Cologne

Driving into Cologne, i was mildly hysterical. Partly due to many more hours in a confined space (the car) together with lots of people (the band). And partly because I thought I was being extremely funny when i thought I would buy some cologne from Cologne as a present for friends back in South Africa. Hahahahahahahahahah! hehehehehehe. What a comic genius I am.

I laughed all the way in. On arriving at the Station backpackers, Jane opened one of the "tourist guide leaflets" that they had at the reception desk. On the first page it said the word 'Cologne.' The heading for this word was "Lamest gifts you can buy while in Cologne." I stopped laughing.

At our one gig someone was ecstatically telling me something in German. I didn't know what on earth he was on about so I called Claudia. Apparently, he was saying that i was a "Stage Pig". Claudia said that it was a good thing to be called that but i smashed a full bottle of beer over his head anyway and kicked him a few times.

Well this tour has been STUPENDOUS for us. The night before last we played in Weimar. What a great little town and absolutely beautiful. The club we played in was one of the only clubs in the area and is a complete student town. And they allow in under 18s until 11. So for the first 30 minutes of our set we had these 17 year old German school girls going moggy and dancing like crazy to everything we did! Everyone in the club was watching them instead of us but it was great! They bought one CD between the 25 of them and even that was ok because they danced like there was no tomorrow. When they left we had to get back to the serious business of entertaining the normal folk. We had super duper response and was another solid gig for the gig bag. See picture...


In Cologne (or spelt Koln if you are German, which I am not) we found pictures of us in a whole bunch of magazines, with articles in German. I was going to put in a quote from one of them to be funny because no one would understand. But then i thought maybe someone would understand and the articles are saying how crap we are. We were also interviewed by a top radio station here in Germany and the DJ was already a fan of Cassette (even wearing a homemade Cassette t-shirt). WE had a great interview with them!

We also did a really really smoker of a gig. There weren't hundreds of people but the people that were there were instant fans. We sold CD's to almost everyone in the room! Lots of people don't speak English which has been unexpected for us. They do, however, understand the word "jagermeister" which got a big cheer when i mentioned it between songs. After the gig, everyone was determined to buy us Jagermeister. And they did. It just goes to show. Determination goes a long way.



Another interesting thing (which we had corrected by Cologne) is that the language barrier presents other problems. No one in Germany has ever heard of Robert Mugabe so I have been doing a mini history lesson before we play "Get In The Ring." To try and get people to understand the context of the song. But a few people have come up to me saying strange things after the gigs about that song. I didn't really understand. Until Claudia explained to me that it sounds like we are a bunch of racists when we condemn a black leader in Africa because they dont understand the politics of it. She told me that i had to say that he has been bad for both the white and the black people of Zimbabwe, which is what i did in Cologne. Then the cheers after that song were back to normal!



Today was a day off (thankfully). We went strolling around Cologne. We went around the corner from a Mc Donalds and there was this giant cathedral up to the sky (go here to see the video of this .... http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=playcassette). It was the most impressive thing I have ever seen. I climbed up the 533 stairs to the very very very top of it and it was truly magnificent even though I was sweating like a Stage Pig.




Below is our poster in up in Berlin for our gig on Sunday.


Nathan has taken a train to Austria for the day but ill tell you more about that tomorrow.
Love ya!