Driving towards Rome for our gig in Santa Severa we thought that after being stuck
in the car for 3 days we may as well do a little recap of our past few weeks in
Europe.
The tour started about 3 weeks ago with a great little night in what could easily be the friendliest pub in London, the Hemmingford Arms... lots of jamming and singalongs and great people so we have to send big hugs and thanks to all the crew there!
We picked up our trusty tour bus, Bruce the Ford Escort and crawled through the Notting Hill carnival traffic to catch the Ferry, got reacquainted with the concept of driving a right hand drive car on the wrong side of the road and headed north to Holland.
Two of our favourite venues from earlier trips were Opus Four in Gorinchem, Netherlands (which by the way we still cant pronounce in any way that would possibly let any Dutch person understand what city we were talking about...), and
The Black Cat (or Le Chat Noir) in Cagnes-Sur-Mer (France), so we were stoked to play them both straight up and see so many familiar faces. Then it was off to Italy where we met up with our beautiful mates Brooke and Jimmi and Patti and Jack to spend the weekend together at the Musica A Fiorano Guitar Festival near Moderna. We played a show on Saturday night and then on Sunday spent the day wandering around the castle checking out the exhibitors and Julz jammed out on an amazing array of handcrafted instruments - she currently has a long christmas wish list of Weissenborn and slide guitars, ukuleles and other wonderful Italian things!
All excited with our great first week on the road we took some of the tour budget in to town for a day of shopping.
Perhaps we were not content with the amazing 95cent espressos that are available pretty much anywhere in Italy - including the outrageously popular roadside rest areas and service stations where the fashionable clientele would put any Double Bay cafe to shame - bus we decided it would be a good idea to purchase a coffee plunger, some Italian ground coffee and a bright pink thermos which we felt would pair up brilliantly with the 4 Euro immersion heater we had purchased the day before in afore mentioned service station.
Cue next morning, somewhere just before the Austrian border, sitting in Bruce after purchasing water (at service station prices) and milk (again - quite heavily overpriced) and ready to try out all our new toys ... a good 45 minutes later, the water was only just lukewarm and concerns were mounting over whether or not the car would start after draining the battery for so long. We thought maybe we would be better off hitting the road... after all the element would probably work better when the car was moving. Bruce the great took a few minutes to turn over but pretty soon were on the road,
crossed the border into Austria and still the water was lukewarm, at which point i figured it may be a good idea to check if the element was even hot at all, which much to my dismay it wasn't. By this time both Julz and I are desperate for a coffee, so we pull in to the next service station only to discover that, unlike the quality, the price of coffee has miraculously tripled between the Italian and Austrian borders and so we leave with our 5 Euros worth of coffee and without our immersion heater which found a resting place in the rubbish bin.
On the up side though, Pinky, our thermos has come in very handy for water heated in the more traditional kettle like manner and is now a vital part of our touring set up.
Oh and I have to mention the wonderful evening we had with our good friends the Nardelli family, who not only make beautiful bass guitars, but do a mean penne arabiata! We popped in to visit them in Trento between the shopping expedition
and the coffee debarkel and after several years of friendship finally got the opportunity to see the workshop where Marcello works his magic and where he made the incredible instrument that brother Joe has played over the years.
So next stop was Karlsruhe and Stuttgart where we met up with our wonderful friends Anja and the Royal Dreggs. Not enough words can be said about how wonderful our Stuttgart family is and we had an absolute ball hanging out, playing music, eating
African food, drinking sourstraddlers and enjoying the beautiful city until it was time to head even further north for our Hamburg shows.
...So now I just happen to be sitting enjoying a lazy Thursday back home in Australia and thinking over all the great days and nights we had over the past five weeks. Not even the 28 hours of flying, the red eyes nor the dry skin are detracting from the big fat smiles from such a great tour. I had intended to give more details on all the shows, but I think at the moment I'll just sit back and relax and perhaps get back to the re-cap later.
Before I go though, and I know I've said it dozens of times but thank you so so much to everyone who came to a show, bought a cd or dvd, came to say hi or give us a hug, helped to put on a concert or had us to play at your venue or festival or shed...
we feel honoured to be able to play our little songs to you all and hope you know how special you make us feel.
More stories to come! xx  
oh... and here's a few pics from Berlin... I know we're not quite up to that yet but I thought we may as well put em up!