Friday, August 22
The show tonight was awesome, probably the best of the tour so far, though of course I expect it to be surpassed by the show tomorrow, seeing that it is the biggest hardcore event in Japan.  The energy was great, there was a kick ass mix of Japanese bands, especially two called ERIC and UMBRAGE.  The sound was incredible as usual, the clubs in Japan being total profs.  We busted out the Unbroken cover tonight  which went awesome as well. After the show last night I was a little unsure of what to expect, but the show tonight felt like a cool hardcore show, and wasn't at all awkward like the previous show.  Anyway, earlier in the day...

Satoshi had a pretty cool place a little outside the city, it had a little more of a "village" atmosphere, well, maybe not, but at least there was plenty of green to be seen.  I made a point to go out and look off of the entrance balcony and check out the landscape in the morning, it was cool to see the mist covered hills, and nice to see a part of Japan that wasn't predominately concrete.  His place was pretty small, which seems typical, and seemed a little older than Koba's place - though it was also a little bigger, having a separate small living room instead of a bedroom/living rooom combo, and a little bit larger kitchen. 


(the view from Satoshi's front entry)

I really like the bathroom/ shower set up in Japanese houses/apartments, which is similar to European living spaces as well.  One, the toilet and shower/bath are two separate areas, and even in the shower/ bath are the actual shower/bath is separate from the sink/mirror.  this means if someone is taking a shower it doesn't put the toilet out of commission like it does in most places in the US, which would be really nice for anyone with room mates.  It just makes sense.  In addition, similar to newer German showers, the shower is actually the entirety of the room where the shower head is located, if that makes any sense.  You don't get into the tub to take a shower, there isn't the shower/tub combo - instead the floor is tiled and there is a drain in the floor.  All of the Japanese places I stayed also had a tub, but I learned that the tub is more for relaxing AFTER you've already showered and cleaned yourself.  I'm sure I really confused Koba when I was trying to figure out how to use his shower the first day there, haha.  Oh well.The shower room also has an electric panel on the wall that regulates the water temperature, and has multiple other functions that I wasn't able to decipher.  like I said before, its the future!    To say the least its a better system, and if I had my choice I would remodel the bathroom here to be more like a Japanese/ European bathroom in a heartbeat.

Earlier in the day our hosts, Satoshi and Takashi (who are both vegan straight edge) made us an incredible traditional Japanese breakfast.  It consisted of some miso and tofu soup, some sauteed tofu with onions, daikon radishes, higiki seaweed, and brown rice.  We also had some wheat tea, which was a first for me.  The spread was just great and it was really great to eat some traditional Japanese food, in contrast to what we have been eating most often: restaurants and convenience store vegan goodies.


(early to rise, and looking beautiful as ever)


(our kick-ass breakfast)

After we ate breakfast and did some showering we headed into the city and drove to a small park along the Pacific ocean.  It was relatively cool today and a little overcast, which was a nice change considering the heat and humidity of the past few days.  It was really nice to just walk around a bit along the ocean and take it easy.  We also went to a "Happy Lawsons" and got some snacks, though I'm not sure what made this Lawson's "happy" compared to all of the other Lawsons out there (don't remember if I have mentioned it, but Lawson's is a pretty common convenience store here, along with 7-11 and Am/Pm).  I picked up some chips, a lemon ice tea (which is one of the best I have had), and one of the rice/seaweed and rice/plum cakes we have all grown fond of eating for our snacks. I didn't like the plum one that much,  so far the kind that I like the best is definitely the kampyo (which is a squash that is slightly sweet) - but I'm pretty sure I thought it was seaweed at that time.  It was really nice to get out to see some nature again, even if it consisted of a totally developed port/coastline.  It was easy for me to totally forget that we were actually on an island up until that point, or even that we were near the ocean at all.


(hanging out on the coast)


(looking out across the bay)

After walking around a bit we headed over to the club (Club Lizard) to unload all of our instruments, merch and baggage - the plan was to switch vans once again after the show and head back to Koba's place that night.  While we were loading in we were commenting on the cleanliness of the city, as well as of Tokyo, and asked our Japanese friends about crime in the cities.  As we suspected, it didn't really exist.  We could have easily left our stuff sitting on the street unattended for a fairly lengthy amount of time and still been sure that it would be there when we returned.  Amazing to think about, compared to the US, where I just realized someone tried to steal the catalytic converter off of my car while I was gone.  Dustin still seemed pretty sketched about leaving anything sitting out in the club, but I just figured that if there was a problem our friends would have let us know.


(Club Lizard when we arrived - Allan is either giving pic-calls, or stuffing his face, you choose)


We got everything loaded in and did a sound check, once again on an awesome sound system (and someone from the US told me that this was the loudest club they had ever been to), playing a couple of songs.  Afterwords our hosts, and some other friends we met up with took us on a short walk into Yokohama's China Town, about five minutes walking from the club.


(walking in China-town)


(the temple)


China Town was awesome.  It was filled with all kinds of shops, food stalls, and tons of people.  It had a real "market" feeling, which I love.  A couple of the band members needed to get some souvenirs for friends and loved ones, so it was the perfect place.  It was really crazy to see $30 t-shirts with strange English slogans on them, or logos from U$ companies.  There was also a big Chinese Buddhist temple in the center of China Town, which was both a tourist attraction and a place where quite a few people would come to pray.  Its was really cool seeing it, with my Religious Studies background and interest.  Its also just interesting seeing temples in Japan because religion seems really hidden there compared to here, where (especially in the Mid-West) there is a church of some kind on every corner.


(close-up of the temple)

The highlight of China Town was eating sesame-coated, fried mochi balls.  FUCK!  They were so good, like a sweet sesame donut or something.  I had two, but I could have definitely been fine with eating as many as I could have stuffed in my face until they made me sick.  Added to my list of things I want to try to make when I get home.  Maybe added at the top of the list.

Like I said, the show was awesome.  It was particularly cool because there was an animal rights table and posters set up in the venue, something I hadn't seen so far at any of the shows we had been to.  The whole affair just had more of a DIY hardcore feel than some of the previous shows, and I think a lot of that probably came from the presence of the AR posters and literature, it really gave the feeling that this was about more than just music, which really brought things home for me.  The other bands were great, and Umbrage even opened with a Birthright intro which was great, it was cool seeing Allan and Dustin getting crazy for the Japanese bands.  The whole atmosphere was just really cool.  Yoshi also brought us more vegan food that night, including an awesome mixed salad (soy beans, corn, green beans, and a bunch of other stuff - it was really good) and this tofu/chocolate fudge thing which was amazing.  It was so rich that it was hard to eat, but I managed to eat more than anyone else by the time we were done with it.  It kicked ass, hopefully I'll get the recipe as well.

I think we played fairly well that night, things were finally coming together, and we pulled out the Unbroken cover too which went over pretty well.  OK, I've written a lot about this day so I'm gonna cut it off.  Good times!

-- 

Thursday, June 21
We had our second show today, in Chiba, which is about a two hour drive from where we have been staying, out near the Narita airport.  We started the day off right by eating a bunch of cookies of different varieties that had apparently been left the night before, there was a little sleep over party at Koba's but we were asleep so fast we didn't realize it.  Anyway, not much there in the way of breakfast but potato chips and cookies, including some maple syrup cookies that were way too sweet for me to even eat.  After everyone was pretty awake a couple of us decided to go out in search of some real food, hoping to find some inari rolls, edemame, or some of the rice and seaweed things we had the day before as a snack, and which were pretty good.  Third time was the charm, and we hit up a small neighborhood grocery.  I brought back a couple of packages of tofu with a seasoned sauce, some of the rice roll triangle thingies, a bunch of bananas, and a few small packages of the most notorious of Japan's foods: the dreaded natto.  The rice/seaweed/kompyo combos were pretty good, as usual.  The tofu with sauce was ok, but really nothing special.  I hate bananas, so I didn't eat any, and wasn't expecting Japanese bananas to break that mold for me.  The natto, well... it is gooey, stringy, fermented soy beans with a sour flavor, and a smell similar to old socks.  I tried a few things to make my little portion of them edible (soy sauce, hot mustard, the sauce from the tofu, and adding rice), but it just wasn't happening.  Hey, at least I tried!  Oh, we also had some mochi balls as well.  Mochi is a ball of rice gluten surrounding a sweet bean paste center.  The ones this day were a little too sweet (or something) for my taste, But Dustin was pretty into them.  Brian would later claim that he didn't like mochi "because it tastes like dog shit" later in the tour.  I didn't think it was THAT, bad, and actually we had the chance to change our mind later on, as I did about natto as well.

One thing I think I failed to mention about last night's show is how welcoming people were.  I could really tell they were excited to see us, and many of the people we already knew, or who we would meet later in the tour and become friends with, showed up wearing either RISEN, BIRTHRIGHT, or Catalyst shirts of some kind.  It was a really cool gesture on their part and I took it as a way of letting us know how glad they were that we were finally in Japan.  Of course maybe they do this for every band that comes through, haha.  I also think I forgot to mention that our new friend Yoshi brought us some awesome food that night, including some bagels (vegan bread of any kind is pretty scarce in Japan) and a really tasty saute of veggies.  It really hit the spot since we were off on our eating schedules from the time difference.  He really went out of his way to make us feel welcome in so many ways, we really owe him and the other people who fed and housed us, not to mention booked the tour and drove us around.

We had a little time in Chiba before the show, so we decided to walk around near the club for a while, basically we went to the mall.  Of course the Japanese mall is a little different than your standard US mall.  We took the elevator up to the second or third floor to the equivalent of a Best Buy or something, but it was on steroids.  Just like the streets outside, the aisles in the store was just packed with people, signs and merchandise.  The store had a huge electronic games/ model section, including a bunch of games that aren't out in the US yet.  They also had some really high tech stuff in the computer/ tv area that I've never seen here either.  Anyway, it kept with the "sensory overload" theme of the trip so far.  

In contrast to the first show, the Chiba show was smaller, and we played with a bunch of bands that none of us had ever heard of before.  Again the club was upstairs, which doesn't seem to be uncommon here in Japan.  Though it was small there were still familiar faces in the crowd, a few of the guys basically traveled to every one of our shows they could make it to, which was awesome.  This was my least favorite of all the shows we played, but it was still cool regardless, I mean I was in Japan so I don't really feel like there is much to complain about.

After the show we loaded into a new van our good friends Satoshi and Takashi had rented and we headed off to stay in Yokohama that night, where we would be playing the next day.  This would be our only show outside of the area that can be considered "greater Tokyo".  Honestly even on the drive there it didn't really seem like we ever left the city, and I think Yokohama is the second or third largest Japanese city, and is still pretty close to Tokyo.  We grabbed some snacks from a convenience store and then started our drive, all of us falling asleep (besides our hosts/drivers of course) in the van on the way as usual.

Day 2:  Wednesday, June 20

I woke up this first morning at about 5am, jet lag is wonderful.  This made for a long day by the time everything was said and done, and we started a precedent of the band falling asleep in the van nightly after our show while driving to our sleeping spot.  Brian was usually the first to go, which gave us the opportunity to watch his head flop around like a bobble head while the van navigated Tokyo traffic. 

Speaking of traffic, one interesting thing is that the city is bigger than San Francisco and Chicago combined (more than twice as big?) the traffic never seemed as bad as it is in larger US cities.  The flow of traffic was pretty steady and though it was a little congested at times it was never close to the kind of traffic you encounter in SF trying to cross the Bay Bridge, or in the LA area.  It seemed more like Indianapolis at rush hour, which honestly looks like SF during a time when not many people are driving.  I'll chalk this all up to Tokyo and Japan having an excellent public transportation system, as well as the fact that it seems most Japanese also ride a bike or a scooter when possible.  Japanese (and most of the rest of the world) are a little smarter, and less lazy than Americans, who, despite the cost, can't think of living without driving EVERYWHERE.


(Tokyo - or a portion of it - from a car window)

Something people should realize about Tokyo, if I haven't gotten the point across yet: its HUGE.  I'll give a few numbers to try and put things in perspective (thanks to my best friend, Mr. Wikipedia). 

