During our first few hours of tour, we had to wait for our friend Lina while she met with her professor.
Creaky Boards took a weary but giddy lap near her university.
Michael and I were snapping lots of photos.
We came across a strange display in an Apotheke window (a pharmacy). It was a row of small stuffed animals; blobby, cute blue creatures with long noses. He was the mascot of a German medical cream. His name was Lino.
It was here that Michael and I exercised our first bit of photography restraint. After all, everything looks exciting and new when you first get off the plane, but you can't just go taking photographs of everything.
When our rental van ended up being a monstrous blue mammoth, it didn't take long for us to affectionately name it Lino. "After that weird blue creature in the Apotheke windows," we explained to inquiring Germans.
Strangely, Lina had never heard of Lino. As the tour progressed, we realized that no Germans had heard of Lino.
"We'll keep looking in all the Apotheke windows in every town and were bound to find him, eventually," we planned. But town after town, Lino was nowhere in sight.
Our band became mildly obsessed with Lino. His elusiveness magnified his mystique. As our final show in Berlin drew closer, we vowed to return to the now legendary Apotheke window, track down our tour's guardian spirit, buy him, and bring him home.
The band piled into the van along with Lina, Nico and Ann. We drove across Berlin and to the university. Driving, we retraced that same jetlagged path we had walked 17 days earlier on foot. It seemed like a longshot, but with each turn of the corner, to our delight we realized we were right on track, recalling our route exactly. Our anticipation was boiling. Classical music playing on the radio seemed to perfectly mimic our mood.
Lino The Van pulled up to Lino the Medical Mascot's window. There was no sign of him. Over the 17 days, a new promotional season had began in the Apotheke world. Lino's window display had been replaced. The Apotheke was locked.
Lino, too, was to remain in our imaginations, in our misty memories.
As a splendid surprise, our dramatic moment of Lino disappointment was captured on video and posted on youtube today.