Straight Euro Bloggin'

16 July 2010

I’ll precede the next few entries by saying that tour journals are often a lot bit boring: “We played with so and so, they were awesome. The scene here is really cool in town X. Thanks to everyone who came out and all the kids who bought records.” Throughout the next few weeks, I’m going to try not to merely give canned details on the who, what, where and when of things, but give slightly more insight into the backstory and individuals at play. I’ll introduce the town and the things that stand out to me (Nate) and the rest of the band will fill in other pertinent details in posts of their own. Hopefully we’ll be able to tell a story and show what’s it’s like to be friendly, monolingual Midwesterners in a foreign land of vegan food and diy hardcore.

Berlin Saturday July 17^th

We had arrived on Thursday and Friday to a cancelled show in Dresden, so we had the day (16 July) off in Berlin. It was a blessing and a curse as we used the time to pack records and sort merch, although we had to weather the day off without playing. The shimmering silver lining was hanging out in the city of Berlin. We’re all thinking of it as the New York City of Europe (or maybe NYC is the Berlin of America?)—big, multicultural and full of things to do at all hours of the night. We had great coffee, vegan pizza, burgers and ice cream as we took the train around and took in the sites, from the Berlin Wall to the numerous riverscapes, to the historic architecture and lack of open container laws. It seemed that everyone had a beer in hand wherever they went, from the subway to the beach, to the parks and bikeways. I guess straight edge isn’t quite mainstream here either.

In our travels, we encountered a subway bass playing cruster and walked through a park of death with Robert. Apparently in Germany, it’s cool to walk through really dark parks without a knife or gun because nobody else has a knife or gun. We had soda that was orange and cola mixed, and lots of mango-peach juice to keep us company as we wandered through the aforementioned woods adjacent to the Tempelhoff Airport and greenspace. Sketchy doesn’t translate well, but that’s exactly what it was.

The weather was hot, about 40C, so we sweated some pounds off as we toured around Berlin and came up with a killer game called “dew it.” Dew it is a game in which he who says “…do it” must then do 50 pushups. We’re quickly stripping the phrase “Lets do it” from our vocabulary and getting great pecs in the process. I think I’ve done 400 pushups in the last three days in addition to drumming duties.