Dear friends and followers,

after a great meetup-weekend, I finally reached the long awaited milestone of reputation 70. Although it's still 69 on Steemit, I just surpassed @dan by reputation regarding to the reputation ranking provided by mysteemitfriends, now being #247 in the list. Yay!

It seems to be no coincidence, that this happend right after I had a visit by fellow Steemian and French translator of the Phill from GCHQ Comic @vcelier.

The power of Steemit

Isn't it amazing, that a retired Navi-Officer from France and a former civil service attendent, who has been a Hippie and Punk in his youth, can come together just through the power of Steemit? Funny enough, the webcomic about a nerdy member of the British secret service (GCHQ), written and drawn by the former Cyber-Punk @katharsisdrill from Denmark brought us all together.

Steemit Meetup in Aachen

So @vcelier asked me some time ago, if he could come and visit me on his little European tour. And since his visit has been planned for the same weekend, @detlev organized the third Steemit Meetup in Aachen, we obviously could not miss this opportunity. After collecting @asperger-kids we went to Aachen.

As you can see, the atmosphere was very cheerful and relaxed due to the great weather (and the Belgian beer) that we could partly enjoy on the terrace of Detlev's office.

_{@reiseamateur @vcelier @alexvan @shortcut @detlev @sebbo-f @asperger-kids @n.n. @jedigeiss @sumsum}

There was even a live broadcast with Terry Brock (@terrybrock) from Orlando, Florida. Terry works as a marketing coach, journalist and professional speaker and has told us about his Steemit experiences in a very funny and informative way.

Later we even had a BBQ on the terrace, while we enjoyed many interesting conversations.

And I even received some presents:

From Detlev I got a signed copy of his book "Einfach anders arbeiten" (Simply work different), which he usually even sells for a few Steem/SBD and from @reisemateur, who travelled from Graz (Austria) to attend the Meetup, I received a very cool refrigerator magnet.

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It remains to mention, that I was especially happy to meet @sumsum and @alexvan, who I know from Steemit for a long time, but have met in real live for the first time.

Of course, I was also very happy, that @jedigeiss encouraged me to sell more art via #steembay, because he would also like to hang an "original-@shortcut" on his wall. I certainly will start working on new pieces pretty soon :-)

Beethoven, Cherry Blossoms and Dragon's Rock

On Saturday @vcelier visited me and my family at home, right after he saw the famous cherry blossoms in the old town of Bonn. I wasn't with him, because I had to prepare the food. But here's a CC0 picture, so you can get an idea.

Of course Vincent also had to visit Beethoven's birthplace on my recommendation and on sunday, I even dragged him to Drachenfels ("Dragon's Rock"), which is a famous place, I recently published a small series of.

I think, he now can check off the complete list of places to visit in Bonn and the surrounding area. Anyway, I thought it was great to have got to know him a little better and we were able to exchange a lot of interesting information and ideas.

_{@vcelier at my home}

Vincent was also very curious about learning how I do art, so I showed him the process of a digital drawing on dada.nyc, a crypto-art related website, I recently fell in love with. I called the piece "veni, vidi, vincent" in honor of my guest.

Conclusion

Great weekend with Meetup, Sit-In and Sight-Seeing

I can't imagine, that such a kind of international and intergenerational exchange can be found anywhere beyond Steemit and I'm really looking forward to Vincent's report of our meeting or the meetings with his next hosts.

Special thanks to @katharsisdrill and @detlev, who brought us together this weekend and very special thanks to everybody, who helped me reaching reputation level 70 by reading, upvoting, commenting and resteeming my posts.

You make the difference - Steem on!

@shortcut

P.S.: If you ever have a chance to meet some fellow Steemians, you should definitely take the opportunity, it often feels like family and is really inspiring.

creativity is based on freedom