First of all the greater Tokyo Metropolitan area contains around thirty-five MILLION people. Indianapolis is home to a little over two million, counting the outlying suburbs.  "Greater Chicagoland" is right at 9.8 million people, and that includes cities like Gary and all of the Northern and Western Suburbs as well.  The population density of Tokyo is well over 6000 people per square km (probably closer to 10k), twice as densely populated as Chicago, and over ten times as densely populated as Indianapolis.  That would be like increasing the population of Broad Ripple from around 17k to 170k, if you can imagine that.

Another way to think of it is adding together the entire metropolitan populations of Chicago, San Francisco and NYC into one giant entity.  The population of those three together are roughly about the same population of the Tokyo area.  I'm talking immense.  This really contributed to the feeling of sensory overload in many areas - people everywhere, signs everywhere, cars, bikes, lights, noise, construction, scooters.  Its overwhelming.  And you rarely see more than a few blades of grass in most areas.  Well, some neighborhoods have more trees and greenery than others,but its nothing like where I live, it is a true urban environment.  As hard as I try, I just don't think words, or photos can really convey the true feeling of being immersed in this city.


(more of Tokyo from a car)

Anyway, that morning we were up early as in 6am.  I did some reading and spent a lot of time working on lyrics for a new song we were thinking of playing to fill out our set a little.  When Koba-san woke up we headed into the city a bit, taking a bus a couple of stops and walking a bit to a park for a little sight-seeing.  The park was quite a pleasant surprise, and it was really cool to walk around the Japanese version of a quite, contemplative place.  It actually seemed more of a huge meditation garden than what we would consider a "park."  There were paths to walk on, a lake with koi and turtles, both of which were obviously used to being fed (and who would follow us as we walked along the paths)  and small areas to stop and relax.  It wasn't the kind of park you would find in the US where you would find people laying on the grass or throwing a frisbee.  The only downside was that it was pretty hot with about 80%+ humidity, which I can get in Indiana, I really don't need it when hanging out in Japan.  Still,it was nice.


(inside the park)

Oh, there were also a lot of these giant Japanese crows, which seem to exist all over the city, a big contrast to the pigeons that are so common in most US cities (and in Tokyo, but to a lesser extent).

More park pics:





(FEED ME!)


(panorama from the high point of the park)

After the park we met up with Shinya and went for lunch at another vegan-friendly restaurant called Govinda's.  It seemed pretty confusing there until we realized that there was really only one menu option that included a number of items together as a lunch special.  It was actually pretty sweet: there was a cold soup, brown rice, some tofu pate, veggie tempura, tea, goya, and two small wraps of some kind.  It was around $10 total, which isn't bad at all considering we were in Japan, and what we received.  It was definitely more filling and flavorful than the meal the night before.  I keep meaning to take pics of food, and I keep failing.

Allan also took the opportunity this day to really start delving into his film-making with a vengeance.  He kept busy getting shots of us walking, panning as we passed, entering into buildings, etc.  He seemed pretty into and serious about the whole thing which was kind of cute.  I don't mean that in a condescending way at all, it was just one of those Allan things that I appreciated, like being consistently well-groomed.

Leaving the restaurant we headed back to Koba's for a few to prepare to go to the show.  In Japan everything is run ultra-professional as far as music goes, so we were expected to be at the club really early by US/DIY standards, around 2 or 3 pm for load-in and sound check.  This is in pretty stark contrast with the vast majority of the shows I have played in the US and Europe, where the band generally arrive around 6:30pm or so and everything is just much more relaxed and/or half-assed. 

The hardcore shows that I experienced in Japan pretty much seem to be run and organized on the same level as a typical rock/metal show would be in the US, the only real difference is the music being played.  Of course this may just be my perception from the shows we played, but its hard for me to imagine something like a house/basement DIY type show going down here, or a squat show, which is fairly common in Europe.  Of course no one we met lived in an actual house, so clubs are probably the only real option.

Anyway, we got to the club, Era, and got everything moving.  The club was actually on the fourth floor of a building full of rehearsal rooms, and we took a small elevator up to unload for the sound check.  There was a small audience of people from the other bands while we did that, and who also were very helpful in bringing all of our merch and equipment up into the venue.  We did our thing, played a couple of songs, and then just kind of hung out and met people, set up merch, etc.  I still had no idea what to expect, since this was our first show in Japan.  The club was fairly small, and there weren't many people in attendance when the first band started playing.  The crowd filled in a lot as the night went on, which was pretty common at the shows we played. 

As usual the Japanese bands playing were all pretty awesome.  The show tonight consisted of Risen, Loyal to the Grave, Umbrage, Eric, and Celt, who I had never heard of before.  Another thing we experienced, most of the shows we played seemed to have at least five bands, sometimes as many as seven or eight.  Even with that amount of bands the shows were over fairly early, and the clubs controlled the set times pretty rigidly. 

Back to the main point: Japanese bands mean business, they were all super tight, they had their shit together and for the most part came across as professional as the clubs themselves.  This is a pretty big contrast to many US hc bands, who I don't think take things as seriously as far as the musicianship goes.

What was particularly awesome about this show was that we got to meet a ton of people for the first time that we would encounter multiple times over the tour. Koba and Shinya were there of course, and we met the guys from Eric and Umbrage (Takashi and Satoshi), as well as the Ironman (Takiyuki - who I had met before) and Yoshi, who were both in a band called Shiver that all of us liked.  It is just awesome to be literally on the other side of the planet and be able to hang out with people with some shared interests and ideas, all thanks to this obscure music scene.  Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Of course, like I said, all of the bands that played before us that night were awesome, I don't think I saw a bad performance from one Japanese band the whole time we were here.  People seemed really excited to see us play, and it was really kick-ass for a first show, especially because I had no idea what the reactions would be.  We played OK, but honestly we needed a lot more practice to compare to how tight sounding the other bands were. 

Its possible we sounded fine to everyone else, but we definitely had some issues centering around the fact that we really hadn't played together very long with this line-up.  All in all it went well, and people were really responsive.  We played about eight songs that night, which is about as many as Risen has ever played in a set.  All in all, if nothing else it was much better than our performance at Gilman in Berkeley before we left.

We hung out at the venue a little before leaving, and participated in the Japanese ritual of taking a ton of photos, and meeting many of the people who came out to the show, which was awesome.  It was just really cool to meet people who are so interested in the music and words you write, especially those that have followed your progress over years.  Beyond that, meeting new people is really one of the best things about touring new places.

Hopefully I'll be able to gather together some of the photos and post them on either the RISEN Myspace page or my own.  We actually met a few vegans at that show as well, including Takashi from Umbrage, our new friend Dye, and another guy who drove the six or so hours from Osaka to come to the show. 

We almost sold out of the Birthright merch I brought to Japan, which was kind of crazy.  I underestimated the impact that Birthright has had on the Japanese scene, thanks to being a favorite of many of the more influential people in the scene here.

Us Americans were getting pretty tired at this point, due to jet lag, I think most of us woke up  around 6 am that morning, but we all ended up going out to a strange Denny's style Italian-ish twenty-four hour restaurant in Shibuya after the show.  People ordered plates of pasta or a kind of fried potato dish. A couple of the guys actually slept while sitting at the table.

Off to stay with Koba again that night, and then to Chiba the next day for our second show.


(in search of vegan food in Japan)

I'm sitting in the airport in San Francisco.  We arrived here about four hours early, to avoid taking all of our bags onto the BART (public transport system - yes, Hoosiers, these do exist in other cities) and to make sure we missed the worst of the city's rush hour traffic.  even leaving at 6:00 am, the highways from the East Bay to and through the city were packed by Indianapolis standards.  Amazing really how many cars were on the road, 90% of them containing one person only.  Even in a metropolis with ubiqutious public transportation people still hold onto drivig and waste like there is no other way, even in the face of $4.16 per gallon gas prices.  I was pretty amazed.

The past week has consisted mostly of practicing with the other guys, plus playing one show.  It felt kind of strange, both because I'm playing with all new people and because its been a while since the songs were even played.  Also just different hearing the songs without Kent playing them, I was definitely used to the way he played everything, and most drummers add their own style to songs they play.  I arrived on Tuesday, after a pretty easy trip out - I pretty much slept the entirety of both flights.  Practiced Wednesday, Thursday, and briefly on Friday before the show.  We played with 7 Generations and a few other bands Friday night at 924 Gilman St.  We were a little rough, but it was the first show with this line-up, so really that was to be expected.  Plus the sound was pretty off as well for a number of reasons beyond our control, which didn't help.  Anyway, it was good to get the first show out of the way.  Fairly good reception considering and quite a few people said we sounded pretty good.   Dustin had to go to a weddinng on Saturday so I just kind of hung out in Albany (near Berkeley) at Dustin and Alison's place most of the day.  Allan was out and about, and Brian was out with his wife and sister for most of the day as well.  Later in the day Lucas showed up to hang out, which was awesome, and we just kind of sat around, played video games and bullshitted.  That is a pretty good time to me, haha.

We practiced again on Sunday, brushing up on a few more songs we wanted to add to the set.  Afterwords it was time to pack and weigh all of the bags we were bringing, and most of the rest of the evening was filled with doing that ad eatig a little.  I'll admit I was a little stressed and got snappy at one point, which always seems to happen before I leave on a big trip like that for some reason.  Then it was sleep time, with the plan of getting up at 5am to start our trip by driving to SFO.  Even at 6am, when we started driving, the highway had dmore cars on it than I ever see at rush hour in Indianapolis.  Overall the drie to the airport was fairly uneventful, and wee got there in good time, as well as really early, since our flight wasn't until 11:15am, and we were in the airport before 7:00am.  Better nice and early than late though.

We checked in and went through security, everything going pretty smoothly.  After getting inside the terminal wee realized it kind of sucked compared to most in terms of food and possible entertainment.  It was basically filled with super over-priced food (as in two places to eat), snacks (one snack/magazine store that had like five stations through out the terminal), and totally boughie clothing stores that sold really expensive shit like Burberry scarves.  But it was only for four hours and not the end of the world.  I'm just used to having a lot more options once in past the security.  Allan and I ended up splitting a pint of fried potatoes ($5.95) before getting on the plane.  

We thought the flight was supposed to be over eleven hours, but it only ended up being around ten.  It was actually a pretty decent flight, especially considering that I thought it was going to be really hellish.  We were able to get three of the four of us sitting in one row (an exit row which ruled), I ended up with a window seat, which is my favorite, and it turned out that our fourth member got bumped up to Business Class because of a confusion with seating on his side of the plane.  Worked out pretty well for everyone.  The vegan meals were decent, even though for some reason they still provide non-vegan salad dressing with the salad, and a handful of non-vegan snacks at snack time.  We also got a vegan cookie with the first meal, and an awesome cinnamon doughnut with the second.  I hadn't had one of those before, but after one I really wanted like five more, which if you know me at all you probably know is strange because I rarely crave a lot of sweets.  The shit was good!

Next up: arrival in Narita Airport/ Tokyo on Tuesday August 19, and our first day in Japan.





Tuesday, August 19

We arrived at Narita Airport, a little sooner than we had expected, and the flight was actually pretty bearable.  I slept about four or five hours of the nine hour flight, which is always a positive.  The only downside was that we had a lot of turbulence at one point, enough that the pilot asked the flight attendants to also take their seats and strap in.  Not a huge deal, but it was enough to make me feel a little queasy.  

We were a little worried about how things would go with customs and immigration since we had a total of nine bags/ guitars between four dudes, and because they were filled with merch for the most part.  It ended up being pretty easy and painless.  Immigration was quick and easy, though we had to fill out a couple of forms that were a little confusing.  It was also super high-tech compared to the US.  You stepped up to a booth with a immigration officer, and a computer told you to proceed and they scanned your finger  prints, and then took a photo of your face with the same unit.  This was all without the officer speaking any English, and it still went pretty fast and easy.  After that wee picked up our luggage and moved on to customs with our customs forms in hand.  This also went pretty quick and easy, we were asked what wee were in Japan for (to visit a friend and attend a music festival), how long we were staying (eight days), and what was in our bags (clothing and gifts), and that was about it.  We went into the main part of the airport, and waiting there were Koba (who plays in the Japanese band Loyal to the Grave) and Shinya (who plays in Crystal Lake).  I had met Koba a couple of times before, and had talked to Shinya numerous times through the internet, so it was cool to see him in person.

