Despite my assertions in a prior blog concerning being caught in the can when you should be on stage, I now believe there is no worse feeling than waking up with a hangover to discover you have slept in a park, in a strange city, in a country where you don't speak the langauge, with no phone, no idea where your hotel is, or indeed the name of the hotel, and about five euros in cash to your name. To add to this distressed frame of mind there are two German women seemingly mocking me for not speaking German (it appears, from what little I can peice together, that they have spent the night or morning in the park drinking with us). Rory has lost his shoes and is off chasing squirels somewhere. The sun is beating down in a way that suggests mid-to-late afternoon, and there are indeed families doing the whole Sunday park-strolling thing around us.

Luckily one of our new German friends lives relatively nearby, I think, and they claim to have both a computer and some coffee so we head in that direction, in a state of befuddlement but with clarity gradually returning. I remember being in one of Cologne's late opening nightclubs until it was light, maybe six or seven in the morning, then we were in a shop, we lost some people on the way, picked up some more, a straggling group of local nighthawks, none of whom seemed to know each other aside from those of us in the Schottlander Band, rock and rollers, ja? My ribs hurt, christ, suddenly the image of a scary looking gentleman looms in my mind. He has a wild spark of aggression in his eyes and I remember him launching himself at me in the club, taking me out with one unexpected leap. This was my first experience of the mosh pit, and it seems I had strayed my right foot an inch or two over some imaginery line which made me fair game. I remember Rory complaining of a similar occurance at the bar. I recall Kas and Gill running back in for more, seemingly gluttons for punishment. Where did they go?

"Hey Schottlander, hey Ruby, we get off here."

Alighting from the U-bahn in an unknown part of town we head round to a nice flat adorned with empty wine bottles and I proceed to try and find our hostel for the evening, between bouts of dozing on the couch. Some hours later after the dinner guests have arrived, classily pushing the cork into their bottle of wine with a spoon for want of a corkscrew and then passing the bottle round for want of glasses, we say our goodbyes and leave clutching an old Lidl receipt with the single word "Marzellenstrasse" scrawled on it in biro. Rory has rallied well and does a sterling job of stopping everyone we pass and testing out his German skills to help us find our way to a bed. We get as far as the Dom. I try to look up at it but i nearly fall over, it's too big, too imposing to take in. Rounding the corner past the MacDonalds, just where the woman on the train said it would be, is Marzellenstrasse, and about halfway down the road outside the Station Hostel stands Gill which is definitely a good sign. We get a key for the room, head back to the square and look at the cathedral for a while, glad to have some bearings again. The rest of the lads are out across town having dinner, so we grab a bite and go back to doze a while in the hostel before their return.

The next day is like a new dawn compared to the way I felt on Sunday morning. Indeed, it is a new week, and a new country as we bid farewell to Germany and get on the road to the Netherlands around lunchtime. The week round Germany has been great, the crowds a little larger than I expected and the reception very good all in all. The hospitality we have been shown here has been second to none. As we head towards Utrecht we discuss when we will be coming back, and sooner rather than later seems to be the concensus.

Utrecht is a city we have played in before, supporting the Black Keys at Tivoli in the old town. This time we are at the other Tivoli venue, Tivoli De Helling, a seemingly custom designed venue and very well organised. They have a washing machine and a drier! Woohoo! Get some laundary done during soundcheck, which is a tricky one as the stage is very "dry". This is something we will need to get used to, basically turning things down on the stage. We've got so used to cranking everything up in the monitors that the noise coming off stage is interfering with Kas's job of mixing the sound on the PA, which isn't so obvious until we get to venues which are adhering to EU noise level restrictions. It was getting a bit silly-loud in Cologne, with the guitar amps in my right ear and the monitor in my left it felt like two competing jet engines, but with everything quieter you feel like you're losing some of the "oomph". You're not, but it is difficult to get over that and not to feel that you have to leather everything to try and recapture it. As a result in a set lasting over an hour you feel like you've had to throw the kitchen sink at it and everyone seemed a little unsure as to how it went. However, from Kas's point of view it was the best and clearest sounding set of the tour so far. So swing and roundabouts - it's a learning curve, and there's a ways to go yet.

We find the hotel on the outskirts of town, noting that "breakfast is until 10, but most bands don't usually take it, because...well, because it's only until 10...". I catch a little News 24 to see what's been going on in the last week, which is dominated by a seemingly drunk Andrew Neil interviewing people at the bar at the Tory Party Conference. Exciting stuff.

