Week 3: Germany Continues

9/10/13 – Keller, Stuttgart, GER / Spice Girls Karaoke

Wake up. Burger King WiFi. Rolls, cheese, hot sauce. Depart. Arrive in Stuttgart. Good Riddance show. We play first. No dancing. No sweating. Everyone pressed against bars/walls to be as far away as possible from us. Get off. Talk to friend Annie on the interwebs for a while. She's never lived in one place for more than a year. Year is almost up. Not sure if she wants to move but as with every new city she could be happier. To stick it out or to start over. Something about opening a black room in Mexico. Something about joining a farm in Oregon. Or going anywhere else in the world. How do you stay in one place when there's still so many things left. I sigh.

Good Riddance closes show. Hangs. Karaoke next door. Guy offers to buy us entire handle of Jack if we sing Spice Girls. We kill Spice Girls. We kill handle of Jack. Another bar. I talk to some lady who left her friends for over an hour about skiing or something. Depart to hostel. Drink beers we definitely didn't need because they were only a Euro. Pass out.

9/11/13 – Schaubude, Kiel, GER / Snoop Lion

Wake up. Three hours sleep. Leave super early for ten hour drive. Thinking about conversation with Annie. Driving. Drinking. Playing. Drinking. Sleeping a minute. Driving. Can't keep a job. Can't keep a girlfriend. Dreams of friends, small house, porch, projects, garden, fire pit, a hammock. I'm balding. 

Arrive in Kiel. Schaubude's a quaint bar. One million delicious sandwich halves. Beers. We play. Dancing. Sweat. Mid street shenanigans with Benny our booking guy, myself, and trying to shove another into cars. Head to promoters house who we are staying with. He's pissed because we were supposed to leave hours ago. Get to apartment. Get really high, which I don't do. Listen to Snoop Lion (Snoop Dogs new name after he found Jah and a mango or something. Great stuff). Pass out. 

9/12/13 – Casiopeia, Berlin, GER

Wake up. Three and a half hours sleep. Still high. Lock bag inside apartment. Promoter's at work. Spend twenty minutes with credit card, clothes hanger, riding crop trying to break in. Leave to van. Call promoter. Turns out he's home (somehow he didn't hear the twenty minutes of pounding and yelling of the word “fuck!” - he hates us). Depart. Go to pick up our Chicago friend Lauren who's going to do merch for us for a while. Get to Berlin airport. Turns out she's not coming until tomorrow. Leave Berlin airport. Arrive Berlin.

Casiopeia. East German abandoned warehouse complex. Multiple venues, cafes, restaurant, outdoor/indoor skate park, climbing wall (cool!). Upstairs green room with too many shots. Illicit substance. We play. Dancing. Sweat. Hilarious strobe lights/fog machine. Snoop Lion outro. Pack into little cab. Load stuff into Steffi's. Some punk bar. Girl named Mari everyone is trying to keep upright. Something about eating babies. Something about Sarte. Not keeping her shoes on. Very intense fooze ball game. Drunk drama. Side walk bro talks. Some people leave to find clubs (turns out no one would let them in). I pass out.

9/13/13 – Ramones Museum, Berlin, GER / More Karaoke

Wake up. Urge to dance and keep drinking. I play shitty rap out of my phone, finish half drank beers, and dance around the house. Turns out the speed is still working. A few of us find half bottle of Vodka at noon. Finish vodka by noon-thirty. More dancing. Go out to buy some beers. More dancing. Four PM comes. Lauren Chicago friend arrives. We go to old airport that is now park. Attempt to play mini art golf but all we are capable of is laying in the middle of the course drinking beers from the bar. The idea of Falafel arrives. Nothing can stop us. Walk/take train across town to the best falafel joint in the world called Alli Baba. Giant plate of falafel with every color of vegetable imaginable. Food massacre. Finally sober. Head to Ramones Museum for acoustic show. Open bar. Totally exhausted. Tim plays. Drunken sing alongs. Show ends. Take train to Karaoke bar we have password to so we don't have to pay. Tim sings total eclipse of the heart. I take my shirt off for a shot. Homeless guy on a bike mini speaker dance party outside club. Fastest taxi ever. Pass out.