Shinya had brought his van, so that was loaded up and we waited to meet another American who was arriving a little later at the same airport. And waited. And Waited.  Eventually we had him paged and when there was still no sign of him we decided to take off and go to Shibuya, where Koba lives.  I'm not too clear if Shibuya is a different city, or a section of Tokyo, and honestly the whole drive we never left what I would consider a metropolis.  Tokyo has a population of thirty-five million, give or take.  The city scape takes up the entire skyline, and there are skyscrapers throughout.  It looks like a stretch of twenty or more Indianapolis downtowns all scrunched together.  The architecture is also so different, it reminds me of modern European cities in some sense, but there is also a futuristic quality that makes me feel like I'm in Blade Runner or some other sci-fi movie from the 80's.  Shibuya seems to be a pretty hip place to be, there are tons of people out walking around, and its a huge shopping district as well.  Most of the people out on the street seemed pretty young, and just like most of Europe there is a decided lack of obesity here.  Bikes are everywhere, as well as scooters and motor cycles.  Of course there are a ton of cars too, but you never see an American car, which is understandable.  I also found the temperament of the people we saw really interesting.  Well, I'm not sure "temperament" is the right word, or if that is something I can even judge.  What I did find interesting is that we are in a totally homogeneous culture, and there is a group of five Americans walking around and we rarely get a second glance.  I've definitely garnered more second glances walking around, looking like a hardcore kid, tattooed, and with metal in my face in European cities.  I don't feel out of place at all, even though I have seen at most twenty non-Asian faces (and probably less) when walking around Tokyo.  Either people have no curiosity, or they are very careful to not give us a once over.  Politeness?  I don't know what the cause is, but its definitely a lot different than I have encountered in other cities, not to mention even in non-white neighborhoods in Indianapolis.

 
I mentioned that we were in the Shibuya shopping district, but I don't think I can really adequately describe it, or many other parts of this trip because I have nothing to use as a reference point at all.  For instance we visited a punk/hardcore record store, which was actually the fourth floor (by a tiny elevator) of a five floor record store.  Interestingly enough there were Risen CDRs and other Catalyst releases on display, which was nice to see.  Anyway, the shopping area was just insane.  It seemed crowded  from the main streets, and then when we moved into the side streets and alleys it was even more packed with people.  I would compare it to going to the mall on the busiest shopping day of the year.  There was a large stretch that was basically a side street that had been covered with a domed roof and turned into a street-mall that was like half a mile or so long.  There was a store that just sold a shit ton of shoes, and next to it was one of just socks.  There was also an arcade type place that was mostly gambling, including a virtual off-track horse racing where there were ten or fifteen people sitting in gaming chairs in front of a huge screen, watching a non-existant horse race, smoking and placing bets.  We also took some pictures in a typically Japanese photo booth.  Pretty funny.


(Catalyst Records at the Shibuya Disk Union)

Koba also took us by the tattoo shop where his artist works, it was cool to see a tattoo shop in Japan.  There was actually only one studio in the shop, and then a very small lobby and counter that was pretty much an entry hall.  I think the shop only had two artists working there, which makes sense since space is at a premium in a city of 35 million (to compare, that's over three times the size of the Chicago metropolitan area).  I'm sure its hard to find bigger places that are affordable.

After the tattoo shop we headed over to a vegan restaurant, called "Vegan Healing Cafe".  It was also quite small, and had a fairly small menu, but the food was good enough and we were pretty tired and hungry at this point.  i think it was nearing 3am in California time by this point, maybe later.  I ordered a Vietnamese dish, and had no idea what I was going to end up with.  The food was good, but but not awesome, and was a little disappointing for the price.  For 950 en (around $10 or so) I basically got a big mound of brown rice with some lettuce and mushrooms around it.  I hate to complain too much, but it was another one of those circumstances that I run into at a lot of vegan restaurants where I feel like I could have made myself something better at home for 1/5 of the cost.  No big deal though, it was nice to get our first meal in Japan.  After eating we also met another "friend" of mine, Hiro.  Hiro is another Japanese guy that  I have had contact with for a long time, but had never met in person, and who also plays in Loyal to the Grave, so it was cool to get to see him for a few minutes before we headed to Koba's place to get some sleep.

There were a lot of aspects of Japan that remind me in some ways of Europe, especially some of the streets and sidewalks in the residential areas, which are often cobble-stoned, and the apartments where we stayed.  Koba's seemed traditionally Japanese to me.  It was compact, and designed in a way to make efficient use of space.  There was an entry hall/ kitchen with a bathroom to the immediate right.  If you walked a few steps towards the left the toilet was on the left hand side - and like many European homes the toilet has its own room independent from the "bathroom" which in Koba's case contained a washer, a sink, and then a separate room that was a shower/bath.  If you kept walking to the end of the short hall  (literally one step after the toilet) you would enter the main room/ bedroom of the apartment, which also contained a walk-in closet that was about the size of the bathroom.  All together it formed a nice little rectangle.  He lives on a pretty quite little residential street across from a school.  The residential streets and back streets are all pretty narrow, also like Europe, with very little space between them.   I had to pee pretty bad and then received my first up-close introduction to a typical Japanese toilet.  It looked like a toilet-robot from the near future.  The thing had the typical ceramic basin and tank like you see on your average toilet in the us, with the exception of a water faucet attached to the top, which ran water through a small hole in a sink on the top side of the water tank, presumably so you can rinse your hands after using the bathroom.  Beyond that, attached to the toilet itself is the plastic robo-component, which includes the  seat, and an arm rest type attachment that has a number of buttons coupled with icons of water spraying onto a bare ass.  I wasn't brave enough to test any of these out, but my guess is that there is some kind of bidet function built in to the toilet.  This actually scared me because when I had to use the toilet for a number two the next morning I didn't realize there was any toilet paper in the bathroom (I couldn't see it when using it standing up to pee) and thought I was going to have to do something crazy like start pushing random buttons on the robot toilet to try and clean my ass.  Luckily there was toilet paper resting under a little shelf.


(the Robo-Toilet)

In general the places we slept were furnished qute sparsely and had the overall appearance of just being clean and uncluttered.  Everything was stored away nicely, folded neatly, and even the design of the apartments were just really clean.  Koba's place had all sliding doors to maximize space, and like European living areas, the different parts of the home were separated by doors, so there was a door closing off the living areas from the rest of the house.  They kind of all looked like Ikea model homes or something.  I liked it.  Of course I'm so cluttered that I don't know if I could ever maintain it, but it would be nice.

At around 10 or 11pm Japanese time we pulled out some padded sleeping mattresses, laid them out and it was sleepy time.

ITALY
I don't remember what time it was, but at some point we came to the Austrian-Hungarian border, I'm guessing it was around 3:00 am.  This was a guarded border, so we had to stop twice and present our passports, possibly submit to searches of the van, etc.  First was the Hungarian side, though I'm not too sure why they would care too much since we were leaving the country not entering, and they definitely didn't care too much when we entered from Slovakia.  The border guard spoke about ten words of English total from what I could gather, possibly less.  This isn't to say that he should have, but whether we like it or not, there is a need for a common language to be used in situations like this, and it just happens that English has become the world standard for the most part.  Otherwise how else would five Swedish dudes communicate with a border guard in Slovakia or Hungary?  It just makes it easier for most people in general for there to be a commonly spoken language internationally.  I think that the language has become English is a little problematic in many ways, but its a lot easier than someone from Sweden trying to learn enough from twenty other languages in order to travel and be understood, rather than just one.

Anyway, we gave over ouor passports, which were glanced at, and our driver was asked to step out of the van.  He was then instructed to open the back so the guard could check out what was in there.  I think Claes told him we were in a punk rock band.  THe guard then asked if we had any drugs, which I think is kind of hilarious, I mean what do they expect someone to say: "Oh yes, we have all kinds of drugs!"?  I mean its obvious that we didn't but I find the act of just asking that question kind of ridiculous, no one that has them is going to admit to it, so if they really want to know they should just search or something.  Claes told him no, we didn't have drugs, and none of us used any drugs or drank alcohol, but really I have no idea if the guy understood a word.  He then asked what was in a couple of containers, which were decent-sized plastic tubs that contained Claes's protein powder and creatine.  I'm not sure if the guard thought that wee would have a two quart container of cocaine or what.  Claes said "protein powder, you have to be strong", haha.  Pretty funny, even at 3am or something.  So they guy passed us on to the next stop, which was the Austrian border guards.  These guys also took our passports and asked a couple of questions, but didn't even bother to see if the passports matched any of our faces.  I think in the U$ if this happened there would be conservatives getting all red in the face and calling for a three-mile high wall to be built along the border.  Of course we got off pretty easy since wee were all from either Sweden, Norway or the U$, I know for a fact that Hungarian citizens aren't so lucky and that there is quite a bit of discrimination at the border, especially in Austria and Germany.  I know that just having Hungarian license plates is pretty much asking to be stopped and checked at every border crossing for the other driver, Jaki.
    
After crossing into Austria I fell back into an uncomfortable sleep, just kind of dozing in and out, until eventually around 4:30 am I was called on to start driving.  We were heading through the tail end of the Austrian Alps, and the views were incredible.  Ever turn we took opened onto yet another aweesome view, and I pretty much wanted to take a picture in every valley we drove through, and around every bend.  It was early and the sun was just rising, the mountains were covered in forest, and wreathed in mist and cloud.  When we drove into a valley the mountain sides were blanketed with a patchwork of fields separated by lines of trees.  Mist was also rising from the streams in the valleys, and all in all it just gave an otherworldly appearance.  I took as many pictures as I could, but as many as I took I don't think its possible to really capture it in a photograph.  We also went through at least twenty tunnels while driving through the mountains, cut right into the mountain side with greenery growing up to the edge of the tunnel.  Awesome, epic in proportion,and just awesome.

Once we entered into the interior of Italy the scenery changed quite a bit.  The mountains settled down into arid rolling hillsides, still covered inforests, or fields filled with row upon row of grape vines or olive trees.  In the distance were small villages consisting of a cluster of buildings, or  an ancient villa surrounded by the olive groves.  At one point in the mountains we stopped along side of the road and tried to do a little exploring of a pretty ancient stone building we could see from the highway.  The roof was partiall caved in, and the area arouond it was totally overgrown with brambles.  We managed to climb up and look into a window, and tried to forge through the overgrowth to get around the side of the building to get inside, but it was pretty rough going.  Plus Noah was scared there would be snakes, which I thought was pretty funny.  It was pretty apparent that the building was hundreds of years old, hard to tell, but I would guess at least four hundred judging by the construction.  I wish I would have put on my jeans before the venture, the thorn bushes were a little brutal.  It was a nice little sideline to the long drive at the least.

Driving in Italy really reminds me of something that I have thought a lot about regarding the difference between the European and American (US) mindset.  Everywhere you go in Europe there is evidence of the past, in some places thousands of years of the past, coexisting with the present and what will be.  I think this gives a totally different perspective than what most of us in the US get, where this same thing is almost entirely missing, or at least the most we get is 200 years or so of history, but even most of that is long gone, having been paved over in the name of progress.  The New World was begun with a clean slate of sorts, with much of the native population leaving little physical evidence behind after their extermination by Europeans.  It must give people who grow up here, and the culture here in general, some sense of continuity, of an idea that they are part of a process, and that they are connected to history in a way that I have never really felt in the US, with our culture of genericism and homogony, and with our desire to obliterate the past (as well as nature) instead of living alongside it.  If nothing else there is always the evidence here that people did not always live the way they do now, which remains fairly invisible in the U$.
 
