‘What stays on the road, happens on the road.’

Germany-Austria-Czech tour October 2008.

I pack my touring bag, kiss the girl goodbye and leave for Amsterdam Central Station. Tomorrow we’re going to leave on tour and I still have to get back to Limburg tonight. Looking forward to being on the road again for a few days.

Thursday October 9.

Heerlen hometown on a Thursday morning. Nothing much to do but buying the shit you need and get going again. I make a quick stop at the guitar shop that has been providing me bass-strings and stuff like that for almost ten years now. I buy an autobahnvignet for on the Austrian autobahn. Yes. Punkrockbands need those as well. We all meet up at the Oefenbunker and load in the van. Heading towards Germany!

After a good drive without any problems and interrupted only by a couple of coffee-and-cigarette-breaks we arrive at the Juz in Mannheim pretty early. But next to the venue is a funfair going on. Especially Ruud is pretty stoked about that. Since we don’t have anything really to do and the venue is still closed we decide to walk around a bit, check out some cool stuff at the funfair and apply PROGRESS stickers to pretty much everything in sight. Still wondering what’s going to happen tonight since we’re not supposed to actually play this show. We were supposed to play a show in another German town called Pirmasens but apparently the local authorities decided to shut the show down really last minute. Which, of course, sucks big floppy donkey dick. After consulting my friend Tom (SMASH THE STATUES) I got a hold of the address of Litty, tonight’s promoter. He couldn’t really let us play anymore since everything was really last minute but he was kind enough to put us on the guestlist for tonight’s show and to provide us with food and sleeping places. A great help as well, because tomorrow we’re playing München and now we’re at least almost in Baden Württemberg. And besides. Touring is all about food. So we’re really stoked about that.

Back at the venue the organizers of the show have finally arrived. We hang around a bit. Talk nonsense. Play football. But nobody seems to be soundchecking, loading out, setting up gear. Nothing at all is happening right now. And it’s already half past eight or so. It doesn’t really take long to convince the promoter to let us play the show haha. Kind of obvious. First band was supposed to start an hour later while we are doing nothing at all with full backline waiting in the van. It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to figure out that it would be possible to play a short set right fucking now. So we start loading out our gear like maniacs. I seriously never seen anyone building up a backline and doing a soundcheck so quickly. We play a solid set in front of some German people who are slowly but gradually arriving at the venue. But. Fuck the show, bring on the food. We played in a café-like venue and we eat (and will sleep tonight) in a bigger hall in the same Juz. Hungry as hell after playing a show without having dinner – we are surprised by the total awesome awesomeness of the vegan goulash we get to eat tonight. Baked, spicy potatoes, big chunks of paprika and peach or cherry pudding for desert. Boah. Even the non-vegetarians in the band are pretty enthusiastic about the food. Except for Ruud as he decides to eat nothing at all for some strange reason. But this man does suffer from a serious funfair fetish so we find ourselves running around on that pretty soon again. Tom and me visit the spookhuis while the alpha-males of the band drive around in go-karts. It wasn’t that scary. Tom was too sissy and scared of heights to join us for a roller-coaster ride though. Back at the Juz SOLID GROUND from Switzerland just kicked off their set. A bit TERROR a bit MADBALL. Quality hardcore but not that spectacular. So Et and me decide it is actually time to start getting drunk. Because that was our intention tonight. Ruud decides to join us. Which is a bit strange since he never ever drinks. So. When the next band called BLEED INTO ONE starts off their first song I quickly notice an drunken Ruud bouncing around the moshpit like an idiot. A bit later Ruud introduces us to the concept of buying reservebieren. Which means buying way too much beer and putting it in the van. Just in case you get thirsty during the night. Right on bro! We throw our mattresses and sleeping bags onto the stage and prepare for the night. Except for Ruud who wants to sleep in the van for some odd reason and is blathering on about incomprehensible bullshit while drinking his reservebieren. But is has been a long day for all of us, so after being charged by Max and Et with actual swords they apparently found in the basement, I hit the sack as well. Goodnight Mannheim.

Friday October 10.

After waking up to the sound of Ruud screaming hooooeeeereeeeeee and blaming us for his hangover we decide to fix up a nice jar of coffee. We chill out for a bit, talking about inspiring subjects like putting your drummer on a stick, the fact that driving from Heerlen to Pirmasens and back would be exactly 666 kilometres (that must be the evilest evil we have ever eviled) or the dangers of anal sex (don’t even ask). After a while Litty shows up, providing us with an awesome breakfast. Awesome. Max gets his ass kicked in yet another swordfight by a local hero called Rambo Ralph while me and Tom check out the infoladen which is located in the venue as well. I walk out of there wearing a newly bought GOOD RIDDANCE hoody and a pile of cool fanzines. Reading material for during the ride to München.

We drive into Bavaria and are pulled over by the cops like immediately. Driving an army van filled with touring gear proudly sporting Dutch license plate is indeed enough for German cops to conclude that we must have drugs on us. Which is not the case because we forced Ruud to smoke everything before we left. Max emerges out of the pinkeltest victorious and we continue our journey to the south of this beautiful country. Driving into München during sunset we load out at Kafe Marat immediately. Yet another left-wing Antifa venue. Cool! We set up the merch and start jamming on some new songs backstage. But. As said before. Touring is basically about food. Today, we eat vegan chilli. Awesome. The other band playing tonight is MAGDALENE – a really awesome Italian screamo band. The German punx aren’t that excited about the band though. A bit sceptical we start our set and the place suddenly explodes. People singing along, nice circlepits and total mayhem during the 7 SECONDS cover. Awesome show, awesome vibe. We hang out with our new Italian friends and some local blonde chicks. I have a nice conversation with tonight’s promoter Will about the social aspects of DIY hardcorepunk and about German punkrock bands nobody knows outside of Germany. Break down the walls. After load-in we leave for a nightly search for a safe parking place so nobody will have to sleep in the van. We all crash pretty early in the hall of the student-house Will is living in. Goodnight München.

