This is your host, Matt. Please sit down.
After Solothurn we had two, maybe three glorious days off. We dropped Susie off in Dusseldorf for sweet times and Mirko, Cam and I travelled all the way up to Varel, on the brink of 'The North Sea'. I really love the epic-ness of that. We slept a lot, enjoyed amazing hospitality from Mr. Mirko's Grandparents, and hung out with the best family unit of the ever. We also rode some bicycles through a wonderous forest:
Munster wasn't scary at all. We played at a place called "Gleiss 22" which had a half a bicycle sticking out of the front. That was a little scary. We arrived at the venue to find that we were playing with a band of lovely folk from New York who call themselves Gregory and the Hawk. Though they were the headline band, the fact that we - as I described it in a drunken state - were like a drunk at a wedding, we played last. Also comparable to Vince Vaughan in any of his films, placed against the other two bands (an acoustic romantic singer from Mexico/Texas/Munster, and the beautiful sounds of 'G and the H') you could see the strangeness. We had a delicious dinner at the venue, and partied down after the show, chatting to the venue owner about all the other Australian bands who had surprisingly played there.
The next day we ventured onto the road for a supposedly short drive to Hamburg, but we ended up in a colossal shitstorm traffic jam. I remember calculating 6kms of movement in 4 hours. Cam decided to kill time by running out into a huge field of deep grass like an escaped convict.
While I silently voiced my feelings:
After almost cancelling the show, we ended up outta that jam and arriving at the venue exactly 5 minutes before the proposed playing time. Crazy stairs. The band room was built for tiny people (I guess they have a lot of "small" bands playing there [AHA!]). We were treated that night to some very welcoming accomodation in the house of another kind local. The breakfast the next morning was freakin' beautiful. So many delicious breads 'n' spreads.
We had nowhere near enough time in Berlin, though it seems like a wonderful place. Our friend Les came from London to meet us at our show (and provide one more person in the crowd, and a blessed person at that). We were also greeted there by our new friends from Gregory and the Hawk, who happened to have a day off in Berlin, lucky suckers. Oh yeah, they had a SUPER NINTENDO IN THE BAND ROOM! and all the games worked without any need to perform the old dust blowout. We had quite an amount of games of NBA Live '95.
After Berlin we played another awesome show in Trier and stayed with our now good pals. We smoked some flavoured tobacco type stuff from one of those shisha pipe thingos and it was very literally sweet. Mirko and I went out to a disco party and left the club in the early daylight hours. Jagermeister shots are pretty good sometimes.
Had to leave early yet again to head up to Rotterdam. We all had a delectable plate of fish and chips for dinner, and were greeted by our friends from Gent, which was quite wonderful. We actually left straight after the show and drove to Belgium to stay a couple of nights in Gent again. Belgium is a wonderful place. We went to an underground pub and had some beers with pink elephants on the glass. And you could smoke in there! I was excited anyway. We had another couple of very relaxing days off, which included Susie's fantastic birthday! "Nobody likes you when you're 23". We still think she's ohhhhh-kay. Beautiful scenic ice-cream waffle eating times a-plenty.
Back to work though before too long and we were on our way back to France, to Nantes in fact. We played in a pizza cafe/venue underneath a very grumpy neighbour who greatly restricted our usual loud loudness. It was kinda like busking. Rather awkward. Although that night we had the priviledge of staying with two wonderful people by the names of Sylvia and David, in the lush countryside between Nantes and Rennes. They made us tea when we arrived and also took a photo of us for their 'bands who stay at our place' blog (which you can incidentally find here: lalogaise.unblog.fr [actually i just typed that inj and it didn't work out very well but it's what they told us so i'll put it in anyways]) They were wonderful folks.
We headed to Rennes after this for our last show in mainland Europe for who knows how long. This meant that it was time to P-A-R-T-Y? Truth. We all had multiple shots handed to us on stage by the bar staff (who included one of the generous dudes that we stayed with (who lived ABOVE A BAKERY!!!)). The place was surprisingly and wonderfully packed, and we got to play with a totally sweet band called I Come From Pop. We managed to make it the devastating 25 metres from the venue to our place of accomodation after playing for even more exstensive partying. Oh, did I mention that we were blessed with some scrumptious-licious authentic french crepes for dinner? I probably should have. They were rather unforgettable. I think we might have hit it a little hard that night and I myself only had about 2 hours sleep before having to drive a while and then endure a 'swayier than usual' ferry trip. I was woken from my slumber by a nice lady who politely said "Time to get off now", and later found out that Cam was woken up in a rather opposite way by a man who said "DOVER!!" when we arrived in Dover.
And ever since then we've been in 'The Motherland'/'The Mighty England'/'The Kingdom'. We've had the priviledge of sitting in at Andy Gill's studio for a little taste of our album mixing in the last few days, and we've all been catching up with some of our long departed Australian London-living friends. It's still wonderful.
If you've got this far, you definitely deserve a thank you, and a picture of me eating a full english breakfast (the crucial last bite no-less). Here's to all of you!
Enjoy. We'll see you on the other side (soon). Cheeeeeeerrrrrrrssssssss!
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