German Dismount
Tour dismounts are always somewhat awkward. After weeks/months of traveling with a small group of people - a wolf pack pursuing the same goals and constanly living in the moment - you become clouded by the reality the group will soon disband and enter completely separate adult realities. Here's an example, from the end of the Mumble & Peg German tour of 1999. This time the wolf pack was the band (me, Jenya, and Erik) and our driver/tour manager Holger.
Our final show was a Saturday night in Singwitz. This town is so small it isn't on maps or roadsigns and is usually referred to as "Bei Bautzen" as it's by the town of Bautzen. Oddly enough this show also had our biggest guarantee.
Since the maps were no help, it was hard to find the place. The sheer nothingness of this town was rather disturbing, especially as we approached it the houses were either nonexistent or under construction. Feeling lost, we nearly wet ourselves when we saw four big piles of rocks right next to the road (this is a Blair Witch Project reference). The club itself was a huge nondescript structure completely shrouded by corrugated metal.
How pleasantly surprised we were when we entered and there was a lovely stage, a good sound system, many nice tables and chairs. There was even a clean green room, but not a lot of food. Once again Jenya and I took a pre-show walk. The street ended in more construction and up a hill. A beautiful sunset over wind blown fields of tall grass. On the walk back it got real dark and frightening. This was diffused when some guy pulled up and asked us for directions. In broken German Jenya described the road ahead would eventually end in an impasse. The man then said the German equivalent of "shit."
This ended up being one of our best shows. Maybe it was the relief from being at the end of this long tour. Maybe it was the fact the sound was good and quiet so we could hear what everyone was doing. Maybe it was because it seemed like the entire population of this town actually showed up and were amazingly enthusiastic. We had many encores, the final of which was Erik doing a solo rendition of his new song which would eventually become "Paddock."
Torsten (our German booking agent) and Arne (our German record label guy) were to come to this show and send us off in grand fashion, but Arne couldn't make it after all. Torsten did come, of course, since we had all his borrowed equipment and Holger had all the tour money. As we wound down Holger and Torsten went over all their books and everything was in order. Holger handed us a fat wad of cash for all the t-shirts and records we sold. Awright!
So now all that was left was to get on a plane back to the U.S. on Monday morning. However, we needed to drive as many as 800 kilometers to get from Amsterdam from here. So we decided to drive through the night to Holger's place in Muenster.
But here's the thing: Holger had serious food poisoning, probably from a funky bratwurst. He was puking all last night, and hadn't eaten all day. He was feeling better, but still not 100%. Jenya actually took over the driving - she had previous Euro road experience and could read the German highway signs. I sat in the front seat, wide awake. I can't sleep in cars unlessly painfully hungover.
This coincided with the worst storm of the tour. So there Jenya was, driving all night through rain and lightning and thunder. Our heroine began crashing around 5:00am, and needed to rest. Holger was still in no condition to drive. Erik was unwilling to drive, as was I. So we stopped at a rest stop. Erik and Holger continued to sleep in the back. Jenya dozed right there in the driver's seat. I was stuck.
I killed time buying a hot chocolate from a vending machine and looking at all the weird candy and trinkets in the rest stop shop. Eventually had to pee out the liquid. That killed a couple of minutes. Walked back and forth and back and forth. Bought a gumball. I kept checking on Jenya every half hour which pissed her off as she just wanted to sleep.
Two hours later we were back on the road again. I got a spot in the back and tried to sleep but couldn't. Ugh. We arrived in Muenster around noontime. It was like returning home, being back at Holger's pad which we stayed at during the first days of this journey. Reunited with his cute cat that drank directly out of the faucet. In a daze we all napped.
Got up as the sun was setting about five hours later. Ugh. Holger and us went to the supermarket to get groceries with which to make our final real meal together. Mostly an egg and sausage concoction. Went back to the pad, cooked it up, and ate it up. Oh yeah.
Repacked all our musical equipment in airport check-in formation. We didn't sell as much of the t-shirts as we had hoped. Yet we had 1000 marks' worth of records and multiple bottles of afri-cola to take back. So there was lots of cramming.
To the airport! Our flight was early in the morning, but it made sense to leave tonight and just stay up the in the airport as opposed to trying to get back to sleep now and get up early and drive through morning traffic. Oy. So we left Muenster around 11:00pm and headed to the Amsterdam airport.
The drive was oddly exhilarating.. The sense that our long travels were reaching a final coda. The cool, dark night air. Or maybe the blasting techno music Holger pulled out at this late hour. Once again, I didn't sleep during the ride.
Holger parked and joined us for the first hour or so in the airport. It was now 2:00am. Our flight left at 7:00am. We all bought token meals at the airport McDonald's. Same old sugar beef no matter what country you're in. Quaint chat about what's next in our lives on our respective sides of the planet.