Saturday, October 11.

I wake up because of Will’s roommates stumbling through the hall the next morning. I’m pretty enthusiastic about taking a nice shower and having a good breakfast, including lots of fruits and the legendary paprikaas. We say goodbye to Will and as soon as we leave München we drive into a nice stau. Ziemlich geil, oder? Gives us more than enough time to admire the nice view though. Europe can be so fucking beautiful. We’re heading for Austria and we can see the impressive scenery of the Alpes closing in. We drive into the Austrian mountains and enjoy ourselves at a playground near a gas-station and chill out near some beautiful mountain-lake somewhere. We arrive at the Triebwerk in Wiener Neustadt pretty early and are welcomed by our friends in SOEY – for whom we set up a show in The Hague last month during their euro tour. And because we all slept at Tommy’s place in The Hague that night but it was a weekday so everybody had the get up to get to work next morning we didn’t really have the chance for a good afterparty. Heino promised us that would be compensated on this night. Yes. Looking forward to getting wasted in Austria. Hirschi and his girlfriend have prepared a nice dinner and after a couple of beers in the backstageroom THE FRANTIC ARTS kick of their set. Good band and a singer who has some really weird facial expressions on stage. Our show went over well too. Responses were good. After that Brian (guitarist for New Jersey based hardcoreband GIVING CHASE) took the stage to play some nice acoustic songs. Good singer-songwriter stuff, including a Johnny Cash coversong, Everybody seemed to enjoy it, hanging around on the very comfortable couches which were put in front of the stage. Nice and intimate atmosphere! We pack up our stuff and head for the house where Harry and Zock (ASTPAI) live to have a good drinking session as promised. I mean, it IS Saturday evening. I’m trying to convince Walli to kiss Ruud wearing a goat-suit (has something to do with Ruud’s fascination with 37 mountain-goats I’m afraid..) while a real drunken Brian finished one third of a bottle of vodka in one shot after uttering the now infamous words: ‘Honey, you know I love you. Right?’. Good times. Around 5 or 6 in the morning everybody starts to pass out. Goodnight Wiener Neustadt. Awesome.

Sunday, October 12.

A little hung over we get up. We drink a cup of coffee with Walli and he says goodbye to us before he (probably) heads back to bed haha. On the road to the Czech Republic. We drive through beautiful Austria. Through yet another stau in Vienna. Through a little mountain-village called Wetzelsdorf (huhu). And through a collection of concrete in the best communist style called Brno. We’re heading for a small town called Tyniste nad Orlici that is somewhere near the Polish border in the north-eastern part of the Czech Republic. What the hell do I know about Czech geography anyway? We make a pitstop in a small Czech town to get great pizza and drinks for only like three or four euros. Fucking awesome. We continue our way over bumpy roads and through deep-dark forests. No traffic lights, no nothing. A punkrockband stares out of the van in total silence. Where the fuck are we going? When we drive into the village we have to play tonight we find out it is really small and that tonight’s venue, the Sepie Club, is located next to the police station. We walk into the club and get stared at by half a dozen tattooed Czech men. Nobody speaks English, there is no promoter to be found and I’m getting a real strange vibe here. After a while of hanging around outside the club, Marek (the promoter) shows up. He’s a really cool dude who speaks decent English since he has lived in NYC for a while. Nice. He explains that in Czech, the word ‘zlatnice’ means ‘jewellery’ – so that kinda means Et and me have been shouting ‘Jewellery! Jewellery!’ all day long. Nice to know. But we still don’t really know what to expect from this show. When we kick off the first songs all Czechs come up front and people seem to really like the music. Some singalongs, some dancing. Cool show after all. After the show some of guys attending the show explain to me in their best English that not that much bands come to tour this area of the world. For example, this guy is a big GOOD RIDDANCE fan and but he never got the chance to see that band live. Since we sound like them at times he saw us as the big touring band and really loved the show. We actually have to give out autographs and sign cd’s and rockstar shit like that. Awesome. We sell a lot of t-shirts, but that could also be because of the fact we sell shirts for 150 kronen each, which is a bit cheaper than clothing costs in Czech shops. Yes we are actually marketing geniuses. In the meantime Et has become friends with some of the tattooed Czech guys and the strong Czech liquor soon follows. Using a strange combination of broken English, some German words, the local green high-alcohol-percentaged drink simply called ‘Green’, absinth and a lot of incomprehensible Czech gibberish we manage to have some cool conversations with our newly made Czech friends. As soon as drunken Czech people (Honza you the man!) start falling of barstools it’s time for us to head over to the hotel. Yes we sleep in an actual hotel tonight. And a nice one too. I really do feel like a rockstar right now. We have some nice talks in the hotelroom while Et runs to the toilet to puke his stomach out. Nice one dude. Goodnight Tyniste nad Orlici.

Monday, October 13.

Day after. We leave at seven in the morning since we have to drive all the way back to the Netherlands today. We get some breakfast at a gas-station and drive off into the Czech mist for what will be a long drive of sixteen hours of being packed into a small van. Not feeling so rockstar now, huh. We have to drive all the way through Germany to get Tommy at Eindhoven central station at 10 pm – which is his last chance to catch a train to get home in time in The Hague in order to get to work the next morning. We make it to Eindhoven like ten minutes before his train leaves. Nice. We drive home to Limburg and I fall asleep immediately as soon as I hit the bed. Looking forward to seeing my girlfriend again tomorrow, telling her about all the crazy shit that happened on the road. Gotta love it. But for now. Goodnight Landgraaf.