We got up early at Freddie's house to start the 10 hour drive to Chemnitz, Germany on the Czech border. The club there was really nice, aboout the size of a decent sports bar, with a good size stage area. The only problem was that we were the opening band for the club's psychobilly night (if you don't know what that is, think Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats from th 1980's, but more menacing and prone to violence). And not only was it psychobilly night, it was Czech psychobilly night. The guys in the bands themselves were very cool, nice to us, talkative, but they looked like a bunch of 1950's era thugs from an alternate universe. Sure, they had the bouffont hairdos, but only on the front of their heads--the rest of their skulls were shaved clean. Except for one guy who had two sprigs of hair shaped like devil's horns.

We played a great show, getting beter every night, but again, the crowd was fairly unresponsive. I was geting a little angry about the cold receptions we've been receiveing after kicking ass onstage, but we noticed that nobody clapped for the Czech psychobillies either.

We were all pretty tired from the lack of sleep the night before, and there was some confusion about the night's lodgings. Actually, tour-wise, things have been a bit disarrayed. We still haven't seen our tour manager, and we keep hearing rumors about gigs being canceled. We learned from the Czech guys that the club we were to play in Prague closed three weks ago. We also found out that our driver Freddie is slated to go on another tour starting November 28th. We have no idea what we're going to do, so we're eager to meet up with our manager Marc today so we can kick his ass...I mean find out what's going on.

We finally found out we were to stay at a hostel in town. It was my first time in a hostel, and I wasn't looking forward to it, but I'm glad I reserved judgement. It was fine, we had a room to ourselves, 8 bunks for 6 people.The only other people in he hostel were the Czech psychobillies and this American kid Ben who was traveling around the world on scholarship doing research on figure skating. He told us over breakfast that this very town Chenmitz is the birthplace of none other than Katarina Witt. I think the Czech guys wanted to group-sodomize the poor guy.

Before going to bed that night, Travis and I took a walk to the local Kwiki-Mart to get some beer. It was one of those deals where the place is locked up, and the proprieter sells you your goods thru a drawer. So we asked for a couple of six packs in our very broken German. The guy puts all 12 beers in a single plastic bag, I take it out of the drawer and it promplty breaks along with 4 of the beers. The guy saw it happen, so we asked for replacements. When he starts to ring them up, Travis and I do our best to protest. So we get in a shouting match in 2 different languages. I had spent the last 2 days learning Belgian curse words (which have a lot in common with German), so I was pretty sure he was saying some nasty stuff to us. I think speaking English in a German accent pissed the guy off as well. "Der bagen hast brokenen, assholen!" Travis and I briefly considered going back and geting the 12 or so Czech psychobillies to come back and take as much beer (and deutchmarks) as we wanted, but the kid in the store finally relented and gave us the 4 replacements for free.

We're on our way to Leipzig now, eager to meet up with Marc and have lot of questions answered. I'm dying to get to a non-pay phone so I can upload and check e-mail. I didn't think I was going to miss being in touch with people. There's alot of down time on the road, so you spend alot of time trying to occupy your mind. The view out the window is pretty good, but I find myself thinking about my family and friends alot. I'm not really homesick, I just wonder how eveyone is doing

On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again. This is the our spacious (and getting smelly) tour van.

The tour has been an adventure, not in the sight-seeing way, but in the camping/taking care of the essentials way. Each day we haven't been sure where we're going to eat or sleep, whether we have to provide those needs ourselves, whether the night's gig is actually happening, if we get to take a shower that day. So far, we've done three gigs and been paid in food and lodging only because the first three gigs were cancelled and Freddie had to book these himself. I'm a little pissed about that, but there's no sense in being angry about it. Everyone is trying to take it in stride, and we're keeping good spirits. Thank God we like and know each other well enough to not take it out on each other. I simply smack the shit out of the drums onstage.

As I said before, Stosh and Freddie are old hands at this (as well as Jerry and Noli), they haven't let us down yet and their good spirits are encouraging. Yes, it's great to see countries I haven't, meet people I wouldn't, and play every night, but it's hard to relax and have a good time when everything is up in the air. Maybe the instant gratification of New York has spoiled me. I am glad I'm here, but I would make sure some more ducks were in a row before I did this again.

So, auf weidershien. Onward...
Shambo