London/Paris/Czech Republic/Slovenia 2005

England

We took the train to the Devon coast, where there's castles and moors and little organic farms. We played in a 1600s inn that was formerly a mill, and in a little pub in a town so small it wasn't on the maps, you just had to know!
Then a longish train ride back to London where we played the 12-Bar, which is in Soho in another ancient and building, with an unbelievably sticky stage-I didn't like to set a guitar on it for an instant, the Grime of Days was so adhesive. The ukulele players came out in force, and were just as sweetie here as they are everywhere-a nice leavening to the lumpy mass of chauvinist Brit blues guys.
I haven't much time-I left Steve getting a Chinese acupuncture foot massage and I have to go get him. We're going to take a random double decker bus ride, just to see the sights.

Guernsey Cows: No Eels Allowed
We love our friends Robert and Thelma Tilling, but Robert won't let us eat conger eels, nor does he look kindly on gathering the wild berries around the pre-historic dolmens: "Much nicer in the shops" he says.

We drive him crazy and he drives us all around the narrow roads of the island, ending up at the Hungry Man...

Luxembourg is a Tidy Town
We came from Paris to Metz on the train, passing through Champagne, Mozelle, and a bunch of of other wines, plus all the places the first world war was fought-the forest of Ardennes, Verdun, the Maginot line. Now the bloody battlefields are beautiful farmlands and canals and old chateaus.
Our host Darryll is a with the European Union-he and his friends all speak five languages and have beautiful manners and educations and lovely intelligent girlfriends a quarter of their ages. Imagine if James Bond dug blues guitar playing...they're all big guitar nerds and we got what guitar nerds like, so they're wining and dining us with great flagons of dry mozelle wine.

Darryl's house is in a tiny tidy village, more German that anything, it used to be called the Cafe Hein, and he still has the cafe tables and fixtures he got from the old couple he bought the house from, but it's all fixed up-his living room is the old cafe. The guitar nerds are driving their bmws from Switzerland right now!


Gay Paree
Boy, we sure are lucky dogs-the weather in Paris is FABULOUS-breezy, not too hot, a nice autumy smell of leaves. The gig last night was in an old, like 1920s era, underground tango palace, near the Belleville neighborhood (and it was really a venue the Triplets of Bellvue could have played!). Down Rue Faubourg du Temple, you duck under an 18th century archway into a stone paved arcade, past a hookah hut full of 35 animated, hand-holding Turks puffing clouds of tobacco and two very low whores crashed out on the carpet doing no business-I guess they go in the hookah hut to take a rest! At the end of the arcade, another archway curves over a black double stairwell. Down you go to the red carpet, past a little wooden box office, under the colored tiny light bulbs, and a cave of wonders opens up! La Java, intact decor from the 1920's, a series of little red tuffeted caves, with an empty nighttime Paris painted on the walls, a stained oak dance floor, a surly handsome barman, glitter columns behind the stage-it's wonderful!
Our host here is an imp, Karel Beer, an Englishman who has been in Paris drinking red wine and smoking in cafes while promoting music and art shows and pooting around on a stinking scooter for a very long time.

He generously gave us his beautiful 5th floor flat for tonight, and put on a swell show, and sheparded us around for two days. Lucky thing we're headed for Prague on the nighttrain tommorrow, as I think we're wearing him out...we can't talk French, can't count to ten, we just point at things and eat, bump into people and whack old partrician ladies with our guitar cases. The Idiots In Paris.


Nighttrain to Prague
It's a misty sepia morning in Prague-we took the night train from Paris via Frankfurt and haven't seen anything of the city, we just changed some money and are right back on the train to go to Plzen. We went by it in the wee hours, but were too sleepy to get off-the beds in the sleeper were nice, warm comforters, from which we were unearthed by the handsome-ist border agent in the world as we entered Czech Republic, all black leather and eagle eyes: border agent as rock star.

Czech Republic Menu
Here we are in the sepia toned Czech Republic: the southern part, which I think is really Bohemia. Woodsmoke and the heavy mist that rises off the river make the air hazy, and the fall pallette of golds greens and reddish browns makes everything autumnal and antique. Well it is hella antique-I think the beer making here goes back ten centuries. Plzen=pilson. On Saturday we played in Budejovice, where they make budvar, aka budwieser. From pilson to budwieser. Steve is very happy. Beer is 80 cents a glass, and the food is wonderful. The only progress I've made on Czech (which has no latinate bits at all-nothing recognizable-makes french seem like an old familiar glove) is on food.
Brambory are potatoes, beautiful creamy yellowish potatoes, served with maslem, excellent tasty butter, plain, boiled, roasted or croquettes. Don't forget potato dumplings! Zely is cabbage made into the best coleslaw in the world (thinly shredded cabbage and a little carrot marinated in a very light sweet vinegrette with lots of finely shredded fresh horseradish) and red cabbage slow cooked with sweet vineger. Sunday dinner yesterday I had a half a crispy roast duck, red cabbage coleslaw, potato dumplings and a giant stein of the hometown brew, Plisner Urquell for the obscene price of $6. This is expensive, as we have to eat in the slightly upscale brewery restaraunt, because they have an english menu. In the market on friday, which seems to be the big go to town day (all the shops are closed both sat and sun) we had bowls of halusky, a stew with chicken, hot and sweet peppers, potatoes and sausage and smes, another stew with cabbage, sausage, hominy and tiny potato dumplings served in plastic containers for about two dollars.
The market was cool-several people selling homemade hard apple and grape cider in unmarked plastic water bottles, a man with all things made from cork (cork bowties! cork umbrellas!cork miniskirts!!), spice sellers, wooden toy sellers. hand knitted sweaters and hats. Very quiet these Czechs, even in a crowd. Not dour, but dignified. Good looking people too, fine featured and straight, except for we saw a witch lady-she had ancient features, like an illustration from the Brothers Grimm, hooked nose, giant mouth, a living cartoon, a throwback to the medieval genepool.
Our rooms here at the wonderful Hotel Continental are great-1930's style blonde wood amoires and daybeds, decorative tile bathrooms in mustard yellow, 20 foot high ceilings a view of the river. the hotel is owned by an American music fan who we met at a Florida Folk festival. You play a date in the club downstairs and stay a week. We have Jakub Korinek a young Czech guitarist to navigate us around and open the week's shows and a little car belonging to the hotel to get to them in. They feed us at the hotel too-every day at breakfast there are poppyseed rolls and a big buffett of sausages, rye bread, fresh cucumber and peppers. The only thing lousy around here is the coffee, which stinks, except at the fancy coffee and cake house at the art center, which looks straight out of Vienna 1879 and has those great fluffy pastel cakes and lovely coffee.
We went to Prague yesterday to visit Franta at Amistar Guitars, where he showed us his small but mighty workshop and we played his lovely instruments and bugged his staff all afternoon. We walked around Prague afterwards, but they charged us $40 for two measly plates of goulash and two beers in Prague-it's Plzen for us!

