Germany, France, and Flannery O’Connor

                It’s Tuesday afternoon and we are about to cross the border into France on our way to Ensisheim.   I haven’t written since Saturday so I will do my best to catch up.

                Saturday night was a lot of fun and I enjoyed hanging out with another American band.  They weren’t uptight like some bands can be and they kept up with our incessant use of foul language, offensive statements, and bad humor.  They seemed relieved that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously, and we all shared amps and drums to make the night go by more smoothly. 

                There really wasn’t anything cool going on after the show so both bands just hung out in the large green room of the club drinking Krombacher and hanging out with the German owner wearing the snakeskin boots and cowboy hat.  He gave us all t-shirts and I scored one from the other band as well.  When the club shut down we all went to the bed and breakfast where we were staying and I went to bed. 

                I slept in until breakfast time and went downstairs to the “Fruhstruck” room.  One of the first words that I made sure I knew in German was the word for breakfast.  I generally eat two big breakfasts back home.  I eat one before I go to the gym and another one afterwards, so I’m used to eating a lot of calories in the morning and I usually wake up starving.  It was the typical German breakfast spread: several types of bread, butter, jam, honey, cheeses, cured meats, boiled eggs, coffee and orange juice.  The other bands tour manager was eating by himself. When we asked where his band was he said that he could almost never get them up for breakfast.  He wouldn’t have that problem with me.

                We had Sunday night off and our six hour drive quickly became eight due to traffic and detours.  One particularly long detour had us driving through all sorts of tiny German villages that would pop up between beautiful expanses of farmland.  We passed one monastery in particular that I really liked.  The buildings looked very old and traditional, which reminded me of something an Englishman named James had told me back in Eppstein.  He referred to many of these traditionally designed buildings as fake architecture because they were rebuilt to look like what we flattened during the war.  I don’t know for sure which these were, but it doesn’t matter to me.  I liked watching the unfamiliar scenery go by.

                I also got some reading done on the drive.  My friend Liz had given me a book called Clan of the Cave Bear, which I will admit took me longer to get into than I like.  It was slow to start, but it’s moving at a quicker pace now and I’m really enjoying it.  I also read some Flannery O’Conner short stories from a collection that Whit had.  I didn’t like them.  Let me try my best to explain why: I love movies.  I can enjoy some movies that are just sheer entertainment. You know… the ones that are simply a medium to covey a narrative.  However, I really enjoy movies as an art form as well.  Movies that make the viewer think, and feel things they may not want to, and that push the envelope.  I love movies that are meant to be discussed, and that aren’t clear cut or one dimensional.  For whatever reason I love this sort of thing on film, but I really struggle with it in literature.  Maybe I’m just not imaginative enough?  Maybe I rely too much on visually observing nonverbal communication to read into a situation? I don’t know, but either way I didn’t like the authors’ work.  It’s not to say I don’t like literature that has some depth to it.  I just didn’t connect with any of the stories.  Maybe I will revisit it in a couple of years and see if I like it better then.  In the meantime I like Ray Carver’s work WAY better and am regretting not bringing my collection of his short stories.

We finally got to Koln that evening where we would be staying with the club owner for two nights.  It was a giant house in an obviously expensive neighborhood.  The décor was really funky and you immediately got the impression that the house belonged to rich European hippies.    The house was set up to host bands often so everyone had their own bed and they even had a rehearsal room.  In typical American Aquarium fashion we found no use for the latter.  They had three dogs that loved to bark and the biggest one (whose name was Guta) was especially cute.  The wife of the owner greeted us and showed us around. She apologized for her husbands’ absence, but he was at the club for that evenings show and she informed us that we were more than welcome to attend.  We politely declined and opted to walk to find dinner on a stretch of road not far from the house that had a few restaurants. 

                We stopped at an Italian place much to Marco’s delight.  Most everyone got pizza, but I tried a salad with onions, tuna fish, and white beans.  It sounds gross, but it was pretty good. And to be fair, I couldn’t read the menu so I’m lucky I got something even remotely edible. 

We went back to the house and Whit, Kevin, and I hung outside with Marco while he smoked.  We talked about his experiences in America and what he liked about American bands.  He says that they are always the best because they have an attitude of “we can do this.”  He was basically saying that the idea of being able to “make it” is very much an American thing.  He thinks this is why American bands put on better shows and are better musicians than your average band over here.  Most European bands just kind of do it to seem cool and don’t take it seriously. 

When we finished our conversation we went upstairs and watched a really interesting English film called “This is England,” which is about a young boy getting involved in a skinhead gang.  I really enjoyed it and fell asleep immediately after it was over.

The next morning I went for a long run and explored Koln a bit.  I found a cool downtown area, a park with trails, soccer fields, and a coliseum where Bruce Springsteen is playing next week.  After I got back and showered the other guys started to wake up and we had the typical German breakfast that I am quickly falling in love with.  I keep eating too damn much though!  My weakness is bread and covering it in butter and honey is just so hard to refuse.  I’m going to have a lot of work to do when I get home to get back in shape.

