SUMMER EUROPE TOUR 2005 PART THREE

DAY FIVE



So we left off falling asleep on the side of the highway somewhere in Germany. We'd swerved our show in Den Haag that day and decided to just take our time heading south. Today's show was in Mulheim in Germany, which is actually pretty close to Den Haag and would have made a lot of sense if we'd ever gotten to Den Haag.



We got to the town early and chilled out in a city for the first time in forever. We went and got ice cream and sat around in a public square. No doubt looking like homeless people and smelling like a German highway, we somehow picked up a waitress and convinced her to come see our show that night. She wasn't a punk and had no real reason to be remotely interested in us, but she was friendly and decided to come with anyhow.





This is one of the only really great shows I remember from this tour. Every show you play in Germany is in a building that used to be something else. A few years ago we played in the largest building I've ever been inside that wasn't a sports stadium, and it was a munitions factory during the war. The last show of this tour was in an SS barracks (more on that later). Germany is full of these post-war abandoned buildings that are now squats, I guess because of such intense post-war guilt, people were allowed to just claim these buildings for whatever purpose they wanted. Turns out what most Germans want to do with their abandoned buildings is put on punk shows. So this show was at an abandoned horse stables, so was long, thing, smelled like hay and had a nice looking bar in the back. We played with Short Fuse, who were amazing and we all loved them. There was an Observers (a punk band from Portland that we all loved) show across town tonight so we were worried about how many people would come see us, but the show was packed and we had a great time. The Observers even came to watch.



After the show I drank banana juice for the first time (German people love nectar) and the gay bartender tried to pick me up by talking about Feist, the only other Canadian he knew.



DAY SIX

We drive right back North, the direction we'd just come from, the play in Hamburg, home of the Beatles. Tonights show was with The Oath, so we were pretty much in mid 00s punk/thrash heaven at this point. The last time I was in Europe I played the biggest squat I'd ever seen in my life. They showed us 3 floors of grand ballrooms, telling us what great bands had played the rooms over the years. Then our show was in a sub-basement hall way with a dirt floor.

Tonight we were playing at Hafenklang, another squat (it used to be a Nazi-run punk venue during the war), a nice place on the water that we've played at 3 or 4 times now. We play first and are pissed because we are super arrogant already and don't like playing with other bands from Canada. The Oath comes on and Sandy has a great time moshing with a full bottle of wine in her hands, wearing her flowing Gypsy Passport (what we called this steam-looking dress she always wore).



After the show we took a visit to the Reeperbahn, which is Hamburg's red light district. Even though we'd already been to Amsterdam a bunch of times at this point, and are mostly all total squares we were all excited to hang out here. We went to some punk bar to hang out with that guy King Khan, and then inexplicably Jonah took our 16 year old driver to a prostitute. I can still remember a drunk Jonah handing him a 50 euro bill and pushing him into a stall. We were unsure if Martin had had sex at this point and were all very curious as to what was going on inside. We didn't get any details really, but Martin was extrememly agitated when he came back outside.

That night I had the worst sleep of my life. It was raining but I'd somehow become so paranoid that I thought the raindrops were cockroaches, and every few minutes I would lunge awake to swipe away a phantom cockroach. At the same time, I was in charge of holding the money pouch that night, which I was literally clutching while I tried in vain to get to sleep. The whole night I just wished I was back sleeping on the side of the highway.

DAY SEVEN

I just recently learned that Bielefeld is "the countryside" in Germany, and is meant to be beautiful. What we did notice about it then, was that it was basically right next to Mulheim, where we'd just been 2 days ago, before we drove to Hamburg and back. Also that Beilefeld is basically in the middle of nowhere, but has a good punk scene because of its huge squat. It's like 7 stories high, which is perfect because after you are done playing your show and drunk, you get to walk up 7 flights of stairs to get to your bunkbed. Josh got so excited that night that he literally wet his bed (I am not kidding - none of us knew that night, but he told us 4 or 5 years later). Mark was feeling particularly adventurous so he bought a tetra pack of like the Armenian national drink or something, which I'm pretty sure was horse milk, and I also think I remember it having hair in it? Anyhow he took one smell/sip and almost died on the street. A bunch of German/Armenian kids formed a circle pointing and laughing at him.

The show was whatever and who cares. Afterwards there was some punk DJ party thing and the most attractive woman that's ever attended a FU show hung out and Beav tried to pick her up. At the end of the night they played "Police" and we all cried, and then walked up 7 flights of stairs to our beds and then all peed in them.