Ausfahrts

We all fell for Berlin, kind of like a dodgy outmoded wall. First 2 shows were the polar edges of the band, one rowdy noisy punk extravaganza to a bunch of cool Berliners and ex-pat Aussie demanding Cold Chisel; the second in Niall and Deedee's lovely little cafe backroom, hushed and acoustic, shut down on a noise-basis by the old hag living upstairs, whose car Niall had scratched several months ago and now cunningly saw her opportunity for revenge. James and Brendo took a pilgrimage-of-sorts to a place called Treptower park, a gi-normous and incredibly solemn Soviet war memorial of some 7000 graves, erected in 1949. Ryan tested various local variations of the Berlin speciality, Currywurst, each case resulting in semi-nausea. Todd's pretty ready to move there, having assessed it as the seat of all girl-on-bicyle majesty in the known world. Niall, our Irish friend there, and whom we suspect works for some government secret service, attempted to draft Steve into dampproofing some dodgy basement in a flat he leases. The sheer amount of bricks and damp in this country could set him up for life, if he has der Wilt und der Way. Alex has been happily exploring various sizes of Jagermeister medicinals and embracing some sleep and workless days for the first time in several months. Rendang popped his ink cherry at a Berlin tattoo parlour, getting some giant colorful dragon on his sexily shaved leg, and is now obsessed with moisturisers and Gladwrap... how the pirates got around the Carribean without such things is a mystery to us.

So now, we're in Hamburg (even more bricks here, and damp), it's raining, grey, kind of what you'd expect from Germany. The need for lugubrious nicknames has passed us by, the world has too many passwords already for us to risk burdening you with more. We've been driving a 6 metre long, 3 metre high home-on-wheels around for about 48 hours now without any GPS system and things have felt a little testy to say the least, sorted for our navigation as of this afternoon so Alles is Gut....

We were very late for our gig at punk club, Hafenklang, last night after our first experience of German autobahns... as James so lucidly pointed out to last night's audience - we expected chromeplated frictionless hover-travel and got a 2 hour crawl, hundreds and hundreds of cars and people walking alongside at a much faster pace. Expecting a major accident up ahead or something similarly catastrophic we were bemused to discover it was simply a case of unmanned roadkworks causing a merge in lanes, fond memories of West Australian freeways ensuing.

Steve's German is getting fine-tuned - he now says "Nein sprechen zie deutsche" to people who speak excellent English. On getting met with a lovely meal at the venue last night Steve swaggered up to the lovely chef and goes " Can we tuck into this shit?", glares of horror opened in the poor man's eyes, we're unclear as to what he may have thought being said about his excellent culinary skills - w are representing Australia well. We are having a great time experimenting with our linguistic failings, Brendo 's pidgin Turkish is getting a good tryout, useful with the large Turkish and Kurdish population here. We eagerly await Alex's interview on French radio en francais, we won't know what the fuck he's saying but will have a translator handy.

Tjhe female population of Germany has been recieving high scores all round, especially from Hot Toddy. Steve finds the local dogs particularly well-groomed, some rather esoteric European species regularly on display.

So, besides the band and our soundguy Rendang, we should mention the zen-master Mr James Cruickshank, of Cruel Sea fame, who's been lulled into a false sense of security thinking that we actually like him, little knowing that we've set it up to sell him to a gypsy white slaver upon our arrival in Paris. Meanwhile, he spins and weaves his mini-Casio folky madness upon mystified punters, who for some reason seem to like it.

Oh, and the shows have been going well, we now have functioning equipment and a lack of source for complaint, what do we do instead? Schnitzel for dinner is a good start.

Das is Alles fur Now.