Irony Water
Today we took a 90minute bus ride to Karlovy Vary, aka Carlesbad, a very old spa town. It's up in the mountains of Bohemia, on a little stream full of carp and ducks and trout and the water is super iron-y (irony water, just what I need...)The buildings are "Barvarian cake style" and it's been a spa since centuries-the main springs with little spouting iron water fountains is in a roman style pavilion and another spring is under an iron victorian trellis. the idea is you buy your little ceramic cup with a spout, then toddle 'round to all 14 springs, each of which tastes horrible in a different way at a different temperature. There are thermal spa treatments at the various hotels and three big 1800s era public bath houses, where the short german ladies (Karlovy Vary is almost in Germany, hence the Carlesbad)give you a good pounding, a soak in the healing greenish waters and a sweat wrap in a little white high ceilinged room with lace curtains for about 50 bucks. Then we walked around in the crowd with our little cup, going from spring to spring.We had another delicious meal of brambory and zely, and back on the bus. Tommorrow we have a gig in the same town, and so our picture was plastered all over, but nobody recognized us. Too soggy!

Slovenia
After a brief stop in Austria-a day in Vienna, under the wing of Hans Thessink's wife Malitsa (aka "The Little General"), who organized and ordered us around very pleasantly for 48 hours. Then a startlingly lovely alpine train ride from Vienna to Graz, where we played at an excellent classic leftist cultural center (handsome young men making arty sandwiches, the motherly culture queen in charge plying us with homemade cherry bounce austrian style), then on to Slovenia.For weeks now, since we hit France, I've been saying I feel like the cat-I meow at odd moments when people address long slavic sentences at me, but finally, tonight in the bar of our Lujbliana hotel, I met the cat man. An old pensioner from the surrounding bauhauses, he meowed cheerfully at everyone, especially the non-slovene speakers-finally I was communicating! Then I started talking spanish to the bartender and it was just as effective as english. Everyone here is inventing their personal esperanto, using whatever word from whatever language they can remember.
There's a certain looseness to Lubjliana, the accordion music has a backbeat, and even the church bells swing, giving the service-leavers a certain Gene Kelly swagger. We've been lucky enough to arrive on a holiday, Reformation Day (as in Martin Luther). Far from what you'd expect from a day celebrating the start of Calvinism and the whole Protestant form of being a religious drag, the town was full of festive people, there was all kinds of music in the old town (zither lady! kiddie big band! button accordion man with ribbons! bass lady!) a traditional wedding, with a marching band, dancers in silk outfits and lace hats, a great cornucopia of vegetables, vats of saurkraut, new wine in unmarked plastic bottles, fried sardine stands, men dressed as cabbage gods, flower gods, straw gods; mingling with the everyday people, the women with their magenta hair, forget the old bleach blonde paradigm, now that sort of woman is magenta headed, from 25-65! Very tempting, I almost went purple red myself, but pulled back at the last minute. This is strictly a slavic feenom-the French and English are still blonde.

We shared the secound class car from Maribor with a man who looked like the strong man from the circus, like Anthony Quinn in La Strada, very sweet, he took our bags from us as we struggled to get them up on the luggage rack and one-handed them up. We were met at the station by a man from our sponser, the Jama Cave Hotel, and he was 6 foot 7 inces and strong too. Our promoter, Borut was at least six seven as were both the DJs who helped organize. The land of giants here.
Turns out the gig was at the mouth of these famous Jama caves-we went on the tour and they are wonderful-a train takes you down, then you walk thru cavern after cavern of white, red and gray formations, with heavy water dripping and the air almost 100% water. The cave has been a tourist spot since the 1700s, but many of the galleries were only opened up after WWI, and the tunnels and bridges to them were built by russian prisoners-the horror of being a slave in that wet cold underground world! Tito's partisans holed up in there too, one gallery is dead and blackened from an ammo dump exploding. There's graffitti signatures from 1821 on some walls. A giant pink salamander, the proteus, lives there too.
The gig turned out to be in the 1910 building in front of the caves-very elegant and a pretty full house (our promoters were wacked up with the TV station). A better organized gig couldn't be found!