Italy is also a great place to experience other failures in the evolution of toilets.  The first I actually experienced earlier in the tour, but I'll mention it here since I also experienced another in Italy as well.  I call the first one the tall toilet, it has quite a space between the seat and the bottom of the basin, where there is (thankfully) a small pool of water to receive your offering.  The problem is that this combination creates quite a splash when your offering enters the water, and invariably results in a wet ass.  I hate splash back with a passion, it really just complicates things.  The second is something I don't see too often, and seems to be more common in Italy than in other places, though not even super-common here as far as I can tell.  This is "the squatter."  I'm not too sure if this can even qualify as a "toilet" though it is a pooping place.  IT consists of a porcelain fixture in the floor with two foot spaces, and a hole, along with some kind of handle.  The goal is to put your feet in the appropriate places, and squat over the hole, holding onto the handle to keep your balance if necessary.  Now I really believe that this is probably the most natural way to relieve yourself, seriously I do, I just can't bring myself to use this thing.  One, I have no idea what you're supposed to do with your pants, or how to avoid peeing on them while you're trying to concentrate on number two.  Two, I just don't want to share a hand hold with however many people have been there before, my hands end up touching lots of things, while my ass generally doesn't have the chance to touch my face too often.  Ok, ever.  Another thing I wasn't too thrilled about is that Italy for some reason sees toilet seats as optional in public restrooms.  There may be a rim may be nice and clean (or not) but damn, my ass isn't that big and I feel like it might fall in if I'm not careful.



June 7 - La Specia Italy
The drive was hellish, but we arrived on the Italian West coast fairly early in the day, and drove straight to the venue, probably around one pm.  The show was at a squat in an industrial district of La Specia, and we were some of the first people to arrive at the venue.  We waited for the gate to be unlocked and drove in, but decided there was no real reason for us to be there since Anchor wasn't scheduled to play until around eleven pm that night, and the show wasn't even going to start until about six.  Se we headed back into the city, and drove up the winding roads along the coast, through small villages clinging to the mountains that ran down into the sea in search of a beach so we could chill for a bit after the drive.  I think it took us about twenty minutes of driving but we arrived at a stretch of pretty small beaches and places to sunbathe and found a parking place.  I decided to go for a walk and do some exploring and "soaking up" instead of swimming with the other guys.  There were rows of restaurants and gift shops along the road up the coast, as well as houses and apartment buildings (in Italian style).  I made it up to Pontovenere, which seemed to be a tourist attraction, having a castle from the 1600's that was an outpost of the Genoese (Genova being a relatively short distance up the coast), along with an island fortress in the bay that would have protected the port as well, important because Genova controlled a fairly lucrative trading empire at that time.  Anyway, it was a good walk and I got back in time for us to head back to the venue.  I had been hoping to find a cheap pizzaria where I could order by the slice, and a gelateria that had some soy gelatto flavors, but the area was too touristy for that and the pizza was more expensive than I wanted to deal with.

Back at the venue, more people had arrived and we loaded in merch while the show started to get underway, and waited for our food to be ready.  All in all this show was just what I needed at this point in the tour, and it was definitely the best show of the tour so far, and will honestly be really hard for any of the remaining shows to top for a number of reasons.  One, it was a benefit for the support of recently jailed animal righst activists in Austria and Italy.  Another is that the crowd was super energetic, ad even as energetic as they were I didn't expect the overwhelming reaction Anchor received, tons of people singing along, dancing, stage diving (with inflatable beach floats and an inflatable dolphin included).  You could tell that Anchor had already made a big impression here in the past, and it really showed the potential this band has to impact and move people.  Also, this was the night that I ended up singing when they played a cover of "Forged in the Flames" (orig. by Earth Crisis) which was a ton of fun.  Beyond that I got to see a couple of other bands for the first time that I was glad to see, including Alone, from around the same area.  The food was prepared by a local Food Not Bombs chapter, and was just awesome: potatoes with a pesto sauce, pasta with olives and veggies, and some fried soy meat.  All in all I couldn't ask for more from a hardcore show, and it is guaranteed to be the pest show on tour.


I also met up with a couple of past acquaintances while I was there, and some people I had corresponded with over the internet but not met in person, including one of the guys from Absence, the bass plaer from Destroy Babylon, and Ricardo and Andrea from Refoundation Records, so that was awesome.  It would have been pretty nice to just had time to hang out with everyone in a non-show environment as well, but hey thats tour.

The last band of the fest played really late, like started at 2am or something ridiculous (to someone like me who is used to having shows over by midnight), so we waited a while for our guide to our sleeping arrangement.  Since he (Ricardo) was one of the organizers of the fest, it took quite a while, and we weren't ready to really start the drive to his place until well after 4am, and by this point we were too tired to worry about driving the extra time to his place (twenty to forty minutes away, and not on the way to Rome, our next destination)  so we decided to just sleep in the van.  Well, I won't get ahead of myself, first we noticed that there were naked people in the car parked in front of where our vans were waiting for our guide.  First a male head popped up to see where the headlights were coming from, then a female one as well.  Obviously there was some hanky-panky going on in the parking lot.  Pretty hilarious because we were parked there like twenty minutes at least, and they pretty much hid the whole time, while Jaki flashed his brights at their car and eventually Ben started stacking soggy cardboard boxes on top of the car as well, all the while they were either sleeping or just pretending and hoping we would just go away.  After that fun Kingdom went to Ricardo's place, and we drove back to the venue to sleep.  Except the gate was now locked, meaning we couldn't get the van in, so we decided to find a way for all six of us to sleep in the van.  That meant one person in the second and third row of seats, and one person on the floor of each of those rows, and we rearranged the merch in the cargo area in back to provide some kind of flat surface to sleep on, which is where I would up.  We didn't even get to sleep until around 5am.  I will say this, though I thought bringing the nice pillow was a bust on the airplane, it has worked out awesome when sleeping on a hard surface, making a pretty damn good mini-mattress, just long enough to keep my back from killing me when I wake up, I just have to use a hoodie or something as a pillow, which is no problem.  Yay me for being a genius and having the idea to use a pillow that way.

We woke up hot later that morning, around 11am or so and headed into La Specia looking for food, realizing that everything was closing up by the time we got there, being a Sunday.  I ended up having some chic peas for breakfast, plain, out of a jar.  Which actually wasn't so bad, they were already cooked and lightly salted, so it was good enough.  After trying to find some food in La Specia we just decided to head on down to Rome for the next show, leaving about 2pm for the drive.



June 8 - Rome, Italy
After we got on the highway I slept a bit in the back of the van, the over-night driving and the lack of sleep and sleeping in the van had left me pretty worn out.  Of course sleeping in a moving van isn't really any kind of premium rest, especially on Italian roads, but its better than nothing.  I missed a lot of the scenery because of my napping but I took a turn driving at around the halfway point of our six hour drive, and drove until we were just entering the city, because driving in European cities stresses me out a little, and Italian city driving is generally way worse than most.  The trip south to Rome was more of the same Italian landscape, though there were more fields and less mountains in the coastal plain area we were driving through.  Though Italy is one of the original EU mambers, in many ways it really reminds me more of the Eastern European countries.  It just seems a little ramshackle and run down compared to Germany, France, Austria, etc.  The roads definitely are in need of repair and everything has the appearance of not being kept up as well as is normal in the other Western European countries.  I'm sure this has a lot to do with the fact that the Italian economy has never been a powerhouse, and before joining the European Union Italy was probably the weakest economy of the original members.  With that said, I still like it, and the Italian countryside has its charm, its just different than many of the more affluent nations.

Anyway, we finally got to the club the show was at and realized it was going to be another fairly late show, which seems to be typical of Italy.  Not really a problem for me, but I know the bands usually would like the shows too be a bit earlier so it can be over and done with some sleeping time before having to drive in the morning.  The food tonight was great.  It was just a simple pasta salad with penne pasta, capers, olives, and some greens, but it was quite delicious.  Oh, it also had tomato (cherry, or maybe roma) which I ate up, and if you know me then you know thats another big step.  I don't mind raw tomato if its finely chopped in a salsa, but I've never moved on to eating larger chunks until this night in Rome, once again Italy comes through with changing my diet.  The tomatoes weren't my favorite, but they were bearable, and I figured I needed the veggies.  They made us a pretty big batch of pasta, and I couldn't get enough and ended up eating four plates of it.  I was hungry.

The show was sparsely attended, and a good number of people left after the first band, which was a new band with a member of To Kill.  Some people stuck around for Kingdom and Anchor, but neither had as large of an audience as the first band, kind of lame.

The highlight of the show was getting to hang out with Josh of To Kill, it had been quite a while since I had seen him, so it was great to catch up.  He gave me a copy of their new CD, which we listened to in the van a few times already.

After the show was over, around 2am, wee went to the promoter's apartment to sleep.  There  had been talk of going into the city in the morning before leaving for Milan, and I was definitely down for that.  I tried to get a stable wireless connection, but that seemed to be a lost cause so I just went to sleep on the floor with my sleeping mat, and my new-found use of the pillow I brought as a nice cushy mini-mattress.  The apartment was pretty tiny, one bedroom, one "family room" that was also functioning as a second bedroom, and a hallway of a kitchen with a small bathroom.  After waking up early (around nine maybe) and seeing that no one else was close to waking up I took the opportunity to shave and shower.  I was met with what I first thought was a typical old-school bathtub with a shower head, the kind that you have to sit in to bathe.  AKA, the kind I hate with a passion.  I was thinking this one was even worse since it was uneven and was almost impossible to stand up in at all, until I realized it was actually way better.  What I had found was a totally new shower/bath configuration that I had never previously experienced, and it turned out to be pretty pleasant.  The uneven shape of the tub allowed one to sit down comfortably and to even maintain a nice flow of water on a decent portion of the body as well.  Kind of like a lazy person's shower, if you're not into the bath, but would rather sit than stand.  Anyway, overall I'd rate it as pretty good.  Would use again.

It ended up that I was pretty bummed out because no one else really woke up in time, or got ready in time to go into the city.  Pretty lame, there are so many awesome things in Rome, and I would have liked to at least get some kick ass pizza near the Trevi Fountain, followed by some vegan gelatto.  Kind of frustrating when people would rather dick around than do something cool.  Its also just too  much of a pain in the ass trying to get like twelve people moving, especially when everyone wants a shower, breakfast etc.  I mean, it is possible with some organization, but just seems like people would rather sleep than eat awesome food in the center of an ancient city with four thousand year old buildings.  I know that would mean someone might have to wake up an hour early, but shit, we can always sleep in the van during our drives.  Oh well,  makes Rome another place I have to try and make it back to just to hang out for a couple of days.  The one thing that redeemed the whole bummer day was that i ended up scoring a sweet Verse/ To Kill tour poster from the promoter, it just happened that he had one left.  Pretty awesome.

We did get some pizza, but it wasn't as good as I was hoping for and just left me really wanting the good stuff I had experienced before.  Oh, I also got some Kellogs Corn Flakes for breakfast, which was a nice change of pace. 

Back in the van for the drive to the show outside of Milan.



June 9 - Arese (Milano), Italy

Left Rome around 1pm or so, after eating sub-standard Roman pizza.  The days have been pretty warm in Italy so far, especially in Rome, which I of course like and the Swedes hate.  Not a whole lot to write about the day or the show.  It pretty much rained most of the drive (another five or six hours), back into the more mountainous regions of Italy.  Once again I tried to get some sleep, wrote in this journal some, maybe did a couple of the crosswords I brought along with me.  Again the show was to start pretty late, but this time primarily because the italian national football (and by "football" I mean the one that actually uses the foot) team was playing in the Euro Cup competition until 9:00 pm.  When we arrived at the venue the game was on, and Italy was behind 1-0.  BY the time the yelling Italians turned off (and unplugged) the t.v. the score had gone to 3-0, in favor of the UK, with pretty much no chance of Italy catching up.  It was a sad day for Italy.  The show was about as lackluster as the Italian team's performance.  Not many people showed up, probably having something to do with it being game night, but who knows.  The food was good, but there wasn't really enough of it, which isn't a huge thing, I'm sure its hard to feed that many people, especially when they eat as much as we do.  Still, I would have loved more.  Three bands played, and I spent most of the time figuring out how I was going to get to Halle the next day, after being dropped off at the Hanau (Germany) train station.  The show was over around 1am again,and I think Jaki and I hit the road around 2 am for yet another over-night drive from Milano, through Switzerland, into Germany.


(I'm out of batteries for my camera currently, and forgot the cord to upload my pics as well.  but as soon as I have it and an internet connection I'll add more photos to all of the last blogs)

also, i just realized that my spell checking wasn't working in previos blogs, and that they had some typos, don't think i'm an idiot, this keyboard just likes to add extra letters on occasion.

home in five days - you better be prepared!