I went back to bed and slept some more after breakfast and then went for another walk when I got back up.  We went to the club to load in around four.  The owner, Marcus, is very nice and shows us around.  He looks like an old rocker from the seventies or eighties and has bright red hair.  Not naturally red though.  It is the kind of red that you would find in a Crayola box of crayons.  It looked like he died it with Kool-Aid.  The stage is nice and the sound guy is definitely the best we have had so far.  Ryan had been having some issues with his pedals since his adapter fried the first night, but we finally got it under control.  Sound check ended up sounding awesome.

The green room was catered with chicken marsala, green beans, and potatoes.  It was really good, but at this point I’m wondering if there is any food I don’t like.  What I loved though was this tin of assorted cookies on the table.  They were hard buttery little cookies of different shapes and sizes.  Some were with chocolate and some were without.  They were the kind I would expect to accompany an English tea time.  The tin didn’t last us very long.

After a while, a guy named Jeremy came into the green room.  We had met him in Eppstein.  He was from NC.  He is currently stationed at Rammstein and had come to see us play again.  This time he brought a three liter bottle of Crown Royal.  It was really nice of him.  After having some drinks we went out and played.  There was a good little crowd especially for a Monday!    Afterwards I found this even more remarkable because the ticket price for the show was fifteen euros, which is about twenty American dollars.  Again it was lots of bearded old men wearing Neil Young shirts and stuff like that which is totally cool with us.  I am not complaining, I am simply stating what the crowd demographic was. It is still mind boggling that anyone over here gives two shits about us. The crowd is super attentive during each song and very enthusiastic in between them.  We played really well and afterwards we sold and signed a whole lot of merch.  One guy even knew all of our individual names and was hunting us down one by one for our autographs.  “Where is Kevin? I need Kevin to sign,” he would say in a thick German accent.

Afterwards, a group of us including Jeremy and a friend of Marco’s named Stephanie came back to the green room with us to have some more drinks and hang out while the club owner closed up shop.  Stephanie brought Marco a bag of Pretzels, which I of course pillaged.  My Dad would be pleased to know that the pretzels in Atlantic City are better.  When the owner was done we took pictures with our new friends and said goodbye.  I think a few of the guys stayed up pretty late drinking and talking with our hosts when we got back, but I went to bed. I wanted to run in the morning.

I woke up early after sleeping like a rock.  We have been very fortunate so far.  I don’t think anywhere we have slept has had air conditioning, but the weather has been so nice that we haven’t needed it.  I am positive that I just jinxed myself and the weather will be sweltering in Spain now that I said anything.  I walked down to the park and ran sprints and did pushups. Afterwards I ate breakfast and didn’t over eat.  We got in the car and drove back to Frankfurt to pick up some cds that got held up in customs, but when we arrived they couldn’t locate our package so we pretty much wasted a couple of hours and left empty handed.

We arrived in Ensisheim about an hour late and no one at the club speaks very much English which is already very different than our experience in Germany where everyone seemed to speak a fair amount of English.  The stage at the club was something straight out of a Poison or Ratt video from the eighties.  It was a series of platforms or tiers at various heights.  Kevin and I shared a riser that was probably six feet off the ground and I had about a foot and a half of room between getting hit with a cymbal and falling off the edge of the stage.  In spite of its dumbass layout it sounded pretty good. 

One thing I won’t get used to is the fact that everywhere in Europe feeds you, and I mean they feed you well.  It’s not like they just send out for pizza.  They pull out all the stops.  Not only does everyone want to feed you, but they want to sit down and eat with you even if we can barely communicate with each other.  They sit down with strangers and make us feel like we are family that has been coming over every Sunday for as long as anyone can remember.  They are so warm and welcoming in this regard.   This little French Grandmother made a giant pot of pasta with a sort of chicken stew to put on top of it, and then an apple torte for dessert. Her grandson was very happy to make sure everyone had enough food and wine saying only that “this food is good as fuck.” 

As great as I think this is I really hate playing on a full stomach, but I don’t have a choice here.  They feed you usually an hour before your show so I really just want to play laying down every night.  Tonight was no different.  We played well and sounded good even thought the crowd was the smallest yet.  There were some big French biker looking guys up front who were really attentive and would yell “good job” after every fast song, but would step outside to smoke during every slow song which made us all laugh.  They might have heckled us, but I seriously think they only knew how to say “good job.”  Our European booking agent was at tonight’s show too which was cool. She was very nice and seemed to really enjoy it. 

The show is long since over and now I’m finishing this blog entry at the hotel which does not offer free wifi much to my dissatisfaction.  I guess I’ll post this tomorrow at some point.  It’s our day off and we have a very long drive.  I think we are going to drive for eight hours, stay the night in Bordeaux, and then finish the drive the following day.  Maybe I’ll get to try some good wine while I’m there.

-May 23^rd, (2:06a.m.) Ensisheim, France