The drive to Austria was loooooonnnnnnnggggg.  Travel hint - when driving for 12 or more hours, make sure you get a vehicle with comfortable seats.  The truck we rented seated seven skinny people, but the seats didn't lean back at all.  Plus, we're not all skinny.  

Rich wins the "iron butt" award for driving the entire distance and not losing his mind.  He was up for about 24 hours, dealing with the whole madhouse.  

Austria is beautiful.  You're driving along a highway, not much to see, when suddenly this huge mountain appears in front of you, or to your left or right.  By the time we got here, it was early morning and raining heavily (which it continued to do all day).  When the rain slowed, it looked like the mountains were burning - tons of what looked like white smoke, which was in fact, fog and mist.  It was eerie and beautiful, and it's not hard to figure out why myths and legends are so easy to come by here.

We were supposed to play outside in the village square at Schladming, but the weather made that impossible.  Instead, we played inside a place called Papa Joes, where we were treated to free food, drinks, and a great crowd of enthusiastic people.  My voice is still not fully recovered, which meant I had to change some of the melodies and keys in order to hit the notes.  Even then, there were some pretty tough songs to get through.  The audience was understanding and supportive, and I drank about ten cups of hot tea throughout the performance.  Plus, the owner came over in the middle of the set with a tray of some sort of Schnapps, which we all drank after toasting the audience.  The next song after that, I was able to sing with no problem at all!  Odd...

We leave today for another gig about 2.5 hours from here.  There were six of us in the truck before, because our English agent, Cat, took the train down from Amsterdam.  Well, all seven of us will have to cram in for the ride, with Guzz and Joanne (and me) still coughing and sneezing, Rich starting to cough - our own little pneumonia factory.  Still, it's a great tour and we're having fun playing for everybody and meeting people.