PRAGUE AND THE CZECH REPUBLIC
The drive to Prague was over ten hours, though I'm not sure exactly what the final count was.  We arrived in the city, one of my favorite in Europe, and drove directly to the venue.  The show was to be over by around ten pm, so it was importasnt that wee were there fairly early.  Met an old friend Pavel at the door, as well as Lukas (from Poland) who had been with us at a couple of other shows.  I knew Pavel from touring with Ppoint of No Return and Risen, and from playing at the Fluff Fest, one of the (if not THE) best hardcore fests in Europe.  Awesome guy, and he was the promoter for the show that night.  Only the two touring bands playing so I took some time to do some blog updating in the backstage room, and then it was time for our hot meal of the day.  THis night it consisted ofa huge pot of seasoned rice and antother of some tofu and veggie mix.  Not the best food I've had on tour or anything, but it was good enough and hit the spot.  I really wanted to go out into the city and party a bit that night, but after the long drive, and still fighiting off sickness I decided to just go sleep at Pavel's place with everyone else after the show.  

Pavel also lived in Soviet-style housing blocks, but he lived on the eleventh floor (Robert was on the ground floor), and we had too take a small, super-sketchy elevator up to his flat.  It was also pretty small, one bedroom (his room mates) and he lived in the family room.  I did score some hot tea and find a wireless connection, which was nice.  Unfortunately both bands, plus lukas were staying in this tiny place - its inevitable that this will happen sometimes on tour, so its no big deal, but in such a small place if some people want to stay up talking all night it makes it a little difficult to get to sleep in the other room.  The good thing is that we definitely planned to go into the city the next day and do some sight-seeing and vegan-food-eating, which I was looking forward to.  Sleeping in a small room with four other guys gets pretty warm, and I woke up at like 7 am (though I wasn't sure what time it actually was).  The sun was coming in the window and my legs were starting to sweat, so I just got up, took a nice unrushed, and much-needed shower, and kind of inter-nerded it up for a while.  Myspace, email, random bullshitting, the usual.  No one esle was even awake for another hour and a half, so the solitary time was nice as well.

Once everyone was ready to go, which takes way longer than you would expect when you have thirteen people travelling together, we hopped back in the vans andd drove back to downtown Prague.  This city is big, European big, not NYC big, just to be clear.  The downtown is awesome though, tons of people out and about, lots of shopping areas, lots of food, and my favorite destination, Country Life, an all-vegan cafeteria-style restaurant in the old city.  Pavel wanted to take people to a new vegan place he had just learned about, so everyone but Marcus, Jaki, and me went there.  The three of us decided we would rather go to Country Life, and really if I'm only in Prague for a day, thats where I want to go.  It took us maybe twenty minutes to get there, and it was a nice walk, warm and sunny, though the Scandanavians seemed to think it was "hot".  Ice-dwellers.  At the restaurant I picked up: cous cous, mashed potatoes and gravy, steamed broccoli with a creamy sauce, quinoa, a large stuffed pepper, and to top it all off, a fruit/cream pastry of some kind.  All of the food was pretty awesome, especially the stuffed pepper.  The dessert was ok, but all of the sweetness was contained in the fruit, personallly I would have liked the creamy filling to be sweeeter as well.  Of course the whole  point of Country LIfe is healthy eating, but shit, desserts aren't meant to be healthy!

Another noteworthy thing that happened is that we encountered people shooting up in a stairway when we were leaving the parking area, that was a totally new experience for me.  Apparently the park adjacent to where we left the vans harbours quite a number of junikies, Marcus and I spent twenty minutes or so sitting on a bench watching people exchange used needles for clean ones with a couple sitting on the bench right down from us.  Looks like there is a state-run program to supply sanitary needles, probably to fight AIDS infection.  Still, crazy to osee people exchange needles, and then immediately sit down another bench down the path and prepare themselves for their next high.  Totally out of my experiences.

Anyway, after eating we walked around a bit, checked out a record store, went into a H&M, Marcus got some gelatto, and chilled for a bit, doing a little sight seeing along the way.  I didn't really have an agenda, just wanted to soak in the flavor of the city, one of the few in Europe that is relatively untouched by the wars of the last century.  Always an awesome experience.

I also realized that we have passed the half-way point of the tour.  Prague marks the fifteenth show out of twenty six, with no days off.  Though I love touring, traveling, and being in Europe, I'm also starting to get the "its time to be home" feeling a little.  The isolateoin of being on tour in a different continent, without easy access to communication with people that are important to me is pretty disconnecting.  No phone, inconsistant internet service, no idea of what is going n in the world really.  Its an existence in this tour-limbo where I usually don't even know what the local time is, and oftentimes have no idea what day of the week it even is.  I think people have a concept of being on tour as being really glamourus or something, but there is a lot of tedium involved.  Not saying that I don't love it, because I do, just that it isn't what most people probably imagine it to be.  Also being on a tour like this one, with twenty-six straight shows pretty much re-confirms my opinion that I would much rather tour with a less rigorous schedule, short drives and a day off every few days.  To me one of the best parts of being on tour is getting to really experience new places, and meeting and hanging out with new people, more than just arriving at a venue, going somewhere to sleep, and then hitting the road for the next stop in the morning.  Of course its less money my way, but its not about the money for me, I'm in it for the experience, and thats something that can't be bought.

In other news Jaki informed us that only one van, with both vans, will be going to France while he and I will head up into Germany after the Italian shows.  I have mixed feelings about this.  One one hand I will be missing some long drives,  and I think it will give me a chance to get to Germany and hang out with some friends there for a couple of days.  On the other hand, I was really looking forward to seeing Toulouse and Paris, since I've never been to either before, I was in France once before, but just on a drive to the coast on the way to the UK.  Plus, Jaki has also informed me that he will be driving to Frankfurt to hang out with his friend, which kind of leaves me scrambling to make plans on how I'm going to get from Frankfurt to visit my friends in Eastern Germany.  Its kind of stupid because the next show is actually in Weimar, which is really close to where I need to be, but I have to go to Frankfurt instead.  Bleh.  More BS with the German train system I guess, hopefully it will go better this time.

I owe people postcards.  I have postcards to send.  And I finally even got around to writing on them.  Of course, in true Kurt style I haven't sent them yet and I imagine that I probably won't get to for a couple of days.  This means that, just like every other time, my postcards probably won't arrive until after I'm already home.  See, if we had some days off I could handle this shit!




Olomouc, Czech Republic
The show tonight was in a basement club, but it had a really Medieval European feel, in the architecture - arched stone ceilings and all of that.  I think it was part of a University in the town or something similar.  We didn't have to  wait too long before the food arrived, and it was one of the best nights for food on tour.  I mean it wasn't anything crazy, but it was just really good: potatoes with some veggies in them, cous cous, a curry sauce of some kind, bread and a awesome garlic-onion spread, a cake, and some kick-ass little donut/pastry thingies that had some kind of plum on top.  I ate quite a bit and loved it.

The show was actually with all vegan straight-edge bands, which was cool, especially because all of the bands sounded pretty different.  Two Czech bands played, Nidal and Specerepta (sp?), and it was awesome to see politically motivated bands  that had good things to say.  

The real high (and low) light of the evening was these two drunk dumb asses that kept pestering me, yelling dumb things at the bands when they were playing, and being general jackasses.  This started with them reading all of the shirts I had on display and asking if I had them in size L or XL.  These weere pretty much all vegan or straight edge shirts so I was just trying to get rid of them, and tried to tell them I didn't have any in large sizes.  Did that work?  Of course not, the one that spoke the most English of the two would read the writing on EVERY shirt (I think I had close to ten designs) individually and ask if maybe I had THAT  one in a large size, needless to say, it got pretty annoying.  Eventually after they left, he returned again and was intent n buying a "its ok not to drink" shirt despite the facts that: a. he was totally drunk, and b. he also insisted on buying a YL sized shirt.  I was tired of deaaling with the dude, and hoped this would just get him to go away so I sold him a YL sizze shirt, and he didn't want his change, so I ended up getting 300 Czeck Kroner for the shirt instead of 250.  But was it over yet?  Oh no, next while wee were waiting to load out he came and just sat right next to me trying to talk to me in drunken Czech, which didn't go over too well, oh and he had gone and put his new shirt on, the fit was a little snug since he was probably at least 200 lbs, wearing a youth size shirt.  I decided to just get out of there and went up to the van to start packing up.  While I was there he tried to trade the shirt I sold him for a larger size Anchor shirt, and they told him it was only possible with a receipt.  I enjoyed that.  After failing to get another shirt he took off the one he bought from me and gave it back to Anchor, I'm sure it was probably cutting off his circulation or something, it couldn't have been comfortable.  Then after we are pretty much packed up he and his friend decide that they should try to pick a fight with us, they even did a round of "rock, paper, scissors" to see who was going to try and be the one to start the fight.  This is hilarious because it occurred about ten feet from all of us in the van.  The winner, or loser maybe, made a giant statement by partially pushing a nearby dumpster into the street.  Obviously this was meant to really antagonize us.  They proceeded to call us "Chelsie Boys" and talked about having sex with our mothers, and kept trying to ask if we were Slovaks, but I imagine this is because the country next to their own is probably the only international geography they knew.  I'll say this much, I'm not the fighting type, but I still feel like some people just deserve to get their ass kicked and people like this are perfect examples.  I wouldn't have felt bad at all about punching either of them in the face, or even hitting them with a lead pipe.  Just saying.

Finally we left and stayed with the bass player from Nidal (I think she also made the awesome pastries) and her room mate, who sang inthe second band if i remember correctly.  I had some hot tea and there was an internet connection, so things wen't pretty well.  Breakfast was awesome, home-made spreads (including one of avocado) with some bread and veggies.  It made for a light and fresh breakfast.  

As a side note, one thing I really notice about the Eastern EUropean scene is the diversity at shows, the hardcore shows are filled with a real variety of people, quite different from the average hardcore show I go to in the US, where most people seem to be "hardcore kids".  There always seems to be that punk/crusty/"I have a dreadlock mullet" crowd at the shows here, especially if its taking place in a squat.  It reminds me of earlier days in the hc scene when it just wasn't as big.  I also think it probably has a little to do with the fact that there is always alcohol available at shows here (in EUrope), so there is always that contigent of people who are probably there to drink first, with the added bonus of some bands playing that they may or may not care about.  Whatever works.


HUNGARY
June 6 - Budapest
We had a fairly easy drive today, maybe five hours or so to Budapest from Olomouc, but we left fairly early because the show in Budapest is starting pretty early.  The drive was nice lots of country side to view, some gentle hills, and lots of farmland and rivers.  This drive actually marked a point where I entered two new countries, Slovakia (we drove through for an hour or so) and then into Hungary.  I think this made new country four and five for this trip, the other three bein the Scandanavian countries.  We actually got stopped as we were leaving Slovakia and found out that we had to pay 35 EUR for the pleasure of driving on their highway.  This is one of the few border checks I have had to go through so far, since most of the tour is in older European Union countries there are no longer border control popints between them, even the drive from Germany to Poland was free of a border check, which used to be a huge hassle.  Of course I also kind of liked getting the passport stamps from all of the countries I entered, its a nice memento.  Anyway, We crossed the border into Hungary and started making out way to Budapest, on the Danube River.  

Fairly soon after we entered Hungary we took a pee break at a gas station along the highway, as we do fairly often.  This usually consists of everryone getting out of the van, gathering up trash, maybe getting a drink in the gas station, and usually three or four of us finding a place to urinate outside a short distance from the parking lot.  This hadn't been a problem so far in any other country on tour, but apparently it is highly frowned upon in Hungary.  While four members of the band were taking care of their business a Hungarian police car zipped up and parked in back of the van.  Two officers got out and started talking to us in Hungarian, which of course none of us understood, but it was pretty clear that they thought it was a bad idea for us to be peeing in that spot, my guess is especially a bad idea for foreigners (I think people would probably get a similar reaction in the U$).  One of the officers, the younger, was pretty agitated.  The other, older one was pretty calm andd was trying to talk to us, asking if any of us understood German (I answered that I understood a little).  In the meantime the youger had asked for our passports and our driver's driving papers, which Frederik got for them. But when the older of the two realized that he wasn't able to communicate with us (neither of them spoke any English, which was the only chance for a common language between the Swedes and them) he just said "Auf wiedersehen" and waved good bye with a smile.  I figures that was pretty much over and done with and headed inside towards the toilet (I had a number two to take care of).  As I walkedtowards the station I saw the police car coming back towards the van, this time faster and with the lights on as well.  When I came back out the van was moved, I guess the younger guy was pissed off again because the van wasn't parked in a parking spot, so the older guy just told them they couldn't park there, not sure why that necessitated a huge production like that, but sometimes no mater where you go some things don't change, like people with a chip on thier shoulders wanting to be in positions of authority over others.  

