The trip's gone weird already. I remember when this realisation hit me: day two, somewhere around seven in the evening, I was playing the drums incredibly badly, on a stage in front of five enthusiastic Germans, and about 50 more disinterested ones trying to eat their dinner, singing in French about how my name is Mr Bertillon and I work at Orly airport as a customs officer, while a guy from Dortmund's local news shoves a camera in my face.
Yes, we made it on to Dortmund local news. Watch the clip here - scroll down and click on Engländer auf Durchreise. It should be up until July26ish.
Jumping back a bit, the promised 'special sausage' turned out to be very special. Traditional German Weisswurst, dipped in a tasty sweet mustard, and eaten in a way that would make even a Par Docks prostitute a little self-conscious. While holding a huge hunk of salty pretzel. All this took place at Alex and Moni's beautiful pad, once we finally found it. They had to come and get us from the petrol station, after our lack of maps had once again proven particularly shit.
We arrived to a small crew, many of whom Jeff and I had met a few years back when the Massive Firefox did a gig in nearby Wuppertal, a night famous for terror wasps and the English going to bed early having expelled huge amounts of vomit, into pint glasses and the backs of taxis. Rock n roll.
So they were understandably keen to have us back, and followed the lewd sausage-fest with a couple of hours spent up on Alex and Moni's veranda overlooking Dortmund, where beer was drunk. Then they shipped us out to the city's best landmark - Borrussia Dortmund's football stadium - for our first 'gig' of the trip.
It's ace meeting people like this. Everywhere in the world there are these little pockets of people who are not only incredibly welcoming and hospitable, but they get what you're trying to do and take time out of their day to make it way better than it ever would be without them. So Alex and Moni, Christof, Holger, Moni and everyone - thanks so much for helping out with our ridiculous venture. As we said, you all have to come to Cornwall so we can repay the favour. And the invite's in writing now, so it's all official.
So what did they do? Even the drive there was ridiculous. They had their mate Christof along - he's a roving reporter for Dortmund's version of the BBC local news, and he was keen to film it all properly. This meant we were suddenly driving around our first European city doing a little dance with a camera car - speeding on, pulling back, cruising alongside - with three or four cameras shoved at us.
They sorted out a proper venue for us - a beer garden next to the stadium, a huge space with a proper stage, and a load of families sitting around the outside eating their lunch and enjoying a few quiet beers. They were then subjected to three English idiots shuffling out in funny red hard hats and matching coats, doing their first gig with no amplification, having not bothered practising that set-up before. I think they were expecting something good. It really was crap.
It went as badly as it possibly could have done. Perfect. The simple task of singing in public without a microphone was enough to make me forget when I was supposed to hit the snare drum, which is the most ridiculously regular part of the kit you'll ever hit. Jeff said he was too pissed to remember how to do anything. And the drums were way too loud for Steve's intricate guitar picking. Brilliant. Anyway, we shuffled our way through a few songs, laughing at the fact we were even doing it at all, and then went outside to perform Magic Number by the Punto outside the stadium. That went far better, as you can see from the reaction of the (massive) crowd. Moni's brother, a total lunatic, made his feelings clear with a heartfelt belting cry of 'I like you!' Absolutely perfect.
What a ridiculous day. Then we got to drink more, eat pizza and sleep in an amazing house, with an amazing shower. Oh momma.
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