Cheese is all you need.


I love being in Europe. Love It. We drove from Suffolk (north east of London – no one knows where it is) from the nice but dull Latitude Festival to Köln, where the hotel had gummi bears on reception and a line of nice old German people checking in before us. A long line. I gasped in quiet desparation and then, moments later when the über efficient reception staff had processed the line, I gasped in quiet admiration. Gots to love Germany.

Sleeping on a bus isn’t proper sleep so the first thing I did was pass out on my fluffy and immobile bed. I woke up with a strange German man in my room delivering complimentary fruit. I was so dazed I thought I was in my apartment and I kept asking him how he’d got in until he left --after he’d delivered the fruit of course. He was German after all.

That night we went to The Rhine to watch the fireworks. Köln have a display on the river for a reason no one understands every year. God bless them for it, they were amazing. Thirty minutes of perfectly synchronized fireworks. Only in Germany (or Switzerland, or Japan…) could the fireworks not miss a beat for a 30 minute pop/classical medley.



Germany was so hot. Almost unbearably so and even with the (wimpy) AC on our bus after 10AM we are all melting – no surprise, it’s like a big metal oven sitting in the sun, is our bus. We all of us woke dehydrated and with our tongues three sizes too big. And it smells great in there of course. Nine men, in a big, hot metal box baked by the sun. Oh yeah. Best thing is, when I wake everyone up and the band all get up at the same time. It’s like Dawn of the Dead. This morning when I did it me and Brian (our backline tech’) watched them getting out of bed and sang Thriller for a soundtrack. It looks uncannily like the video only they aren’t all in sync as they grope for their socks, toothpaste and trousers.





In Heidelberg, the venue was next to the river Neckar. Vineyards clung to the hills either side of the vally, smoke drifted from small farm fires through the trees, and the local Heidelberg roller-skating club circled the town. It was a bit like a monster movie town with a castle on the hill above the houses – obviously where the evil Baron Heidelberg was conducting strange and Godless experiments on innocent farm lads and lasses from the neighboring countryside. There was a lot of scaffolding up around it. I think this week Evil Baron Heidelberg was having new windows fitted.





Brian noticed an interesting cultural moment in Subway (serves him right for going to Subway in Germany, I say...) in Heidelberg where an American family were ordering their food. They used words like “Give me, I want” etc. In Europe this is universally considered bad form and quite rude as it’s too direct and too much of a command. In Europe people use requests rather than commands. I’m not critical of this myself as I know how it works in America and I know it means something different, but it does jar when heard overseas. I was faintly amused as I’d wager that, if told, the Americans would take offense to be told they were giving offense…or am I being uncharitable?

In Vienna it was so hot it was unbelievable. Hotter than it was in Vietnam. There was a general residual odor of unwashed bods too, which was special. A salty, spicy smell. No Viennese Fancies there. No Teen Spirit either.

The venue in Munich was in the middle of the city centre. God knows how our driver got the bus and the trailer down there. I couldn’t look, even though I was supposed to be navigating. Just to make it interesting as I argued with some nice Bavarian men who’d parked in our reserved parking (to be fair, they read the reserved sign and once they realized there was an official sign in true Bavarian style they pissed off. Good Bavarians obey all posted signs, it seems) a Copper turned up and squirted his sirens behind us to get us to move. I went over and gesticulated in the manner of inarticulate bus-parkers the world over and he took one look at me stood standing there in my tracksuit bottoms, calf-fur clogs and me Ooga Booga tee-shirt, rolled his eyes and reversed away to from whence he came. Ooga booga shirts scare German rozzers. That is, quite literally, sticking it to the man.

We had a day off in Dijon, France. We had to stop to give the driver a chance to sleep. It’s a beautiful town even though I was as sick as a dog and could barely make the effort to get off the bus. The people were friendly and indulgent of the three ill-advised words of French I know and the town was ornate and bite-sized enough to enjoy and see in one day. Sure enough, both plates in my evening meal came with mustard style creams and sauces. Delish.

I thought, even with the promise of delicious mustardy type sauces on everything, that Dijon might be a bit of a dull place to live, flirty waitresses and impish-eyed bakery sales women notwithstanding. And at night ye-olde town centre was overrun with bored kids on skateboards like provincial towns everywhere. For a moment I felt a bit sorry for them until I remembered that Paris was only 2 hours away and the south of France only 3 hours away. Spanwny gets. They deserve to be bored. No existential angst there, not when you can get on a train to the Riviera.



The show in Angouleme (above) was another winner – amazing catering – lamb stew, spectacular cheeses that defied naming but were all stronger and more pungent than the last, bread you’d want to be buried in and a view of the medieval town from the festival site that really set a certain tone. The French have a lot to be arrogant about and to be honest, outside of Paris, I’ve encountered nothing but friendliness and hospitality in France. (The shame of an Englishman admitting this). I miss the European cultures living in America. New York has its own thing, and so does SoCal too, but the middle of America feels the same to me for 2500 miles – I’m sure there are differences, its just by using the same money, language, and chain retail outlets, the subtleties of difference go over my head. We’re off to Spain now – I just woke up and saw Barcelona out of my bunk window and again we are somewhere different for another day. A whole new plate of cheese to look forward to.