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, just drove straight to the venue, which was actually on a boat moored in the Danube, which is kind of strange.  But appparently there is a pretty big venue in the main hold of the boat that has concerts with up to 600 or so people in attendence.  Our show was on the top level in a pavilion-type enclosure.  It sucked carrying all of the equipment up three floors of stairs, and across the gang planks (is that what they are called?) from  the street to the boat, and back again.  The show was ok, the crowd was pretty subdued for the most part for all three bands.  I was hoping for a little more energy considering that this was one of the few shows where most people there pretty much looked like "typical" hardcore kids, you know, with band shirts I recognized and all of that.  OF course I hate open-air shows, I think it kind of ruins the atmosphere of a hardcore show, so maybe that was part of it, and the fact that most of the people, if not all, had never seen the two touring bands before.  I didn't set up merch or anything and concentrated on getting stuff done on the internet connection I found instead.

I don't know if anyone knows much about Hungary, but its kind of an oddball nation.  It was traditionally home of the Magyars (and the Hungarian name for the country is something similar), and Hungarian is one of the only languages in this part of the world that isn't a Indo-European language, being more related to Finnish and Tibetian (if I remember correctly).  The guy who booked the tour and who drives the other van, Jaki, is Hungarian and his name is actually Jacob Gabor - "Jacob" being his family name and "Gabor" being his given name, coming second in Hungarian traditionally.  You can also see an ethnic difference in HUngary as well.  There are definitly a lof of prople that look more typically "European" but there is also a strain of something else as well, that seemed a little exotic to me.  Maybe thats just my white-bread American perspective speaking, but I'm definitely interested in learning more about the country and its history/ ethnic groups.

After the show was over and we loaded out we headed to someone's house to get some food before we left for Italy that night (we had a twelve or more hour drive to the West coast of Italy for the next show).  I really wanted to go out on the town, but time just didn't permit it.  Would have been awesome to see more of the city, and go to a dance club or something and do some of the "soaking up" that I love to do.  As it was we didn't get to see much of the city at all, which is too bad since I have heard so many good things about it.  What I did see was interesting, it looked a little stressed overall, like a lot of Eastern Europe, still recovering from some dark days in the past.  There was also a mix of really old, and sometimes delapidated buildings and newer, sleek, typically European buildings as well.  One thing I did notice was a enormous amount of trash on the sidewalks on the drive we had to the place we were eating.  I mean like piles of trash that were maybe four feet high sometimes - mattresses, chairs, broken tables, dressers, all kinds of stuff.  We asked our guide about it, I have a feeling it might have been for a once in a blue moon "big trash day" or something similar, but who knows.

After about twenty minutes of driving we reached the suburban apartment building where we were to have our dinner.  It was still pretty early, maybe 8:30 or 9:00 and still fairly light out.  We pulled into the parking lot and there was a gypsie (or more appropriately, Roma) family living in a car in  the parking strip a couple of spaces from where we parked.  This made the Swedish guys pretty nervouos, and they kept looking at the Roma the whole time we were getting whatever we needed out of the van to take inside.  I think they were contimplating moving the van further away from them, but the guy who lived there told them he didn't think there would be any problem, though I'm not too sure the Swedish guys really believed him.  It kind of seemed like they thought that if they weren't constantly vigilant that one of the Roma would probably steal their baby or something.  Well, not that any of them were touing with a baby, but you get the idea. I was trying not to even act like I noticed the people living in the car, just because everyone else was kind of staring at them, even though I was really curious, this being my first encounter with anything of the kind for the most part.

Anyway, everything was fine and we went into the home to have some food, which was apparently prepared by our guide's mother.  They let us hang out and put in some 90's metal video program that he had on VHS, including a Madball video, pretty hilarious.  After about tweenty minutes they said it was time to eat and brought out a huge pot of soup.  It was super hot, and I definitely burned my mouth.  We were all pretty excited to eat so we dug right in, it was good soup, a veggie mix with rye, carrots and peas, and some celery, which I did my best to pretend wasn't in the mix, mainly becasue it is a vile excuse for a vegetable.  We were all on our third or fourth helping of soup when they asked if they could take the pot away and bring in the second course.  Second course?  We were all under the impression that the soup was our food and were well on our way to polishing off the entire five gallon pot, not realizing that there was also rice and gulash coming as well, and that we were just eating first and the rest of the Hungarian kids hanging out there were eating after us, oops.  So we didn't leave a lot of soup for our hosts, our bad.  The gulash was awesome, it included tomatoes, onion,  and peppers over rice, I had a couple of bowls of that as well, and we definitely ate all of the rice.  I think Jaki warned them about our appetites, but I'm not sure if they actually believed it until they saw it in action.  

A short time and a couple of showers later we were on the road again, this time towards Italy, where we were going to be attending Feel Their Pain Fest V.  I think we hit the road right around midnight, I started off by sleeping since we would be drivinng in shifts.

POLAND (three days of adventure)
June 1 - Wroclaw.
Pretty short drive today after leaving the pool, and it wasn't long until we crossed the border into Poland from Germany.  There was no longer a huge border check process like the last time I was here.  That was nice because it was possible to wait up to two hours in the lines of cars trying to get across the border.  I also didn't see the once-plentiful Polish prostitutes waiting along the road right across the border, which was a big change.  What hadn't changed was that as soon as we crossed the border the roads became terrible, it felt like we were riding in a wagon or something.  It eventually smoothed out, but it really sucked for a while.  The countyside of Poland is for the most part pretty indistinguishable from Germany, the houses look similar, if maybe more run down.  Actually the first show and the area we were driving through both used to be a part of Germany until after WWII when the region was ceded to Poland.  From what I can tell Poland has changed a lot since the last time I was here, there was construction pretty much everwyere we went, especially on the existinng roads, turning them into highways, which were pretty non-existant in the past.  Another thing that seperates Poland (and the Czech Republic) from Western Europeaan countries is the predominance of Western business chains - Burger King, McDonalds, Tesco (kind of the UK version of Walmart), BP, etc.  You don't see much of this in Germany or Holland, or in Scandanavia, and the Western European countries have been pretty quick to take advantage of the economic weakness of the former Soviet Bloc nations to spread this viral form of capitalism. 

The first Polish show was in Wroclaw, the former Breslau (Germany).  Driving in it seemed pretty typically Polish to me, many of the buildings were pretty run down and in a state of disrepair, at least from outward appearances, and it seemed to be dirtier, or maybe just more grimy(?) than the average city in Germany.  I say this only as an observation, and without judgment, because Poland has had quite a few obstacles to overcome in the past hundred years.  The show was in a squat (now legal to some degree) tucked in a giant courtyard (like the size of a football field or something) formed by a block of 100 year old buildings.  It was actually a courtyard inside of a courtyard.  We had to drive the van through one tunnel-like gateway and then through another to get to the squat.  I should have taken pictures to illustrate all of this because if you don't know how old European cities are built its kind of hard to imagine.  Anyway, the show was pretty good, though I spent a lot of time when the bands were playing working on "business" - checking email and getting some stuff done that I hadn't had a chance to take care of.  I got back to the area where the bands were playing in time to catch Anchor's set.  I had put up my merch and then taken off,  and a bunch of people were wanting to buy stuff.  I ended up selling a good amount of RISEN shirts in Poland, which was nice to see, we had alwas gotten a really positive response there.  I was also told numerous times that people were disappointed that we had to cancel the tour, and that everyone hoped we would be back in the near future.  Hopefully it will happen.

After loading everything out from the show a few of us decided to go walk around the town for a bit.  This included a friend of mine who booked the Risen show in his hometown on our last tour, so it was cool to see him again (along with the other Polish kids I had met last time) and go hang out.  When we walked to the downtown area I got a totally different impression of the city.  The downtown was beautiful, and reminded me a lot of downtown/ old city Erfurt and even Vienna a bit.  Awesome city square and beautiful buildings.  It was nice to see that they made it through war unlike many Polish cities (like Warsaw) that were 90% destroyed.  Walked to the central station and got a sandwhich (which I didn't really like) and back, to the venue where we were sleeping that night, which was unfortunate because it was pretty filthy.  Filthy in a "I can hang out here for a while" way, also in a "I'd rather not sleep on this floor way".

We also met up with Robert of Refused Records, who booked the Polish shows for the tour, and who released the 12" vinyl version of the Anchor CD.  I knew him from the past as well, and he also booked the Risen shows in Poland on our last tour.

In addition, of all things the squat had a ping pong table, Ben and I played a number of games again, and I did better this time than last, even with an injured wrist.  Of courseNoa then won the international USA vs. Sweden tournament by beating me (after I took out Claes), and Ben as well.  Bastard.  Its one of those things where I love competing and I don't mind playing people better than me (I'd rather do that than play someone I am much better than), but I'm still not a big fan of losing either.  If nothing else I feel like I was a lot better this second set of games, probably just takes a little time to get un-rusty.  Hopefully there will be more of those opportunities as the tour progresses.








June 2 - Kolbuszowa
We left pretty early from Wroclaw to head to the next show, in Kolbuszowa, wich was supposed to be a 4 hour (or so) drive.  Well, thats not how it turned out.  We were driving through the Polish country side, and actually was going pretty well - we were trucking along on a fairly new highway, I was driving, and then out of nowhere, the van just started losing power.  It was pretty confusing, we were climbing an incline, which usually slows the van down anyway, and I kept trying to down shift into a gear that worked, but something was just off.  So I pulled off the side of the road, and to make a long story short we sat there for about four hours on the side of a highway.  This time was spent making phone calls to Frederick's auto insurance, calling the promoter at the venue, talking to the tour manager, and haggling with the tow truck drivers that stopped to see if we needed service.  Over all it was a pain in the ass and the band ended up spending around 150 Euro's for a tow to the venue, about a two hour drive.  The band ended up riding in a car with one guy, who had t make a "short stop" and was supposed to arrive at the venue a good deal of time before Robert and I, who rode in the tow truck with an old Polish guy.  It turns out that the "short stop" the car made included the guy going to his house, taking a shower, picking up his wife/girlfriend, and picking up a GPS and a car stereo.  In the end we all got there, at the same time, just in time for Anchor to laod in and play the show.  THe crowd wasa pretty enerjetic, as it had been when Risen played there on our last tour as well.  I also met a couple of guys I met on the last tour, including the promoter, which was awesome.

I was pretty happy to pee (I had been holding it for like two hours) and to put some food in my stomach.  I was pretty stoked to see that there was a ton of sauerkraut with vegan sausage and some other vegan breaded patties, along with bread waiting for us.  It seemed strange to me that Davin had never seen/eaten sauerkraut before, since it was a pretty common dish at my house when I was growing up.  Anyway, it was good shit, and the girl who prepared it for us was just super awesome.  We also ended up staying at her home that night, which was a really nice place right on the outskirts of the village.  We all got a comfy place to sleep and then an awesome breakfast in the morning as well, and our hostess continued to be awesome.  Of course I'm terrible at names, and I have forgotten almost everyone's name in Poland except for the few people I knew before.  I mean i recognize everyone when I see them, but its always hard for the names to stick when I only hear it once or twice, and its in a different language.  Maybe I suck.  Anyway, the food, shower and hospitality was great.  Pretty funny that it was the second time I was in this town and there was a problem with the band getting to the show on time.

Also, while we were waiting to get towed I discovered that one of my anchors had become infected, and then started bleeding a little.  I'll blame that on overnight drives, lack of reliable showers, and sleeping on the floor at a filthy squat in Poland.  First thing I did when arriving in Kolbuszowa, well, after peeing for like five minutes, was to find a bathroom and wash and soak my piercing a bit.  That seemed to take care of the problem.

