Caroline Yes

Monday, June 06, 2011

Montmartre

Paris, France
December 2010

Ave Maria

12/8/10

I don't remember anything about the drive to Paris except getting there. We check into our hostel which is in Montmartre, close to where Steve and I stayed when I was here with him 10 years ago. I ask Luke if he has been telling the hotel clerks that we are a Mormon Polygamist family and the band are his 4 wives when we check in every night and he says yes, of course. We have directions to Timmy's favorite restaurant in Paris and we hop on the train and sit down to an amazing Brazilian meal in a restaurant that feels like home. We amble back to Montmartre after dinner and Kate and Margot and I climb the winding streets up to the top of the hill and have wine at a little bistro where it is too late for the tourists.

Dance in the Light

Paris, France
December 2010

Hamburg

12/7/10

We are playing in the famed red light district in Hamburg and the city is misty and electric, with sex stores and peep shows lining the clean, brightly lit boulevard. It is like an outdoor sex-mall. There is a giant Christmas market in the middle of the street and Kate and Margot and I stroll around and drink grog out of a ceramic mug. It is sweet and there are bits of nuts and spices floating around on the top and we all crack up trying to take dainty sips. There is a beautiful tree and jolly middle-aged carolers and I look around for a gift for my parents but all of the booths are selling gimp masks and glass dildos and it is totally bizarre. We hear that there is a street that only men are allowed on but there is no time to find it and run a reconnaissance mission.

The club is labyrinthine and has a great light-up disco floor and a beautiful old theatre-style stage. The green room is basically another bar downstairs and there is a spread of candy bars and Fritz-cola and crackers. We are playing with a British band called the Tambourines and it is a great bill, with some label people there that Frankie is stoked about. The blonde bartender tells me that we are her favorite "woman-band" since Elastica and gives me my first ever shot of Jager as we are on the way out. It is delicious and I want to stay and drink more. We grab a bottle of Wodka out of the green room for the ride and have a great time surfing the radio stations in the van on the way out of town. We decide to cancel the show in Gent the next night so that Luke can drop us off in Paris and head back down south to pick up the Sprinter. We figure we'll find an Etap along the way but everything is full and we end up driving until 4am and spending way too much money on a fancy hotel in the middle of the German countryside with mints under the down pillows and tiny duvets.

Berlin

12/6/10

We get to Berlin after a grueling day inching through the blizzard in the van and as soon as we check into the hostel Kate and Margot and I are out for a walk in the snow. Arriving in a big city always feels like coming home to me, and I am SO EXCITED about seeing Carrick and spending a night away from the endless routine of hotels and the van. There are a lot of teenage girls at the show and Carrick and Rocco say it is the first non-electronic music performance they've seen since they arrived in Berlin two years ago. After we play Margot and I go out with the boys to a bar that looks like a grotto and I get drunk on red wine and tear my weave out. We sleep at Carrick and Rocco's awesome apartment that feels like home and cuddle with the cat I remember from Chicago and stay up all night talking. Margot goes out in the morning to explore and I drink coffee and snuggle with the boys and the cat. I am in a great mood leaving Berlin and we talk about movies and zombies on the way out of town, heading for Hamburg.

Black Forest Rising

12/5/10

We play in Koln at an old bar that vibes Las Vegas, with red leather booths and an old disco ball suspended over the circular stage/dance floor. Cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air and we are served whiskey and taken out for vegetarian food before the show. The rooms upstairs are all decade themed and Margs and I stay in the 70's suite, which is decked out in orange and red florals and plastic furniture. Kate and I jam a little bit during sound check, and the show is fun even though not a lot of people show up. The owner blames the weather and the fact that its a Thursday and we all drink more whiskey and head up to bed.

The next day there is a blizzard and we have to pull off the road and camp out in a rest stop for a while. Food in German rest stops pales terribly in comparison to the sublime Italian Autogrills and we suffer through schnitzel and kraut and paying for the bathroom. I buy some cola flavored candies for my brother with the voucher you get after you pee, and eventually we figure the weather is not getting any worse and we press on towards Berlin.

High on the Hill

Swiss Countryside
December 2010

La Chaux-de-Fonds

12/4/10

Switzerland is a winter wonderland and the snow is magical, even when the van gets stuck in a drift behind the bar. The club is called Bikini Test and there is a piano in the green room. There is a coming-of-age party in the club for all the kids in town who are turning 18 this year where the mayor gave a toast and all the kids get drunk. We camp out at the hotel and do laundry in the sink before the show, and when we arrive the crowd is a confusing mix of drunk teenagers and rockers from out of town. After the show I try to sleep on the couch in the green room but am jolted awake by friends of the other band banging out traditional French-Swiss songs on the piano and leaping around the room. It is amazing and we all end up singing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lungs while the one guy jumps off the furniture and gesticulates wildly, directing all the parts. The hotel has beautiful hand-knit blankets on the beds that we want to steal for the van but we can't do it because they are just too nice.

Ariano nel Polesine

12/3/10

We drive North again and East towards the coast. For hours after it gets dark we weave our way down narrow roads drenched in fog and smelling of the sea. The headlights refract dull yellow light off the heavy moisture in the air and each turn seems to portend a cliffs edge. We can barely see three feet ahead of the van. Finally we rumble past a heavy gate into a small town and it feels as though we are being swallowed by the creaking, ancient pulse of another time. It is chilly and damp and the fog lies still in the corners of the road. Cigarette smoke is absorbed by the night as we stand outside of the bar and listen to the thrum of the silence around us. An old woman in a long mink coat and a scarf tied under her chin rattles by on a heavy black bicycle and disappears into the fog.

The owner of the venue lives above the bar with his mother and his grandmother, and he offers us espresso as soon as we step through the door. He is gracious and handsome and says that in the summer they have bands play in the street and that the whole town stays up for days. Luke says the bar reminds him of a British pub and he waxes nostalgic for England and the beer that he made when he worked at a bar in Nottingham. We load in and sound check and before we know it we are seated around a booth in the bar and fresh homemade pasta is paraded out of the kitchen with several bottles of wine, followed by a meat course followed by salad followed by more wine and the mother's and grandmother's insistence that we all keep eating! I tell the owner that Italian hospitality is like American Southern hospitality insofar as the idea that there is nothing that more food cannot fix.

The whole town seems to turn up for the show and even though everyone talks through the performance they buy a lot of merch and enthuse drunkenly to Kate and I for hours after we play. We sleep upstairs in the grandmother's apartment and are served cappuccinos and chocolate croissants in the damp of the grey morning before we load the van and leave for Switzerland.