9/14/13 – AJZ “Back to the Roots Festival,” Leisnig, GER / It works!

Wake up. Drive toward Leisnig. Bring Steffi to drop off in Leipzig. Wrong way. Leave Steffi to hitchhike (she gets picked up by Pastor because he said she looks “desperate”). Arrive at festival. Place is called AJZ. A community center with indoor/outdoor stage, half pipe, bars, kitchen, and some sort of pool run by anarchists (cool!). City pays for most of it but doesn't know what actually happens. Hardcore bands. We totally don't fit in. Drink tent. Mexicana shots. Food tent. Delicious vegan Goulash. Kill bottle of Fefe (think mouth wash) and something cherry. Sound check. Nothings really working. We play. Monitors go off after first song. Dancing. Sweat. Crowd surfing. Someone jumps off PA on stage. Load out. Dance party. Weird 90's songs redone to be German (fun fact: a lot of western music couldn't be played in East Germany so they would redo the songs with different lyrics). 5 am picnic table talking. Climb into loft bunk thing nine feet tall and almost die. Pass out.

9/15/13 - Black Label Pub, Leipzig, GER

Wake up. Almost die again climbing out of bunk. Stumble around. Tons of people help cleaning. Find breakfast. Spreads, cheeses, breads, coffee. Talk to promoter people for a while. Everyone is a volunteer. No one paid. Place has existed for eleven years. Concert was a benefit for a guy who killed himself from the stress of organizing the same festival in year past. Turns out guy is promoter girls sister. I sigh. Depart. 

Arrive in Leipzig. Rad promoter's house. Internet and showers. Gigantic monument dedicated to the defeat of Napoleon. Black Label Pub. Old warm bar. Dim wooden stage. In neighborhood totally covered in graffiti. Atacolypse outside. Best burritos in Germany made by sweet Texan lady. All vegan. Eat too much. Beers and really nice scotch. Cool park full of punks with giant slides and trampoline spider web thing. Play lazy show. Eighty people packed in tiny room. Sweat. Run into friend from last year Nadine. Central heating, politics, and helicopter cats. A relatively sober walk. Pass out.

9/16/13 - Emil, Zittau, GER

Wake up. Spreads, cheeses, breads, coffee. Walk to protest. Extremist right wing German pride group protesting in front of squat. So many armored cops couldn't even see extremist group. Opposition just sort of standing there. Overall: two and a half stars. Depart. Drive down tiny roads through staggered colorful neighborhoods. Arrive in very East German town of Zittau (we were told we could walk to Poland). Acoustic show at skate shop. Also sells spray paint and bongs. Walk down narrow winding streets. Some houses in rubble.  Black plague plaque still hung.

Emil is a three story venue with a kitchen and bunks. Delicious stuffed white pepper stew meal made by four star chef. Nap. Wake up moments before show. Slam a few shots of hairspray vodka. Play show. Dancing. Sweat. Everyone else in band but me is totally wasted. Shit talk that didn't translate. Get off stage. More hairspray vodka. Ping-pong person talk. Henny's (German beer-mosas). Late conversation about I don't remember. Fancy step night walk down river. Pass out.

Week 2: Berlin / The Tour Begins

9/2/13, 9/3/13, 9/4/13 – Berlin

Night train. Very loud Vietnamese people. Legs weaved and staggered to attempt comfort. No avail. Few hours of sleep. Sun spills on fast winding river. Hollowed out bodies of pre-1940's industry. Plush green rolling hills. Wake up to very loud Vietnamese people. They leave. I pass out on empty seats. Miss station. Wake up at Berlin main station. Get on different train. Get off at stop I think is mine. Walk around trying to match street names I have on scribbled napkin map. Try to find wireless. No avail. Talk to guy. Stop isn't mine. Back on train. Get off. Walk in direction. Finally find wireless. Turns out I was going to wrong place all along. Get a hold of friend Steffi. She says something along the lines of “you're an idiot - wait there.” Go to her place 6 hours later than I should have. Finally rest. Shower. Food. Rest. Nothing. Nothing. Acoustic Astpai show at Ramones Museam. Drunken deep fried veggie smattering for like 1 Euro. Nothing. Some Turkish market. Somewhere else. Delicious vodka club soda drinks. Nothing. Roof. Skype calls. Nothing. Sleep. Nothing. More food. Check my Facebook like 12 times. Make blog. Nothing. Bars. Good Riddance show. Bars. Food. Sleep. Really cool gigantic park that is an old airport with community gardens, art mini golf, people who still roller blade, and the coolest remote control helicopters ever doing flips (cool!). Sunset. Food. Doing basically nothing for three days feels so good. Sleep.