Another good thing is that the swelling seemed to have gone down and there waas way less pain in general.

The next day we had to wait in town for the van to get diagnsed and repaired, I was expecting a fairly hefty bill, thinking that the problem was related to the white smoke coming out of the exhaust.  Fortunately the problem was that we broke a belt, and the repair was pretty quick and not too expensive, another 150 EUR, and we were back on the road towards Warsaw in the early afternoon.

Another little thing that happened at the show itself was that a couple of the guys from Kingdom tried to catch me in some sort of a "booyaah".  They had been reading an interview I did with another band a long time ago, and the interview touched on the subject of abortion.  Because in the interview I said that I thought life begins at conception that I was coming from some Pro-Life stance, and had a "gotcha!" attitude about it.  Too bad its a bad idea to make assumptions like that, though I do (as a rational position) believe that life begins at conception (I mean any other point would be completely arbitrary) I didn't and don't attach any inherent moral significance to that.  That my friends is a booyaah reversal.  It annoys me when people think they know more about my opinions, past or present, than I do.  At the very least I feel like I'm a pretty approachable person, and they could have just said "hey were you pro-life at any point".  Then I would have told then I had not been.


June 3 Warsaw
The first thing I noticed when driving into Warsaw (and this was apparently because I was asleep when we passed all of the prostitutes along the road) was that it looked like a pretty modern city.  If I rememberr correctly there has been a pretty significant UK business presence in the city since the fall of the "communist" state, and I saw a lot of signs in English, though they were all business related.  The city has that modern look because it is one of those that was about 90% destroyed in the battles of WWII, between the German invasion, the rebellions against German rule, and the eventual "liberation".  This means that there isn't much left that you would find in many old European cities.  It has also been built with automobile traffic in mind, with wide streets and plenty of open space around the buildings.  There were a few remnants of the old Warsaw remaining, but they were few and far between.
90% destroyed.







The show was less than I was expecting, especially it is the hometown of Refused Records, and the show served as a LP release show for Anchor, I think only 60 or so people paid.  Another U$ band played as well, Let Down, who didn't seem too thrilled about the show in general, or being in Europe for the most part.  Maybe they were just having a bad day, but I kind of feel like a lot of US bands show how spoiled they are when it comes to playing in Eastern Europe.  One thing that ruled about the show was the food, we had some kick ass pasta with veggies (never had pea pods and carrots in pasta before, but it was good), some bread, a round ball of something that was fucking awesome (a kofta maybe), and I decided to also buy an extra battered, deep-fried kebab with a bunch of veggies.  Also awesome.

Its nice that I keep getting people telling me that they wished Risen was on the tour, and hoping that we will be coming in the future again.  I've especially been getting a lot of that in Eastern Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, all places we played a lot in the past.

After the show we drove out of the city to a "suburb" on the South side of the city.  By "suburb" I mean it was an area filled with the typical giant apartment buildings built during the Soviet era in Poland, East Germany, and the Czech Republic, to name a few.  Robert's flat was on the first floor, and was typipcally small compared to U$ or Western European housing standards, showing  areal economy of space.  The inside was paneled all over in a rich golden wood paneling, which seems to be a traditional kind of interior decoration that so far I have only seen in Poland.  I also discovered that Robert would have no farting in the house.  Oops.  Thats a pretty rough demand to make on touring bands, but he seemed a little up tight about it, different strokes I guess.  I refrained from any gassy-ness for the time we were there, though the other guys did indulge.  It was actually a pretty quick stay, and we left pretty early for the long drive to Prague the next morning.

Also turns out that I accidentally left a box of CDs with Robert when the van was unloaded, sucks because people have been asking for the Birthright discography, and I sold allof the ones I had in the other boxes.  Lame.

Here I would like to pause and talk about feet for a minute, with the context of touring in mind.  RIght now the van stinks.  It stinks like banana peels and stinky shoes.  It  stinks like sweaty dudes and sour-smelling clothes that have been worn on stage too many days in a row.  It stinks like the decaying food items in the trash bags.  But most of all it smells like Claes and Marcus's feet.  I don't know what babrbarian decided it was acceptable to continually wear tight-fitting shoes without socks in extremely humid and sweaty environments (like being on stage), thus creating a vile petri-dish of bacteria, but fuck, the shit is repugnant.  At this point its hard for me to believe that either of them can even live with that kind of stench eminating from thier own body.  It is seriously the worst thing ever.  We experienced a similar experrience with Allan on the last Risen tour, but after some badgering he took care of it to an extent, I'm hoping the same will happen here as well.  Marcus told me that if my feet didn't stink by this time of the tour that I wasn't human.  I then offered my foot up to him for odor innspection, guess I'm some kind of alien.  Orrrrrrrr, maybe I just wear socks with my shoes.  I don't know why I think it smells so wretched, but it definitely takes me back to the smell of my sister's feet on family road trips when we were younger, the shit was out of control.

May 30-31
Back to the Fatherland.

HAMBURG
Thusday night we were back in Germany, after an all-night drive and ferry ride from Sweden.  Once we landed on the German mainland the drive was fairly short and we were in Hamburg early enough in the day to hang out a bit in the city, which is always awesome.  Once we got to the venue I realized I had been there before, when I was on tour with Point of No Return in 2003.  At that time the area the club was in (its a long-standing squat - and in case anyone doesn't know that means its an abandoned building that has been "illegally" occupied) was a pretty scary place.  There were drunks and junkies wandering around and the whole area around thee squat was kind of deserted or filled with sketchy people.  On the first trip we even left sommeone in the van while the band played just to make sure no one tried to break in and steal anything, and the show was one of the worst on tour, attended mostly by drunks and gutter punks.  Five years later was quite a contrast.  The area seems to be pretty happening now, lots of shops and people out on the street, at least one vegetarian restaurant and even a two ice cream shops within a few blocks that had a few different varieties of vegan ice cream.  Booyaah.  The club was pretty much as I remembered it, with the addition of a small skate park/bowl in the back.  Have I mentioned I wish I would have brought my skateboard yet?    So we just kind of hung out and walked around a bit, Went to a really over-priced record store, and just kind of enjoyed a small portion of Germany's second largest city.


(the Squat/ venue for the evening)

As I was standing by the venue I looked across the street and saw a familiar face.  This always seems to happen to me somewhere in Europe - randomly meeting up with someone I never expected to see.  This time it is an old acquaintance of mine named Christian.  He was an exchange studentat my highschool a few years after I graduated, and hung out with a few of my friends at the time.  Turns out he was now living in Hamburg and working as a lawyer, and was in the area for the show that night.  He treated me to some vegan ice cream from the shop across the street and we hung out and talked for a while.  Awesome to see him.  I'm pretty bad at keeping in touch with people, I realize this, but its always awesome to see them and  catch up, especially people who I just always thought were genuine and sincere. He invited me back to hang out and stay at his place if time permits, depending on how things go with the end of the tour and getting in contact with my other friends from Eastern Germany.


(just looking down the street)

The show was pretty good, if nothing else it was another night of fucking awesome food, which is always a highlight  for me.  It consisted of a salad with an incredible creamy dressing, a bowl  of yummy soup, then a plate of cous cous, seasoned and fried tofu and mixed baked veggies topped off with a nice sauce of some kind.  Damn, that shit was good. I asked for the recipe of the salad dressing, but the guy forgot to give it to me before the end of the night. Only three bands playing this night, but there was a really good crowd - not very energetic, and not much dancing or anything going on, but still a good amount of people there to see the bands, which is always nice.  All in all it was a lot different than the last show I saw in Hamburg.  While watching Anchor I noticed my name written on a pillar at the club, and realized I had put it there five years ago, pretty funny.  I decided to add to it again this time.  I also had a little (pointless, unnecessary, and needless- especially considering the circumstances of this tour - in my opinion) static with one of the members of the one of the other bands.  It was pretty surprising to me, but oh well.



Stayed with a friend of Anchor's that night, well, i slept in the  van with Noa, which wasn't too comfortable.  I did get a nice shower in the morning, which tends to fix most things in my world.


BLANKENBURG
Next day was another short drive so we spent a little more time in  Hamburg before heading out.  Today's drive takes us into my favorite area of Germany, the Turingia region.  Its a part of the former East Germany and isn't far (30 min) from Nordhausen, where I spent a lot of time in the past.  The country side is a lot of fields and woodland over rolling hills, gradually rising into some low mountains in the middle of Germany, its awesome to be driving and having a 360 degree view of forest.  Indescribable.  When we sarted driving into the town where we were playing it was really easy too tell wee were in what used to be Eastern Germany.  The tell-tale signs include lots of abandoned buildings - including huge factory buildings and warehouses - and just a general feeling of depopulation.  Its painfully obvious that the town once supported a much greater population.  Another key markerr of East Germany  are the tenement houses built during the communist regime, in stark contrast to the older housing areas, the club (which seems to have once been a restaurant of some kind) was near a collection of these, filled with some pretty typically working-class East German people, who didn't seem so amused by our presence.

We played a lot with a little kids ball (Winnie the Pooh) that Claes found in Hamburg.  It was fun.

It was a friday night, so I was hoping for a decent show witha good turn out, the last shows I had been to in the area (home to Maroon and Heavan Shall Burn) were pretty well attended and were great shows.  Not the case here, it was more of a "something to do on Friday night" type thing for locals, and not a whole lot of kids from other towns inthe surrounding area.  The guy who put on the show was pretty disappointed about this as well, but sometimes you get what you get.  Seemed like most of the people there were reallly there just to hang out and drink beer, the music being pretty secondary.  Another lowlight of the show was the UK band that played - seemed like ok dudes, but I've heard more than enough of the Blacklisted wannabe style bands with the scream-singy parts.  Not to mention that they had a pretty offensive shirt design that consisted of a woman masturbating with a ball gag  in her mouth, and bleeding profusely from her vagina (from what I could tell).  I don't know why bands think that kind of shit is even remotely acceptable, and I'm glad Kingdom confronted them about it (and they removed the shirt, though I'm sure they are going to sell it other places).

Slept in the van again that night, for the second night in a row, I don't really mind it that much, and on tour it can be a great escape when the time comes (and it always does) that you are a little cranky and need some personal space, or don't want to deal with the hassle of figuring out where everyone is sleeping, or trying to get some sleep when others are talking.  Got up pretty early in the morning, had a pretty good breakfast, and another nice shower (the house everyone stayed inwas pretty nice and had two shower rooms, a rarity for most European homes).  We hung out a bit and were off on another short drive further East, to a venue in FOrst, Germany, which is fairly close to the Polish border, and pretty close to Cottbus, where Risen played on our last tour here.


FORST
Another great drive through the German countryside.  These drives in Germany are really triggering some strong nostalgia for me, and a desire to come backand spend some time in the area again.  I'm getting bitten by the "maybe I should mve to Germany" bug again hard.  There are so many small towns herer that are still close to cool places, and where there are abundant buildings that could be fixed up and occupied, plus rent is really cheap because of the low occupancy rate.  And the scenery is just incredible, pretty ideal for me.  I was driving a few hours today, I love the drive, through all of the small villages, and through pretty large forested areas - again being able to look around me in a circle and seeing forests on every horizon is amazing.  Its a lot different than Indiana where the predominate landscape feature is fields.

When we pulled into the club (another squat-type place) I realized that I had also been here before with Point of No Return in 2003.  That show wasn't a good one, so I was a little apprehensive about this one as well.  We had somme time to wait before our food was ready and loading in so wee just hung out in the courtyard where teh venue was located, played with the ball that Claes (pronounced "Clause", like Santa) acquired somehow in Hamburg, and dreamed of having an internet connection.  That is, until the food arrived.  Damn, it was another good night for food: pasta salad with yellow bell peppers and pickles (its a German thing) some grilled tofu and veggies on a stick, two kinds of pizza (I went with the red bell pepperr and mushroom one, my favorite combo ever) and an awesome pan of a pastry made with a lot of slivered almonds as a sweet topping, pretty sure I had like four pieces of that.  It was awesome.