The meal was done, the hour was late, and the conversation was drying up, and so Holger chose this moment to exchange farewells. He said, "I really don't like long goodbyes." And so we fulfilled his wish, shook hands, waved, and he disappeared.
Well, shit. Now we had about four hours to kill before getting on an eleven hour flight. We hit the café. I struggled to write in my journal but couldn't keep my thoughts straight. Browsed at some of the airport mall stores.
Around 4:30am we figured we might as well find where we were supposed to check our luggage in. I was kinda nervous anyway about our check-ins being overweight and wanted to get this over with. We were quite shocked to find that hundreds of people were already waiting at the MartinAir lines. Of course, we picked the slowest of six queues.
When we reached the front they weighed the pieces that would actually fit through their check-in entryway. I think we were a couple pounds over but they didn't bother to charge us for it - not worth the trouble. The remaining pieces, like my bass guitar, keyboard, Erik's guitar and Jenya's drum case had to be brought to the over-sized check-in area.
Erik and I dealt with this. We placed the pieces on the conveyor belt, which suddenly began moving, carrying the objects towards the gateway into the void. Eight feet later the belt stopped. This wasn't cool since my our cases were on the thin sides (i.e. ready to topple over any second) and we didn't have a chance to lower their center of gravity before they were dragged out of our reach. Erik took it upon himself to climb up on the conveyor to reposition the cases on their flatter sides.
Then the conveyor started again. Two attendants were there, but neither seemed to have control of anything. Anyway, Erik nearly fell over on his ass, as he was standing on it when it began moving again. And then the gateway opened, revealing a long, steep passageway heading downward into hell. Erik lept off the conveyor for dear life, no sooner than the drum case, positioned perpendicular to the momentum, entered the cave and began tumbling down the slope with alarming speed. I could only stand and stare and watch it accelerate. The gateway closed before I could see its final resting place hundreds of yards in the distance.
We complained to the staff but due to colossal indifference on their part not much could be done except hope everything was okay and wait to see how it ended up upon arrival. Great.
Now we had two more hours to kill. I wrenched my brain to stay awake. We found our way to the gate. Jenya had the right idea - she crashed to sleep on the ground. Despite having more or less been up two days straight I felt I should force myself to stay up so I might have the chance of sleeping on the plane.
Finally boarded the aircraft - the tiny tube that would contain me for half a solar day. Erik sat in a different aisle away from Jenya and I, which allowed us all the get extra seats to stretch out a bit. This didn't help. My ass already hurt from sitting around the airport. I braced myself for a hellish eternity of forgetful movies and food that was both bland and scary. We took off without incident.
And I couldn't sleep the entire trip. Hell. I did nothing but stare and wait and pray for distraction. There was very little of that. A couple trips to the bathroom. Two meals. A conversation with same weird dude, also from Oakland, who was a old-school rock n' roller. The only pleasing part of the entire trip was the clear skies over Greenland, seeing massive, cold, blank hills where nothing green could grow, eventually to be enveloped in solid ice which evolved into a jigsaw puzzle of icebergs floating in the clear ocean. Impressive.
To break up the journey the crew came around to hand out some yummy-looking pop tarts. However warm and inviting, Jenya and I nearly barfed when we found the tarts to be filled with runny, unidentifiable meat.
Watched the little monitor and the animated plane advancing one pixel every five minutes as we headed down over Canada - lots of farms in huge, square lots, each one slightly different shade of clay. Suddenly the northern Rockies exploded up from the earth. I was so happy to see Montana beneath me. I was effectively back in America.
Two hours later we approached the airport and landed soundly. Going through customs in Oakland was hardly as exciting as in Amsterdam. And it took a shitload longer, if only because our luggage was the last to arrive. We watched hundreds of people speed through customs with their bags, trunks, and even cages with live animals, all before we even saw any of our stuff.
Everything eventually arrived and seemed fine, except the drum case, as was no surprise. It had a giant dent in the side, and one of the castor wheels was completely useless, rendering it impossible to steer. Since we were the last through customs, the tired staff took once glance at our collective heap of crap, checked our passports and waved us through.
Jenya ended up complaining to MartinAir about this, but they made it impossible for us to do anything about it. Example: We had to bring this drum case to a registered luggage expert for an estimate of the damage. Fucking whatever.
Virginia arrived in Jenya's car. Hooray! We threw all our shit in, and headed back to their house where my car was parked this entire time. It needed a jump to get started and then I headed home.
Due to time zone difference, it was still only noon. For the record, I now was awake 62 of the last 67 hours, and still considering staying awake until night fell to help me get back on schedule. Jenya was smart and had a little nap. Not me. I talked to housemates, hallucinated while taking a long shower, watched "Naked Lunch" on video, ate dinner, and finally.. finally.. Zzzzzzzzz.zz..zz...
I feel like a sub category of "will this man ever sleep?" Is necessary since somehow this subtext of suspense exists in many of your stories.