Köln:


We have a day off on the outskirts of town where I sleep all afternoon and into the evening. I feel stupid for wasting a day off like this but what are you going to do. There was a good sauna in the hotel that I visited to compensate... It’s our last day and show in Germany and I’m sad to be leaving. It’s a boss country. This is not a popular view. Kind of English without all the English (and English is a dialect of German…linguistically speaking. But of course you knew that already…). However, the venue in Köln was one of the worst on the tour. For some reason, certain clubs achieve the basest of standards in terms of equipment and décor and facilities and stop there. I can only guess it’s because the owners don’t care and in some way view a grotty, run-down club as having some kind of rock and roll bona fides or something. This place looked like interrogations took place there.



And upstairs, in the production/office dressing rooms, it looked like the kind of place that interrogees were forced to sleep – as Brian and Steve are demonstrating after dinner.



The hotel where our day rooms were (for showers) had a vending machine in the lobby that dispensed miniatures of Whiskey, Vodka and this tour’s favourite, Jaegermeister. Supply always meets demand so in a suburb of Köln in a deserted two-star hotel people evidently like to get mullered on Jaeger…


Paris:

Another overnight drive and we get to Paris in good time and prepare ourselves to leap off a moving bus with all our luggage because the traffic is so bad and we can’t stop on the Blvd de Clichy for longer than the turn of a light. Like L.A., Paris is one of those Cities I always look forward to getting to, but when I do I invariably get bitchslapped as soon as I step off the bus.


… in the hotel I ask for the keys and the woman behind reception gives me an attitude. She complains that there are three rooms but nine people; these rooms are for one person each. I say c’mon, stop pissing about, we're only here for showers, here are the reservation numbers, give me the keys and we'll be gone as soon as we came. She boots-off and refuses to give me even one key even if I relent and promise that only one person is going into the room. She speaks no English at all and then only speaks French with a sneer. I give up on diplomacy and while Marc, our French speaking guitarists remonstrates with her in French, she complains that the hotel is only used to professional clients (it’s a toilet on the Blvd de Clichy – hard to appreciate the joke without seeing the crap hotel. There were no shower curtains in the bathrooms, for example..) I call the label who arranged the rooms to sort it out. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to start a day pissy to get even the basics taken care of. It's a long time since I've tried to check in to a hotel on the Blvd De Clichy. Last time I remember I ended up jumping over the counter and giving out the keys myself...

The quality hotel frontage....



Which is across the street from this...



Which looks old and tired in the grey daylight, doesn't it? Whatever, Montmartre has an enduring charm.

Sure enough in time it’s all sorted out. There’s a lot of Gallic shoulder shrugging and indignant conversations but finally we all get to shower ahead of a day spent doing press, radio and TV. Marc is by now enjoying himself with the woman behind the counter who is warming to us now she realizes that we’re not trying to rip her off. She even tells him that had we not been musicians (we’ve got three guitars with us for the day’s promo) she’d have thrown us out on the street, as though this is a consolation. While ten minutes previously she couldn’t understand my request for “An Extra towel, s’il vous plait.” She now regales me, in perfect English, with the difference between Berbers (what she is) and Arabs and how the Moors (her ancestors) colonized southern Europe. I guess she’s studied the chapter on “Introducing Oneself” in English but not got to the chapter about staying at a hotel. Or the one about not being a miserable, incompetent, acidic sow.

Paris is an amazing city. Despite the traditional rivalry between the French and the English I can’t help but respect their bolshie no-shit attitude (however frequently misplaced) and the fact that the French built Paris (and to be fair Rennes, where we also visited for a weird festival, was similarly beautiful). Even after all these years visiting it’s still breathtaking. While Albert and Matt did press I got to see some favourite sights – even if a little briefly.

Paris form Sacre Couer...



One of the funicular cars at Sacre Couer had crashed in the Place Suzanne Valadon. A ring of Gendarmes hung around while I and all the other tourists took photos. It didn’t look like anyone had been hurt.



I even had time to have a Chinese Movie buying accident in FNAC and Virgin and to wander around the Marais – something I haven’t done in over 10 years. There's a boss tea shop in the Marais called Mariage Frere's that's been around since 1854. On a recommendation I went for tea and cake - both were excellent. The kind of place where the service justifies the prices. It was packed...and one of the most polite places in Paris, for sure.



And the Champs Elysee looked amazing (well, maybe it loses something in translation here but...).



And so did Notre Dame...the great thing about Central Paris is that you can get around it so easily.




Even the chore of working in Paris (Like New York, London, L.A. blah, blah...) was easily overlooked because of the beauty of the place and the show was one of the best of the tour despite having to load-in up a hill and through construction. The night of the show I dreamt I was going out with Bjork. It was great, she was all into me. Then when I woke up and I realized that I wasn’t going out with Bjork I felt like I’d been dumped. By Bjork. I left the band at the label to do their last day’s promo at their label and wandered around the Marais and Pont Neuf alone and in the rain singing Paris Match by the Style Council to myself. I didn’t even have an I-pod to mope around with. Woe is moi.

This is the view from/of Pont Neuf where lovers go to hang out. As I'd been chucked by Bjork it seemed fitting that I sulk here by myself. Note the young lovers snogging next to the Seine. I'm in the City of Love and everyone is at it but me. I consoled myself by thinking they were about to throw themselves into the water.





The drive to Milan from Paris is about 1000KM. I slept for most of it. We were in Milan for about 12 hours. I like Italy for my vacations and nothing else. Oh, and the guy on reception was a dick here too--I’m going to start photographing them from now on….. I couldn’t get on the bus fast enough at the end of the night – except that our trailer with all the gear in wouldn’t hitch correctly so we spent 20 minutes trying to nudge a 1-ton trailer 1/8” to get the pin in it. Class. One hasn’t lived until one’s been covered in crap from a trailer that’s been dragged around the autobahns and autoroutes of Europe. Yum. I don't know what it was that made being in Milan so anticlimatic - Italy and the Italians are all so boss. Maybe it's just tour fatigue?

Outside of Barcelona I woke up on the bus and Brian, our lucozade swigging, cadbury’s button chomping, 20 benson smoking guitar tech’ was watching Supersize Me. I breakfasted on strawberry jam filled smiley face biscuits and cadbury’s buttons and joined him in watching the movie. By the end I was feeling suitably nauseous and it occurred to me that touring is very much like Supersize Me. We’ve eaten crap for nearly 30 days – everyone’s tired and lacklustre and there's a vague malaise floating around but spectrally, just out of the corners of our eyes. Intellectually I know we’re all hanging out with friends and getting paid for it and doing what we love but I am convinced the fatigue is partly because our diet is so bad. I feel like crap around the clock and am hoping for a bodyectomy when I get home.


In Madrid the band left the stage at 11:55 PM. By 7:45AM we were back at Barcelona airport for the flight back to New York unwashed, bleary-eyed and exhausted. 15 hours later, including many I missed thanks to vicodin and tylenol PM, I was home.

Back a day and I can’t quite remember how only 36 hours ago I was baked and falling asleep in my bunk, watching the Spanish service stations pass outside my window. It’s strange to come to the end of a tour and to feel the forward motion desist. Even while sleeping we’ve been traveling at 60 mph all week. Coming home to a quiet apartment feels a little like coming down from a sugar high. Wandering around the city it takes a while to feel grounded. When I got back I had an urge (I always do) to get a change of clothes and go back to the airport to get on another plane to somewhere. I think it's a sickness.
It took me 36 hours to book my next flight.