer. This is for the first two months.” The first moment I did not know what to think about the whole situation, but my fridge is half empty all the time and I needed the money.
This is how a penguin moved into my fridge.
Summer passed and the penguin stayed. He put money on a regular basis on my kitchen table, so I did not see a reason to kick him out.
Time wasn’t always good between him and me. He often swigged my beer and did not refill.
One day, when I came home, I found a female in my fridge. It was at the beginning of February. I thought: “Ok. We are moving out soon. So who cares.” My journey to Australia in March 2013 and the following journey through America led to, that I had to move out of the apartment at the end of February 2013. For the penguins, it meant that they had to look for a new place too. About mid of February we separated without a lot of words. I never knew their names. They did not tell me and I did not ask. I did not expect to see them again.
At end of February, it was one of my last working days, I came home and there he was, sitting in the hallway, with a bottle of booze in his arms wings. So, what happened? The Sushi restaurant, he worked for, was closed after a police raid. It turned out that the restaurant offered the highly endangered Southern Bluefin Tuna in a backroom for financially strong customers.
After the loss of his job he was really devastated. He tried to find a new job immediately. But at the top of the financial crisis it was not easy to find a new job, especially if you were employed in a restaurant with a criminal background – although the penguin was innocent. But who would believe that? I think you understand that such incidents are not very beneficial for a young relationship. So it came that they broke up. What else can you say?! I refer to Edward A. Murphy: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.”
Lacking a girlfriend, expectations and a fridge he could live in, he decided to accompany me on my journey to Australia and through the American continent.
That is how it came to be that we are on tour together – the penguin and I.