Not poor in money, but poor in kindness and poor in friendship. That`s the experience I made as a young swapper who tried to get more contacts around the world. It seems that in Germany are no swappers anymore! You are asking why ??? I guess the !nternet` is the big `problem`. It is doing everything man need for life. You neighter have to go out for shopping, nor to work. The new american way of life is that your refrigerator orders new food if the old one inside is out or overdue. It is going to be the paradise on earth like it seems. The only thing you have to move your ass for are the red-tapists, but this will only be until it is sure that you can not fake videotapes, isdn or whatever will be used for comunications of persons in a few years on !nternet. Why typing normal letters or send disks to normal sceners yet? Should they buy itself a connect to `the net` or die alone !!! almost everyone is adapting oneself to the mass of the typical modern business man, only chatting via eletronic.

In my opinion is the WWW a bit unpersonal. A bit cold. You don`t have this old feeling of kindness as in the times when mankind could only send hand- written letters. It is also a pitty that 100% is only an empty phrase today and that the addresses I wrote to are all pretended to be new ones and the guys are very active and will answer sometimes 1000%.

If you are a young and unknown swapper, you should only try to contact the ones, who doesn`t want elite only, althought it`s not bad, just the ones who didn`t write this shouldn`t lie with their 100% promises! Have a look at several addies. Check the messages-parts of some mags out for the really active ones. There are also some special spreaders around with addresses that guarantees really 100% reply to everybody...

But like today no one is writing those old-fashinone but really cool mega- scrollers, one have to inure to the fact: everything is changing! It is sometimes bad, but almost ever the only way.
But back to the Germans. I got only one answer back from a german amigian. All other contacts of mine are settled in poland (the most), norway, sweden, finland, italy, france and so on. It was a hard experience for me and I lerned my lessons well. I lost so many disks when I tried to made new swappers out, that I already go banana if I remember the ansolute number of it. That is not only a problem in germany. Here no one writes back. In the other countries about 20th percent. But there are also some cute ones who sent a disk only to tell you that they are no swapper or scener anymore.

Swapping is not at its end yet! I think and I hope! The scene is like everything else changing everyday and it would be boring if it doesn`t. In Germany are today less active groups than ever. Only some elite ones like Endzeit, Abyss and so on are producing stuff. the scene has moved more and more to the east like poland and the nordish countries. That`s a fact. Not bad but no good certificate for Germany.

But except the lost of friendship and engagement, swapping is faced to another problem, perhaps the bigger one: The post office !!! A normal letter takes too many days to find its target in this technologic century. Three days to England, four to Poland and Sweden. Two ones to Italy. That`s what making real (means fast) swapping apparently imposible. To take a walk to my friends and contacts would be essential faster and cheaper of course. It seems that this is the one that is not to overcome.

Apart from the fact, that many sceners mean that swapping is not neces- sary today, some guys I met or heard of told me, that they were more than surprised that there are `some` swappers to stay. But swapping is not only an important peculiarity of our scene and swappers do not only have the better knowledge of the current state of it, particulary for the topical news in countries where not everyone is linked to the !nternet, but they are mostly very friendly contemporaries, who keep the feeling that made AMIGA generally possible, alive. The feeling of community and of course happieness. I would call them `the blood donors of the scene`.

Thanx to my friend Punisher for the inspiration with his article `The Current State...