9/5/13 – Ex-wives/ Villa Nachttanz, Heidleburg, GER

Depart Berlin. Meet up with ride share (Germany has a ride share system with many rides and specific times/prices going all over the continent – cool!). Martin. Works figuring statistics for distributing unemployment money. Just quit job because he hates it. Also quit to save marriage. But just recently wife left him. Driving to Heidleburg to drink with good friend and figure it all out. Super bummed. Story - “Growing up I lived with father in small East German town. I lost long term girlfriend. Father asks what I need. I say I want is a cold Coke in a glass bottle. Father comes back a half hour later with a cold Coke in a glass bottle (communism isn't a huge fan of Coke). He tells me “nothing is permanent – live for the small things.” I sigh. I tell him to come to show to figure it all out. He listens to good music though, so no. Drops me off at venue.

Villa Nachttanz. Three story building with show space in basement, themed art rooms for dance parties, outdoor stage, party tower, bunk trailer for bands, giant hammock, fire pit (cool!). Free - Appetizers. Drinks. Dinner. Drinks. More drinks. We play. Sweat. Dancing. So much sweat. So much dancing. Martin shows up and dances harder than literally anyone. Someone goes face first into Jared's bass. Show lets out. Drenched bodies hit cool air. I walk back and forth between the bar and the fire. Tired. Drunk. I pass out in trailer.

9/6/13 –  Sabot, Wiesbaden, GER/Melanie 

Wake up. Stumble to freezing cold shower made out of plumbing parts in a utility closet. I shoot bees with really huge squirt gun. Lay on sunny hammock for a while. Hangs. Depart to Wiesbaden. Arrive at Sabot. Skinny bar with no room for drums. Buy some beers and adult size juice boxes to mix. Hangs. Open bar with good vodka and torso length straws. Homemade pasta pretzel dinner. We play. Sweat. Dancing. More drinking. Good buddy hangs. We kill bottle of delicious weird mint Baileys like liquor. My friend Melanie. She tells me I'm a loud American dumps a bottle of sparkling water over my head and slaps me. We joke about moving a car. Melanie convinces as to move the car. Four of us on the count of three only crunch the bumper. Some thirteen year old gangster kid tries to convince me it's a not a “drag” of a cigarette but a “hip” in English. I ask him if he means “hit.” He makes some snarky “no” sound. Fucking idiot. 

9/7/13 – Practice Space, Hannover, GER/Dance parties

Wake up. Lionel Richie shower dancing. Everyone should listen to the new Kanye West “Yeezus” album. Donut coffee dipping and mozzarella sandwiches. Depart to Hannover. Awesome complex called Glocksee with skate ramp, squash court, multiple show spaces, metal sculptures, recording studio, apartments, theater (cool!). Drink with friends on picnic table. Pass out in van. Get woken up minutes before we're supposed to be on. We play. Tiny cement wheat pasted basement room. Sweat. Dancing. So much sweat. Unsuccessful crowed surfing. Someone bowled through the mic stands. Show lets out. Bummed my friend Anna of Russia didn't show (it turns out I gave her the wrong date and missed her by a handful of hours and kilometers. I sigh). Dance party in other room of the complex. We can't sneak in. Walk to weird German festival aftermath. Beer hall style bar full of people with suspenders, funny hats. Headset DJ playing traditional German songs. Walk to another bar. Ten very old haggard locals. Leave quickly. Go to another dance party. I dance with some girl for a minute before a fumbled beer hand off between Dave (our driver) and explodes. Leave. Everyone departs to sleep. Dave and I depart to sleep in van. Dance party at venue still going on. Get in. Too tired. Pass out in van. 

