Carrot soup

There is so much rain in Europe. I forgot about what it's like when it rains all the time. Reminds me of the pacific northwest, my youth. I was expecting a tropical balmy time in Italy and Spain, but the rain has actually gotten worse as we get closer to the mediterranean. Saw pictures of crazy freeway flooding on the news. We drove through a monster puddle that consumed the windshield momentarily. The wildest lightning I ever saw, too.

It rained at our first show too, in Amsterdam. At the end of the show (which was exploding with party people until 4 am), it started raining as we were carrying all of our stuff out to the car. I didn't know this, but apparently Amsterdam is notorious for crumby weather. It never even crossed my mind that it might rain. I kind of forgot about rain. At the end of the night, trying to herd everyone out of the club, our driver/manager, Pete, told us that we were going to leave all the equipment inside the venue and we would walk home. Oh, but we already loaded it all, and now it was raining very hard. So, we can't walk home in the rain, and we can't really carry everything inside again, so that plan was spoiled. He didn't want to drive the car away from the club because the parking situation near his home (a house boat in the Amsterdam canal!) is dire and also because it was late and he drank some. Everyone wet from the rain going back and forth between the van and the club, where Pete was still DJ-ing, each party trying to convince the other that their plan was impractical. Eventually, we concluded that there was no way to do it except to drive the van and park in a parking garage or something. We got home close to 5am, Pete went to park the car and, I discovered in the jet-lagged morning, he had a flat tire and couldn't move the van so he had to sleep in the van in the middle of the street and call up someone to come change the tire as soon as the sun was up. The First show of tour.

BRUSSELS

The next day was Brussels, a very beautiful cobblestoned city with sprawling old churches crusted with age, every sign written in at least three different languages. Some of the friendliest Europeans I've ever encountered on the street. A host peeked out of the  entryway of one of the many many restaurants surrounding the square near the bar and, smiling, inquired in French about the food I was eating while I walked down the street. I think he was genuinely curious. Some kind of African heritage festival was going on in the square, weird French rap echoing out over the long decorative pool and fountains there, squirming down the pedestrian alleyways that sprout from the center, becoming faint and ghostly.

In the night, several of us were mauled by sneaky mosquitoes that had gained entry to our host's apartment, using some kind of foul insectoid magic, no doubt. Shannon woke me before dawn with a wild tale about a single mosquito she had been battling all night. In my half-crazed dream state, I thought it might be just phoey and poppycock, and I made my way to the light switch. Bleary-eyed, I managed to see that walls were COVERED in more mosquitoes than I had ever seen together in one place, lazing about on the walls, digesting everyone's blood through their tiny simple guts. Shannon and I, the only ones awake, executed a seige on their numbers, smearing the walls with our own blood as each bug popped under our palms. In their satiated state, there were drunken and foolish, much easier to kill.

In the morning, our wild host (the owner of the bar where we played), who had been up all night partying in some European fashion and minding his bar, treated us to some very elegant street seafood. Plate after plate of mussels, razor clams, seared tuna and fish stew were brought out to us, and white wine. It was remarkable. We all became drunk in the street. Our host had a nearly perfect American accent and was quite a drunken rascal in the morning. He was very fond of the california accent and the jokes particular to it. He called out thinks to innocent old passers-by, requested high fives from old Belgian men, made fun of everyone there. His friends told us, in painfully, syrupy thick French accents, of the previous night's cocaine and booze binge, all of the things that had transpired while we were sound asleep, dreaming mosquito-fueled dreams.

PARIS

In Paris, a crumby time was had by all. It rained again. The traffic was awful. The neighborhood where we played was crowded and dirty and devoid of charm. The show was moved at the last minute to a new venue, which was the tiny and awkwardly shaped damp old basement of a bar/restaurant. The staff of the restaurant was very annoyed by our presence there. I'm not sure why they rent out the basement if it bothers them so much. Everything and everyone was wet from the rain. This was the first night where we became suspicious that all of the promoters on the tour thought we were vegetarian. Our hosts brought us a meal of a simple diced salad with a mayonnaise type dressing and a quinoa-cucumber-pepper salad and pasta salad. It was neither filling nor substantial. Later I bought some disappointing kebab type dish from a dingy shop across the street to satisfy myself.

The show was hot and claustrophobic. A wet mess. The end of the night dragged on drunkenly as all nine of us passively tried to figure out where each would be sleeping that night, finally standing out in the rain in front of the bar while they tried to close for the evening, gabbing and babbling with the last few wiggley-eyed stragglers. We had to split up into three different locations for sleeping. We left only when the restaurant finally kicked everyone out and closed the gate around 4am. I slept in a nice living room. Some of the boys from Las Ardillas, the other band, went to party with some girls and ended up bouncing around a few bogus "parties" where they were mistreated by rude drunkards, before finally deciding that sleeping in the street or walking all night would be preferrable to that company. They saw the Eiffel tower and a Parisian McDonald's while they waited for morning.

NEUCHATEL

The place was a punk squat in an abandoned restaurant across from a long dead chocolate factory in an industrial section of the idyllic town of Neuchatel, Switzerland. It looks a bit like a Canadian city, clean and green and organized, with a big lake in the center. The party was sparsely attended, but what it lacked in numbers, in made up for in late-night raging weirdness and raw enthusiasm for the simple act of partying. I later heard that nearly all the attendees had eaten LSD that night. They were very annoying. We did have a very nice room upstairs safely away from the acid.

Before we played, the squatters made us a meal of salad and a carrot soup. We were soon hungry again. We resolved to go to a restaurant and I met a guy named Ludo who was a chef and offered to sneak us into his restaurant and cook for us at 11pm. The squatters got wind of this and were very upset and insisted that we stay and eat something else. They cobbled together some dumpstered prosciutto and chicken, which I cooked in the kitchen. A lot of high-flying LSD freaks ate most of the prosciutto while I was cooking, giggling like gnomes.

Down the road from the house, one of the squatters showed me an alcove in the empty chocolate factory where a man had laboriously cleared out decades of obsolete and neglected cacao-stained machinery and built a tiny public gazing pool with benches and a stone garden and strings of lights hung all around. Adjacent was his workshop, full of wood and tools and a motorbike or two.

The morning took a very long time to get started. I was first or second awake and my hunger drove me into the streets to search for food while eveyrone slept. Unfortunately, Switzerland has its own currency, so I couldn't buy anything with my Euros. I starved most of the morning until we were able to wrangle everyone into the van and leave. The host of the party had promised to make us a beautiful Swiss dumpstered breakfast in the morning. This was a lie. We left near 2pm and only one member of the household had risen, and just barely, and only because we woke him up so that he could pay us for the show, which he did, mostly in coins and at least 100 Swiss Francs short of what was agreed upon.

More to come...!