It's a long drive from Marburg to Vienna, luckily I didn't have to do it. The downside though is that The Autobahn is fucking insane and I am wound way too tight to find it even remotely relaxing watching freaks in Beamers zipping by when we are already doing 160kph. We did however come across the single snazziest pay toilets I have seen (note: I have never been to Japan) complete with Subway style turnstiles, smooth colour scheme and euro techno piped over the PA system. The only thing missing was Klaus Nomi as the greeter (or perhaps to hold your cock while you look at your reflection in the mirror).

Vienna. As Manowar would say, "Architecture here we go." One big Neo Folk postcard with a polishing bill in the 8 or 9 digit range. While we didn't get to play in the horse shit reeking main square we did get to play at Fluc which is a rad bar basically in a train station. Standing on the stage if you turn away from the "crowd" you are looking at a scene straight out of Ranxerox with two criss-crossing trains and plenty of foot traffic. Folks on the 10PM train got to see 10 seconds or so of our set as they passed by, it is that close.

The venue was long and skinny with an L off towards the entrance and cans (which apparently keep getting destroyed by drunk rowdys from the red light district). We set up on the floor in front of the stage to be closer to the crowd with the downside being that there was quite a bit of drunken lurch weaving as peeps with drinks tried to avoid getting clocked with either metal "grief". The crowd kept moving back which meant that fairly quickly I was doing the dog on a short chain thing, unable to stretch far enough to reach the audience. Smoke was brutal, the stinking cancer smog thick enough to make your beer taste like an ashtray from a dog racetrack. Guess we didn't totally suck as we sold a few CDs and even had one lady make an off colour remark about banging the band.

We did learn a valuable lesson though. . .drop off the gear before you park in Europe unless you find particular satisfaction in carrying heavy shit for great distances.

Arrrgh, just get logged in and we are leaving again. Sitting at Man Manly's pad in Stuttgart about to check out some squatted train cars hopefully beingable to snag all the coffee in the world on the way. Have to update this later. . . figures that I just figure out where the Y key is and I have to go.

Fuck, not only is the beer here cheaper than the food than on Air Canada flights but the bottles are larger as well. We're drinking beer like grannies at bingo parlours smoke, serial chain style. Luckily I have managed to stay away from the $6 twixers of bourbon.

On Friday night we had gone out for a walk down by the train tracks and a thoroughly shitfaced Cory had managed to fall on the tracks smacking his knee real good as well as losing a lens from his glasses. Yesterday we retraced the steps and amazingly the blind one managed to find the lens nestled up under a rock while the rest of us tried not to look like we were bored with life and waiting for a train to end our run. On the way back empirical evidence seemed to demonstrate that all German joggers of the female persuasion are an insanely sort of grinning, creepy happy.

Owen snagged a multi-meter yesterday which renewed the shock hazard play with the powerbar hating voltage converter. Turns out that due to the apparently common design of these fucking things one of the plugs has a 50% change of being 220V instead of 110V. Normally this ain't an issue as the phase difference makes it still add up to 110V (-110V + 220V = 110V) but when you have surge protection (i.e. in just about any powerbar you would buy in North America) the surge protection circuit ain't expecting 220V on one of the pins and does its best impression of Hiroshima (or to keep it regional, Dresden). So now we get to weird out all of our venues by poking the metal probes of the multi-meter into the converter's power outlet before each show (and then flipping the plug in the outlet if need be). Lucky that we have an electrical engineer in the house as I seriously doubt I could ask for one in Denglish.

3 more days of jamming with the grimacing faces of classical students and Russian female taskmaster staring at us from the wall before we invade Vienna. Can't wait, this is gonna rock.

Not sure whether to feel lucky we didn't die or to curse the Chinese slave working at gunpoint who sabotaged it but our power converter appears to be designed to to convert 220V to 440V (or some similar death inducing voltage). The shot is of the first of two power bars we fried testing the bastard out. Hard to make out from the picture but the board is nice and blackened plus there is half a cap blown to shit. Who needs's power? Acoustic set here we come. The best thing about when the thing blew was that my 4th espresso had just kicked in which meant I both shit my pants and jumped 3 meters off the ground to the loud zap just before the lights went out.

I guess I know what we are shopping for tomorrow.