9/8/13 – BLA, Bonn, GER/Judith & the Lime Vodka Adventure 2.0

Wake up in van. Decide it's a good idea to walk barefoot in party aftermath to take pictures. Glass foot. Pick up everyone else at apartment. Two Euro sandwiches. Depart to Bonn. Arrive at BLA. Nice clean bar. Immediately start hearing stories about the last time Dave was at bar he proposed to the bartender and peed on someones face in his van. Dave clarifies it wasn't his face and proposes to the bartender again. Hangs. Drinks. Free veggie burger fry dinner from place next door. We play. No one really does anything. We talk shit to audience. Some people get mad. Hang out after. Invited to stay at some guys house watch sports and go to an amusement park. Instead we are told there's another dance party by some kids in a German electro punk band. We meet the girls house we originally planned to stay at. Head to dance party. Bottle of lime vodka appears. Tastes like a delicious Capri-sun. Empty bottle rolls down street. Get to dance party. It's a shitty bar playing Depeche Mode where a man with one ear is yelling at people outside to be quiet (ironic). We hang for a bit. Head back to Judith's place. Pick up empty vodka bottle. Replace with rack of beer. Binders of acoustic songs by Judith. Drum set made of pots and pans play with wooden spoons. A forbidden room. Pass out.

9/9/13 – Exhaus, Trier, GER/Bottle Cap Betting

Wake up. Awesome breakfast of cheeses, spreads, and dad's homemade jelly. Judith is great. Depart to Trier. Arrive at Exhaus. Graffitied old school house that is also an after school and kindergarten funded by the government and dance parties. Horizontally managed, and works (cool!). Big delicious fake meat chili sort of meal. Beers. Another bottle of vodka. Sting, Queen, and Kendrick Lamar. Finish bottle of Vodka. Turns out we missed the opening band. We play. Dancing. Sweat. Singing along. Finish. Go straight to bar. Invent game of throwing bottle caps into various sized containers behind the bar betting shots. Very cute bartender is very annoyed. Way too many shots. End up on back trying to load out. Pass out. 

One Week in the Balkans

8/23/13 – Arrival in Istanbul/The Ausies

                Plane lands 5pm. Cymbals lost for 20 minutes. Someone moved them off belt. Find bus. Sit next to Ausie girl. Tons of manikins in blocks of retail windows. Meet her sister and a lost Italian in Taksim. Walk to café with jazz show that sister is playing. Check in at Neverland hostel quick. Show starts. Sister plays acoustic Bright Eyes cover with bluesy deep voice. Turks shred guitar and violin. Bowl of booze fruit punch 5 Lira. Narrow cobblestone street packed with people. Almost get foot run over several times. Cops come. Show’s over. We buy beer and head to Ausie’s apartment. Get onto roof. Overlook entire night skyline of city, layers of splintered roofs, Bosphorus river, Rianna remixes climbing buildings. Drink 'til 5am. I stumble home with Italian guy.

8/24/13 – Tourist stuff/Club Kassette/the ”House Party”

                Wake up in some hours at hostel. Stiff from no sleep and the drinking. Sit next to three French girls. I don’t say anything until I finish coffee. I say “I couldn't say anything until I finished my coffee.” We talk about plans. They invite me to Grand Bazaar. I’d rather walk on own. I depart to Golden Horn (tourist part). Review: Blue Mosque – really big, smells like feet. Grand Bazaar – coolest mall I’ve ever been too. Hagia Sofia – great architecture if able to see behind lines of tourists with cameras overhead. Tried to walk all the way to Eyup for legit Muslim/Jew neighborhood. Passed out in park 1 kilometer away. Woke up an hour later very sticky. Took bus back to hostel. French girls have multiplied. I talk to one about Canada and electronic ice music festivals for a while. She tells me she knows how to get into the Catacombs of Paris. I'm going to Paris.

                Met Asli 1 in Taksim. Killer Kumpir for dinner under small roof (potato on steroids). Both of us talk too much. Walked with her friend to club Kassette. Local Turk bar, dancing in alley, projection on wall. Dance for a few hours. I’m invited to go back to girl’s place for party. Dudes getting weird and aggressive. Asli grabs my arm, refers to direction of dudes, and says something along the lines of “I’m so glad you’re not just trying to sleep with me" with her boob pressed against my arm. I sigh.

