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!