The great thing about Dutch hotels is that they seem to know how to do a good breakfast, and, despite not wanting to appear unlike "most bands", by the time I arrive most of the lads are already on their third platefull of goodies. After a hearty bread, cheese and cold meats starter, I help myself to a mound of bacon, eggs, sausages and mushrooms, several cups of coffee, the same again in orange juice, some toast,  and a few slices of something akin to Jamaica cake, then head back to the room for a much needed lie down as I was experiencing the "bacon sweats" (which tend to coincide for me with the left-arm numbness...). After a quick sleep and a long shower we make for the local university, where a lot of the buildings have been designed by various highly respected architects from around the Netherlands and Europe. Our first port of call is the Educatorium, designed by Rem Koolhaas (or, as Rory tells us was the preferred nomenclature around Dundee University, Rem Kool-as-fuck...), which is a striking building and we were pleased to be able to just walk in and have a good old wander round as the students went about their lectures. Then we went to the library, designed by Wiel Arets, and again, like most of this modern campus, an award-winning piece of architecture and a really great working space. You feel like you could actually get a lot of work done in these buildings, and compared to the library at St Andrews (which I managed to avoid for most of my time there), it seems the students here were doing just that. Even as we passed the cafe bar between the two buildings, everyone was drinking coffee and seemed to have books with them, despite it being after midday and with Heineken freely available.

We were heading to Rotterdam for the show at Rotown, but unlike Germany all the distances for the Dutch leg of the tour required very little driving, no more than an hout or so anywhere, so we had time to check into the hotel (conveniently located directly opposite the venue), have a coffee and then split up and take a look round town. Because Rotown was a functioning restaurant and cafe bar during the day, we couldn't load in until after five so we had the whole afternoon to ourselves. I headed with Gill to the Kunsthalle to check out the Hopper exhibition, but it was out of my price range (ie. not free) so we went to have a look at the Natural History Museum, where I decided to go my seperate way and walk through the Museum Park, having a look at the Villa House and then off around the town. As it seemed to be an architecture appreciation day I thought I would head for the Cube Houses we had seen on the way in, but my geography was a little off and I couldn't find them. Instead I opted for the dandering aimlessly approach, eventually sitting by the canal around the corner from the street we were playing, watching the constant stream of trams at the junction on the other side, and the cyclists trying to decide whether to speed up and try to cross the junction before getting squished, or to slow down and let the tram do it's thing each time the bell started ringing.

The venue was an interesting one, kind of like Manchester's Night And Day in appearance (although not worn-looking...), and the stage was actually used as part of the bar during the day with tables set up on it and so on. We loaded in and had a feast of a tea in the other room, which was behind the stage but could be seperated by means of two layers of glass doors and black curtains. Soundcheck was before doors opening, so we didn't have long to wait between getting off stage and going back on for the gig. We had a minor panic thinking we had lost Jim, but he was found nearby (!) and we played to the biggest crowd of the tour thusfar, presumably helped by our appearance at the Metropolis Festival a few months back. We packed up and settled in for a few beers, talking to the venue staff about Dutch politics and the like until about four over a glass or two of some kind of local schnaps-type liqueur. We politely declined the offer to go for a "real beer" after they had counted up the tills, with the memory of Cologne still too fresh in the mind, and Amsterdam to get to the following day.

The alarm goes off all too soon on Wednesday morning and it's down to breakfast, a slightly more bread-and-cheese heavy affair than yesterday's but washed down with some good coffee and juice which seems to be the best possible start to a day. We were off to Amsterdam, to play upstairs at the Paradiso, not the first time we have played this room as we were there for London Calling last April. Load in is tricky as we have to negotiate a small lift with brutal doors that stop for no man, and a pissed-off man trying to get a trolley full of juice up to the bar which I inadvertantly remove from the lift and replace with a pile of amps. However, we finally get sorted, but as there is another band on after us (we aren't supporting them, they actually run two seperate gigs on the same night), they have to soundcheck before us leaving the afternoon pretty much free again. On this occasion I opt out of the "tourist" vibe and have a sandwich in the dressing room followed by a short nap, followed by coffee and sitting by the canal out the back waving at the tour boats.

It was a good gig from where I was sitting, although afterwards we had to go for the speedy pack up as the other band were waiting to put their stuff on. We were able to leave all our stuff in a cupboard though so rather than load out we walked to the hostel, a ten minute walk from the venue (which, as Jamie lamented, felt a bit longer as nobody had had any dinner yet and we had been drinking beer on a collectively empty stomach). We headed round for a spicy pizza, followed up by a bottle of Westmalle Triple, which pretty much finished me off. Arne was in the mood for "the dancing" and formed a group heading back to the Paradiso, but for once I couldn't bring myself to continue (it wasn't just fear of "the dancing", honest...), and headed back to the hostel for a bit of a catch up on the old sleep. How very rock-and-roll...

The next morning it was time to bid farewell to the Netherlands and make our way to Belgium, which will follow...

Shortly!

BR xxx