                Driving deep into Asian side for party. I’m drunk and yelling with half my body out the car window driving over the bridge to Asia. Get to party. Turns out it’s just a handful of really high passing out people. We wake them up with box wine and acoustic Radiohead covers. Hours go by. Asli passes out on couch. I can’t sleep. Dawn. I pass out.

8/25/13 – Big Breakfast Apartment/Eren

                Woke up at 2pm the next day. Huge breakfast. Play with bird. Leave at 5pm with a speedy mini bus to meet up with Couchsurfer Eren in Asian side. We go to a warm bar with lacquered wood and a hidden front door with no sign. Talk US and Turk politics. I agree to go with her to a protest for Morsi/democracy that I’m not really on the right side of. Take night boat across the Bosphorus. Beautiful view of night city against the shore. Eren called me cute. Get to protest. Lots of people praying. Afterwards some chanting. Overall – 3 stars. Eren goes back to families. I walk to my hostel.

8/26/13 – Kumpir in Ortokoy/Asli 2’s I-gah-han

                Woke up. Had to move hostels because overbooked. Found one up the street that sucked (shower didn’t work, outlets didn’t work, lots of old hippies, cock roaches, bed bugs or fleas or something). Walked to Ortakoy to get the best rated Kumpir in the city (I find out this is one of the two traditional things without meat – the other one being a waffle). Wind up on Bospohrus boat cruise watching fancy hotels pass by between couples sucking face. Walk to Taksim to meet Asli 2. She has two friends with her. I start talking to her friend Igahan (sp??). I yell at her slowly in English so she understands. Turns out she’s an English teacher. I apologize. She tells me she wanted to see how long I’d go with it. I immediately like her. We walk to night hill with lots of kids drinking booze over the Bosphorus. Sit together. Igahan speaks of her disdain for the US. I ask her if she’s ever shot a gun. She tells me she was in the riots and was tear gassed every day. I tell her shooting a gun is still pretty awesome. I explain the profound romance of her city, being so far from home, waving lights on black water. She tells me she never dates - only 3 people who were professors and politicians. She tells me she never hooks up – only with one guy. We walk to the bus stop. She leads me to a bench right on the water before the bus comes. I ask her if I can kiss her. She smooches me. I ask her if I can really kiss her. She takes a moment, says no, gets up, and leaves. I sigh.

8/27/13 – Computer repairs and train tickets

                I spend all day trying to fix my computer, figure out a way from Istanbul to Germany, and figure out how I’m going to kill myself after the night before with Igahan.

8/28/13 – Bus/No bus/The journey begins.

                I wake up late. Move real slow after failing to kill myself. Take tram to non-existent international bus station. Head to the Golden Horn to catch a train. Hang around train station for a while. Moments before I buy my ticket I hear a Dutch girl yelling at the ticket guy about it costing 10 Euro more than it should. She vents to me and says she’s going to hitchhike to Sofia, Bulgaria. I say okay. We meet up with some other train riders and invite them to hitchhike. They’re not as stoked as us. We all go out for some food and drinks. Johanna (pissed girl) and I catch a tram to a bus that’s supposed to go to a certain point of the highway that’s good for hitching. We get on wrong bus. Get lost in the outskirts Istanbul. Talk to lots of people who don't know English/pretend to know what they're talking about. Finally 1 tram, 2 busses, and a taxi later we are where we are supposed to be. We hop huge fences across a dark and terrifying 15 lane highway. We quickly catch a ride with a trucker who speaks no English. Johanna and I talk of social centers, radical politics, and all that shit. Turns out I’m jaded. We pass out smooshed in the truck cab bed.