Feeling like I've had a shovel or two to the head but Germany is where we be. The flight was brutal, we had the screaming tantrum child pair directly in front of us complete with soul beaten, defeated mama that essentially threw her hands up and let the entire population of the plane act as surrogate parents for the plane trip. Cory did not find it amusing though it was making me smile and then laugh as first passengers started trying to calm the screaming child (getting hit in the face) and then the flight attendants took over and then argue with each other as the process failed miserably. The best part was when one of the female attendants actually firmly told the hapless, beaten down Algerian woman that she had to discipline her child (to no avail, the freakout continued for hours after that).

I am getting ahead of myself though. . .the start of the trip had its own ridiculousness compliments of Canadian wanna be US homeland security.

The belt buckle in the shot above is apparently a very dangerous gun facsimile which for the protection of everyone must not be used to hold up one's pants. This totally caught me off guard (nothing about it on the airline's site) so as I put my keys and other metal shit in the tray at at the security check I was pretty surprised when I got a sudden crowd due to my friggin belt. We were there early enough that I could go back out and put the buckle into my luggage so I did so and then went on a hunt for something to hold up my pants. It ended up being two older ladies at the souvenir shop giving me some price tag zip ties while rolling their eyes at the security peeps (as my pants crept down my ass every time I reached for something). So I get back through security and am sitting down waiting when my name comes over the PA system asking me to get back to the luggage check. So again I leave the secure area and head back to the check in. I go to the same teller I started with (and who got my luggage back when I put the buckle in it) and she immediately asks me if I have any ammo in luggage. Then if I have any firearms in my luggage as the screener apparently went apeshit over something in the case.

I assume that the problem is the metal "claw" I brought so I say here, let me open it up and I will show it to you and that it looks scary but it is just a musical instrument. I show her the claw, the pickup on it but she shakes her head so I show here the other piece of metal, get another shake, show her the siren and get another shake. Now I am totally fucking confused as all that is left is clothes and such. I start rooting around and she suddenly goes what's that? I pull out the FUCKING BELT BUCKLE and she's like yup, that's it . . . a gun like outline is what the screener described. Arrrgh.

Germany however is on the other side of sane. We land in Frankfurt after the screaming child apocalypse and stumble out in a sleepy daze. Unlike the gross violation that is Canadian customs in Toronto, German customs seems equally bored shitless and pissed off that they have to take the effort to actually look up and down once from the passport to our red eyed faces to stamp it before waving us on. After following the unnecessarily convoluted path the luggage we get another "don't fucking talk to us" customs for (not) declaring stuff and we are off to train land. YES!

The next highlight for the sleep deprivation run was getting into the elevator at the Frankfurt station with a Lynchian shit reeking homeless dude with the gnarliest leper hands I have seen in a while (or perhaps he was in an accident and had his feet sewed onto his arms by mistake). Beer on the train to cement in the fact we are in Europe and an hour later we be in Marburg.

Cheap beer, check. Cheap cheese, check. Castles with cannons, check. I don't have any shots of it but we closed out the sleep deprivation run by climbing a cobblestoned hill up to a local castle and then slinking into a dark unlit tunnel behind it until we ended up in a weird chamber dripping water from small stalactites and with an old cannon at the other end. Oh, and bat flying around to complete the Bela Lugosi vibe.

Morning comes just in tine to remind us of the jet lag. Some menial shopping crap unveils the fact that at least in Marburg German's have a fetish for unnecessary amounts of spurious greetings. It is going to seriously get on my tits to say "Allo" and "Shoes" (however you actually spell that) ever time I enter or leave an area smaller that an auditorium.

Tonight we get to see whether the music school staff come running in with expressions of horror when we practice in the room we rented.

Only 16 hours or so now until the sleep deprivation party starts. Fucking 4am start, that's brutal for someone who hasn't risen earlier than maybe 8:30am in a close to a decade.

Too bad airports are so uptight, they would rock for guerilla gigs bigtime. At least the natural soundtrack of 'em will be cold and ugly.

Trying to frantically prepare for all the last minute bits and pieces before we leave. Not looking forward to 4AM start at all but at least Lufthansa will give us some booze once we get out of Calgary. Got a cheap suitcase today for the stuff that won't fit in my pedalboard case (in particular "The Grief") which I am hoping doesn't burst in a million pieces going through the luggage grinder. My big fear though is what the fuck customs is going to make of a scary looking metal claw and piece of sheet metal with a duct taped handle with wires coming from it.

If they do tear the case open here's hoping that the person that looks at it plays guitar and recognizes the 1/4" jack and pickups or at least they talk to me before blowing it up. At least I do not have to try to taking them as carry on baggage and Germany isn't anywhere near as crazy ridiculous as the USA or the UK.

About 36 hours until this party gets started.