The show itself was pretty good, the bands played well and the sound was (as usual in European clubs) really good.  People take doing sound in small venues there pretty seriously and the bands get soundchecks and the cabs and drums are generrally mic'd, this is in contrast to most small US venues where you basically get a (shitty) PA for the vocals and thats about it.  I tried to get a Karamel Malt Bier (its a non-alcoholic malt drink), I hadn't had one for a long time, and I was in East Germany, so the time was right obviously - unfortunately they were out of the Karamel flavor.  Bastards, thats the only one I really like, its not as bitter (and beer-like in flavor) as the other varieties.  No big whoop, but it would have been nice.

The down-side of this show is that while I was taking pics of Anchor a random German mosher hit me super hard in the wrist (I was not participating in the mosh) and it immediately felt fucked up, as in something in my wrist was popping, along with some pain.  Glad I didn't drop the camera.  It also turns out that I knew the people who booked the show.  We had met briefly at the last Gather show in Berkeley, and they had sent me some photos of Risen and Gather from the show.  Good to see them again.

As it had started getting dark and people were showing up at the show I also noticed some search-light type things that were pretty close, and I knew this meant one thing - there was a disco, or dance party going on that night (a Saturday) somewhere near us, the next town over at the furthest.  I asked aroound a bit and it turned out that it was actually just a few blocks away, so I spent a while trying to round up people to go hit it up with me, loving the German Discotheke as I do.  Unfortuantely the Swedes are all talk about partying and none of them were down for the adventure, so it ended up being me, and Dave and Davin from Kingdom.  We were told that admission since would probably be pretty cheap or free because it was already so late.  When we arrived I tried to play the "I'll just walk right in like I belong here" game, the burly German security guards weren't having it, and it turns out that they weere still charging 5 Euros to get in even though it was already 2am, or possibly later.  So we didn't pay, and walked back out to the parking lot to figure out what wee wanted to do.  I was in favor of just trying to talk to the admissions guy and tell him we were Americans on tour without any Euros in our pockets and see if they might just let us in free.  We decided to see if we could find a back way into the place (it was beng held in an old/unused industrial area) and Dave succeeded in finding a door that we entered.  We followed a hallway and came to a door that was cracked open to allow poweer cables to pass through, for the sound and lighiting system, blocked off by a couple of couches.  The couches had people on them, but we just decided to go through the cracked door anyway.  And before us lay the East German techno party (not a rave, just a huge dance party).  It was actually outdoors in a courtyard formed by the industrial buildings, and had a pretty big light system and a crazy sound system as well.  I'm guessing there were at least 500 people there, possibly more, it was pretty hard to tell.  It may seem strange that there was this big dance party going on in a small partially deserted East German town, but its fairly common, and events like this draw a lot of people from all of the surrounding towns and villages. Davin was there to dance and she pretty much led us onto the dance area immeiately.  I was kind of more in the mood for people watching, so I alternated between hanging with those two and walking around and finding a place to chill for a few minutes.  At one point a buff drunk German dude asked me for a cigarette, and ten he realized I was from the US and started talking to me in the few phrases he had, and offered me some of his beer.  I think his main concern was to make sure I realized that there wee lots of hot girls there.  Anyway, I loved it.  I don't know what it is about German Discos, or going to the Vogue for that matter, but I really like seeing people out in that environment, especially here where the focus actuallly seemed to be on the music and dancing, and not necessarily just the alcohol which seems to be the main point in the US clubs I have been too.  I didn't do much dancing, I think I probably need a couple of girls there to goad me into it, that seems to be the only formula that has worked in past.  Wish I would have had my camera with me.  I don't know what time it was when we finally decided to sneak our wayback out, but it was definitely starting to get light out, and the party was still going fairly strong - both there and at the venue, where we were also sleeping.  I was ready for bed though and got to my cot and settled in only to realize that one of the guys in another band that played that night snored to extent that it sounded like he was going to suffocate in his sleep.

In the morning we had some breakfast and then decided to go to a public pool for a couple of hours before driving to our first (of three) shows in Poland.  It was a good time, though I concentrated on writing in the blog rather than swimming, definitely wasn't hot enough for me to feel like i wanted to strip down.  It was a cool pool though, especially for a small community - high dives and a pretty good sized water slide, a hot tub/jacuzi, ping pong tables (too bad you had to bring your own ball and paddles), and just a nice park-like atmosphere in the non-pool areas with plenty of trees to chill under.

Bad news is that my wrist was swollen and pretty much unusable by the morning as well.

May 29
Wow, it's really the 29th?  I've got a couple of days to fill in it looks like.  We just sat down (well, I'm about to sleep on the floor) on the ferry we are taking from Sweden back to Germany to continue the tour in mainland Europe (as in our dates in Scandanavia are over and done).  Sweden has been mixed as far as the shows have gone, one was really awesome, one totally sucked, and the other was just ok.  I'm still a little sick, but my fever broke and now I'm left with a nice sinus infection, awesome.  Also we just finished up another all-night drive leaving the show last night around midnight.  The ferry is going to be a six hour trip across the Baltic Sea (if I remember my geography correctly), landing in Rostock, then we have another hour or so to drive to Hamburg.

Lets see if I can remember all that happened in the past few days.

NORWAY - SWEDEN (Gothenburg)
Drove all night from Stavanger, Norway to get to Gothenburg, Sweden for the first of three Swedish shows.  I was anticipating a pretty good show there since its Anchor's hometown.  Apparently the scene and shows there are pretty hit or miss.  The show was in another Youth Center in the downtown area/shopping district of the city.  The turn out wasn't that great, but the show was ok, pretty much your standard fare.  A metal band from Italy, The End of 6000 Years, played as well.  They were pretty good, but not really my style - these days I  really only dig metal that reminds me of vikings or shit like Turmoil that just makes me want to burn down an entire city.  The food was decent, but I honestly don't really rememberr what it was at this point.  Neither good enough or shitty enough to be noteworthy.  Anchor sounded awesome as usual, the more I see this band the more excited I get about them being part of the label.  Just awesome dudes, and kick ass, sincere music.  I was a little disappointed that the merch was set up on a pool table.  Well, it was a billiards table, but at this stage of my pool wiithdrawal I would dgladly settle for playing billiards, or bumperr pool for that matter.

After the show we stayed at Mattias's flat on the outskirts of the city.  We had a good time snacking and drinking tea after wee got settled in for the night a little.  I don't know what it is about toasted bread that makes it one of the great joys of life, but that shit is damn tasty.  I ended up sleeping on the sofa in the kitchen that night and woke up pretty soaked in sweat more than once from my fever breaking, which was a good thing, even if it wasn't much fun.  The morning brought a nice, long and long-needed shower, breakfast and a drive to Stckholm, our next tour stop.
There were no meatballs, Swedish or otherwise.


STOCKHOLM

(I took this pic, pretty sweet huh?)

Stockholm is a beautiful city in the way that only the European cities that weren't obliterated in one of the World Wars can be.  The city itself is built on a series of islands on the east coast of Sweden.  This is probably getting repatetive, but I think its really hard to appreciate the feeling of being in a European city without actually experiencing it.  I keep trying to describe it but for the most part words fail me.  Anyway, its awesome, hopefully including a few photos will help a little.  I get real enjoyment just walking around the streets in the shopping district, people-watching, and just soking in the environment.  

The show was at a really awesome anarchist/politically focused cafe called Kafe 44. It close to the city center, and right down the block from a nice skate park (which pretty much every community in Europe seems to have).  This was probably the 2,153 time I wished I had brought my board with me instead of being a poseur.  Anyway the venue kicked ass, and its been in the city since 1990 or so.  Markus's girlfriend Julia (that's "Yoo-lia" it seems that English-speakers are teh only ones to pronounce a "j" as we do.  this reinforces my theory that English is pretty much a language based on the mispronouncing of words from other languages) was in charge of providing food for the bands, and it was great.  I have been told its a vegan version of a traditional Swedish dish that roughly translates into "Wild Stew", which would normally feature moose or reindeer meat.  We atee it served over rice with a salad on the side.  I also had a soy chai latte which was pretty nice as well.  The owner of the venue also made fresh cinnamon roll type pastries.  Yum.

The show itself was also pretty awesome, the crowd was super energetic, and there was a good amount of actual hardcore kids there, as opposed to many of the shows so far where a good number of people just seemed to random kids that wanted something to do in their area that night.  Not that that is a big problem, it just gives a different atmosphere for a show.  Stockholm felt like a real hardcore show, and people showed a lot of support for Anchor, who played well of course.  I also met up with a Myspace friend at the show, Malin, who presented me with a tiara (there was supposed to be a ping pong match before i was to wear it, but that didn't happen).  It was cool to meet her in person andd hang out for a bit.  There were also a bunch of kids with these sweet "Stockholm vegan straight edge" shirts, I need to get one of those - I think its really cool to collect regional stuff like that.  Remnds me that we need to get our Broad Ripple straight edge shirts made.

We stayed at Julia's parent's house in the suburbs thhan night, it was pretty posh, a really nice European house, had a sauna too.  I didn't use it, but it was nice to see and seemed typically Swedish for some reason.  In the morning we got up, had some breakfast and drove back into the city to meet up with Kingdom to hang out in the city a bit before driving on to the next (and last) Swedish show.  We basically walked to the city center and eventually stumbled across a veggie restaurant, where we partook in a pretty sweet vegan buffet for lunch.  I ate too much and then split a piece of raspberry "pie" with Markus, it ruled.




OREBRO
This was definitely the shittiest date of the tour so far, for a number rof reasons.  First of all when we got there I just had the feeling that no one was going to show up, even the promoter was an hour late, maybe a little more.  That was problem number one.  Number two was that the venue (just some bar)  really had no idea what was going on, and were preparing to supply us with a bunch of meat for food.  It ended up that we got some pasta instead.  Well, it was pasta with a sauce made mostly from ketchup, curry-ketchup actually.  This may seem strange, but in reality many Europeans are underr the false impression that ketchup is an acceptable substitute for a real tomato sauce.  I'm usually a pretty open-minded guy, but in this respect I can tell you that they are just plain wrong.  I mean I've had worse, but this wasn't good in any way, besides just filling us up a little.  The next part of the disaster that this date was becoming was that the promoter left without telling anyone, and the club informed us that their understanding was that they were getting all of the door money, and the bands weren't getting paid at all.  The promoter had told the bands that they would be getting 3000 Kr, which is about 300 Euros.  Basicaally the promoter sucks ass, realized the show was going to suck and skipped out so he didn't have to deal with bands on tour who were angry about him not doing his job.  Bottom line is that the dude was a dick.  Well, I'm sure he still is a dick, i doubt it was a one time thing.  Basically we had a shitty show with ten people, shitty food and no money.  Then we follwed that awesome, life-changing experience with another all-night drive to the ferry on the coast to Germany, arriving about 8 am or so.


More random bullshit:
It stayed light in Sweden until seriously like 11:00 pm.  Actually it never really seemed like it got fully dark at all.  Shit is crazy.

Sweden and Scandanavia in general also really let me down in respect to the amount of blondes I saw walking around.  Popular culture has lead me to believe that I would be met with hordes of Aryan-looking people everywhere, which turned out to not be the case at all. Bummer time, these people need to get on their game or something, the least they can do is TRY to live up to the stereotypes.

I realized that the problem with my power converter is that I'm not supposed to be using it at all, and should just be using a small plug adaptor instead.  Duh.  I had one of those at one time but was given the (false) impression by the chauncey at Radio Shac that I needed the $30 converter, not what turned out to be a $3.00 plug adaptor.  Bullshit.

I'm still sick.  Sinus infections can pretty much suck it, I can never get them to really go away without some anti-biotics, and of course I have some at home but didn't bring them with me.  I'll call that bullshit too.

At one point I had a short conversation with the guys in Anchor (who I'm traveling with) about them speaking Swedish to each other instead of English.  It was pretty understanding of them to bring it up with me, and they were concerned that I would feel left out of conversations or whatever.  I told them that it would be kind of silly for five Swedes to speak English all of the time just because I was around and didn't speak Swedish.  I'm the outsider here and I'm not such a typical American that I have some expectation that everyone has to speak English in my presence.  I mean of course it would be nice if I always understood what was being said between them and was in on more conversations, but I don't see it as their responsibility to accomodate me.  Word.

More pics of Norway: