Ruud Grosmann wrote:

<xsl:apply-templates select="$this/text()[1]/following-sibling::*" mode="li"/>

But it appears that the select only selects the b-element.

My questions are: - what do I misunderstand and (isn't the following text a sibling then?)

It is a sibling but not an element so you need to use following-sibling::node() instead of following-sibling::*.