Some collaborations give you great content.
Others give you stories you'll still be telling years later.
Hamburg gave us both.
This was one of the first proper work trips David and I took when we were still relatively new to the creator world. We were heading to Germany for a week to stay and collaborate with Master On Twinks and Benny Twink — two established creators who, from the outside, could easily have felt a little intimidating to two people still figuring everything out.
We arrived thinking we were going to Hamburg to work.
We left seven days later with some of our favourite content, new friends, considerably less sleep and enough stories to fill an entire Journal.
COME IN, MAKE YOURSELVES AT HOME
From the moment we arrived, they made us feel completely welcome.
We stayed at their beautiful home for the entire week, and it never felt like we'd simply turned up, filmed together and gone our separate ways.
They brought us into their world.
Between filming, we met their friends, went for dinners, explored Hamburg, wandered around Christmas markets, went shopping — including some shops that were perhaps a little less Christmas market and a little more After Dark — and spent a lot of time just talking, laughing and getting to know each other.
But some of my favourite moments were actually the quieter ones at home.
One night David and I cooked everyone a proper Italian dish and we all sat down together to eat. Another evening we ended up watching Scream Queens together.
And somewhere amongst all of this, Benny, David and I discovered we all shared a love for Game of Thrones, which naturally gave us another thing to talk about for far longer than necessary.
It sounds like little stuff, but that's how you know when you've genuinely matched someone's vibe.
You arrive as creators who have arranged a collaboration, and a few days later you're cooking together, watching TV on the sofa and debating Game of Thrones like you've known each other considerably longer than a week.
And yes, we worked.
Quite a lot.
We created some of my favourite content from those early days, but I think part of the reason it worked so well was everything happening around the cameras.
Nobody was watching the clock.
Nobody was treating it like a transaction.
We were comfortable with each other.
And when the chemistry is right off camera, it usually shows on camera too.
WHEN YOU'RE THE NEW ONES IN THE ROOM
The trip also taught me something I've carried with me ever since.
When you're new to this industry, established creators can seem intimidating.
You see their following, their work, the people they've collaborated with and everything they've already achieved, while you're still learning how half of it works.
It's very easy to assume there's going to be some enormous divide between them and you.
Then you actually meet people.
Master On Twinks and Benny couldn't have been further from that expectation.
They were incredibly welcoming and genuinely generous with their experience. They taught us things, gave us advice and included us in conversations that helped David and me understand the creator world a little better.
There was never a feeling of, we know more than you.
It was much more:
Come in. We'll show you.
For two creators near the beginning of their journey, that meant a lot.
ONLY IN HAMBURG
And then, obviously, there was the nightlife.
Because apparently filming all week, going out for food and exploring Hamburg wasn't enough activity for us.
One night we ended up clubbing inside a Second World War bunker that had been transformed into a nightclub.
A literal bunker.
Turned into a club.
It's still one of those experiences where I occasionally think, Did we actually do that?
We did.
And it was unforgettable.
By the time Saturday arrived, however, David and I had reached the stage where our bodies were politely requesting that the holiday end.
We had spent an entire week filming, eating, drinking, meeting people, going out and generally behaving as though sleep was something we'd deal with when we returned to England.
Naturally, our flight home was at 7am.
Did that stop us going clubbing on our final night?
Of course not.
THE 5AM EXIT
At around 5am, David and I finally left the club.
Our flight was in roughly two hours.
So we got into a cab, went back to the house, grabbed our luggage and headed essentially straight to the airport.
No sleep.
No sensible hotel breakfast.
No calm little journey home.
Just two exhausted Italians with suitcases wondering why Past Us had been allowed to make travel arrangements.
I remember sitting there thinking:
I have made a terrible mistake.
It took me days to recover.
Would I recommend that particular travel strategy?
Absolutely not.
Would I change the week that led up to it?
Not a chance.
THE BEST COLLABS DON'T REALLY END
The thing I love most about Hamburg is that it didn't finish when we boarded that flight.
We've stayed in touch ever since.
They still keep us in the loop when opportunities come up, and recently Benny came to London and stayed with us.
After everything we'd done together in Hamburg, our reunion was considerably more civilised.
We made lasagna.
And honestly, it was amazing.
There was something lovely about it.
The first time we'd spent proper time together involved cameras, collaborations, Christmas markets, clubs, Italian food on their side of Europe and a week in Germany.
Years later, we're standing in a kitchen in London making Italian food together again.
That's when you realise something that I think gets lost when people talk about this industry purely in terms of content.
The product isn't always the most valuable thing you take away from a collaboration.
Sometimes it's what happens between the shoots.
The conversations.
The ridiculous nights.
The things you learn from each other.
The friendships that unexpectedly continue afterwards.
Hamburg gave David and me some of our best content from that period.
But when I look back at those seven days now, that's only one part of what made them special.
We went there for a collaboration.
We came home with considerably more.
And a very serious need for sleep.
— Roby