8/29/13 – The Journey: day 2

                No real sleep. Crazy traffic before the border of Bulgaria. We walk through the half dozen different check points trying to see how many we can sneak by. A kilometer later we are at the end and get breakfast at a truck stop. I get some grits/soup that turns out to be entirely chicken broth. I eat only bread, not for ethics sake, but because it was gross. We hang until noon intermittently checking to see if Obama has bombed Syria yet. Find out our driver isn’t driving anymore (language barriers are hard). Try to flag down cars. Every single car had a full family in it (no exaggeration – real weird) so we go to the truck side. Get one ride that drops us off early. Piss off some ladies in a copy shop who want us out from in front of their store. It’s hot as fuck. We get a ride from an Iraqi who doesn’t speak English. We go all the way to Sofia and find out he is going all the way to Budapest. Johanna gets out and invited me to stay. I’m conflicted. I can't pass up such a free ride. I get in the car with the Iraqi. I sigh.

                The Iraqi knows a few more words in English. He explains he is Muslim, has a wife, but loves boning. He explains once he was at a disco and fucked seven girls in one night. He explained he was driving from the United Arab Emirates where his parents are living. He shows me a picture of him with the hawk they own and explained they have to feed their other pet 10 kilos of food a day, because it is a tiger. We enter Romania by night and he tells me “Here at night, Mafia stops you, takes money, if no money, they take you.” We run over an already dead dog and dismount the break line of the car along the dark empty potholed road. As we are putting it back I point at a car that turns around and say “Mafia!” I laugh. He doesn't.

                I start to feel high during the late night drive. I think about how cool it would be to get high while driving through a 2am Romania. I start sweating and having light hallucinations of faces in the trees. Putting together that this guy asked me earlier which water bottle was mine and him asking me next to a huge black river if I could swim I convince myself that this dude has drugged my water and is going to drown me. I decide it’s a bad idea to tell him that I feel really funny. He keeps asking me if I’m tired to which I say “nope no not at all!” as to convince him the drugs aren't working. I stop drinking my water and eventually feel better. We pass out at a gas station with a stray horse. I don’t die.

8/30/13 – Romania to Hungry/Budapest Sunset/Physics

                Four hour front seat sleep. Romania into Hungry. I’m invited to a wedding and offered a job in Kazakhstan. He drops me off a few kilometers outside the city at a gas station. Families picnicking in muddy grass and people selling knives out of the backs of their Beamers. I catch a ride into the city from a finicky university chef who is nervous about his English and makes schnapps. Every bump makes his brass cauldron in the backseat ping complimenting his darting scrambled speech. He drops me off on the first downtown bridge right in time for Budapest under sunset. I watch for about a half hour. Walk to a hostel and check in. Go out for a drink with an Italian PHD physics student at a bar made out of pallets. Drinks are dirt cheap. Small glasses with good whiskey for a dollar. One turns into several. We get invited to go to a club by a girl, we get uninvited to go to the club by her friend. Another girl who edits a newspaper is provoked by her friend to talk to us, eats our French Fries, and talks about Syria. We get lost on the way home.

8/31/13 – The Best Bike Ride Ever/The Worst Judit 

                  Woke up. Rented a bike. Road for the first time in almost two months. Smooth pedaling pushed silent rubber down Hungarian streets. Huge lap of the city. Hero Square. Chain Bridge. An amazing island park complete with drinking sunbathers, outdoor stage, elliptical machines, water park, and trampolines - the perfect use of no-shit-for-sale space. Dilapidated cobble stone streets where the only place to drive is the train tracks. Rushing down the huge hill of Gellert park for sunset.

                Invited to a Couchsurfing meet up by a person named Judit. Dozen people going to a “ruins” bar for drinks (a building in ruins that people started serving drinks out of). We all sat sharing where we were from. Where we’ve been. Travel stories. Arguments about beer. Terribly dancing to techno disco with Judit. Dark Hungarian eyes behind black bangs. Timid adorable smile. Conversations that we will never see all of the amazing places there is in the world. We spoke for a while. Nice smelling guy in a collared shirt talks to her. She leaves with him. I want to puke. I hang out on the side of the dance floor judging human behavior. I sigh and lay in a subway stairwell for a good minute on my back staring into the streetlight bleached sky.

9/1/13 – One last bike ride/departure.

                Check out. Drop my shit off in a train station locker. Ride around for a while still briefly wanting to puke imaging some bro pounding Judit. Zigzag through streets taking lots of pictures because I always forget to do that. Get food. Write this in a cheap train station café with an adorably funny bar tender that just tried to take my full tea off the table. Overnight to Germany in 45 minutes…