The proudest day of my life

Europe Tour Part 2!

After ten days hanging out in London together I followed the Crayon Fields to Sweden for a week of gigs, free beer, and two-minute noodles. We stayed in lots of different peoples apartments, which ranged from impeccably pristine to gross and cat-ridden. Everybody in Sweden seemed to have cats- they kept sitting on my head as I slept, filling my mouth with hair, eating the money out of my pockets, and gnawing on all my electrical cords. In Stockholm Geoff got poisoned by a glass of bad red wine after the show, and spent the next 24 hours throwing up. They had to play at a swanky hotel that night, where we all got free luxury accommodation and meals, and he had to spend all day in bed. Ten minutes before the gig he staggered upstairs, threw up in the hotel bathroom, then jumped on stage and they did an amazing show. I explored Stockholm for a couple of days and went to lots of galleries, then caught an 8 hour bus up to Gothenberg to meet up with the bands again. The only show in Gothenberg was a really relaxed afternoon gig at an art gallery, where everyone sat around on pillows on the floor sipping tea, and we saw an awesome psychdelic American band called 'AU'. Afterwards, the organiser invited us to a private live recording of El Perro Del Mar at a tiny radio studio in the back warehouses of Gothenberg, which was the most amazing show ever. There were only about thirty people in this beautiful little room, and she came down the spiral stairs, all beautiful and elegant, and gave the most incredible, flawless performance I have ever seen. We were so lucky! The next day we got the train to Jonkoping, which is a small Christian town outside of Gothenberg, where the Crayons and the Motifs played a show at what felt like the local youth centre. The guy who organised it, Pierre (in the picture at the top), cooked us all vegan danish pastries and lentil stew, and after hanging around for hours playing musical chairs he took us back to stay the night in his parents country farmhouse. It was so beautiful in the countryside, we went for a midnight walk among the cherry trees to see the horses and the other farms. Next morning I had to head back for London and the others left for Latvia, Finland and Estonia. This is Jacqui relaxing at a cafe in Gothenberg where the girls from Liechtenstein took us for toasties- And Geoff playing solo at the Gothenberg art gallery-
Neil passed out in a pile of cat hair at Mathias' apartment in Stockholm-
And me, very very grumpy at having to go home-

Europe Tour Part 1!

I finally handed in my final disastrous round of essays, just as the Crayon Fields and the Motifs arrived to crash on my couch and play some awesome London shows. They're in Europe for six weeks, yay! Its so nice to see Melbourne people. I went to Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg with them, where we lounged around in cafes and ate nothing but bread, cheese, and beer for a week. The first show in Berlin was rad, it was at this place called Madame Claude's where all the furniture was glued upside down to the ceiling, just like in the Twits. I ran into my old housemate from Fitzroy, who now works there behind the bar, its was bizarre. The first night we were homeless, so Geoff and I stayed at a crazy little hostel on a boat moored in the river, and then for the rest of our time this lovely German woman called Ursula, who plays under the name 'Skirt', put us up in her beautiful apartment. Her kids were away for Easter so I got to stay in one of their beds, which was shaped like a castle. In Dresden the bands played at an amazing old-fashioned GDR style venue, called Ost Pol, where the organizer cooked us a massive feast of vegan curry with grapes, which was a little odd. Then in Hamburg we went to a three day festival called the POP! Weekender, and got to stay at this crazy place called the Rock n' Roll Hotel, which had incredibly loud music til 4am every night and pictures of naked sailors all over the walls. They greeted us with whisky shots on our arrival, and all the bands from the festival were staying there so there were many hilarious drunken hallway and awkward shower moments. One of the bands we met in Dresden, a Swedish group called Liechenstein, were playing the festival as well, and we all went together on a tour of all the sites where the Beatles played there in the early 60's. Later on they put us all up in Gothenberg, and took us on a tour of the city-After Hamburg I went home while others went to Glasgow, Nottingham and Cardiff. It took me 12 hours on the train to get back to London and I threw up the entire way from general exhaustion and alcohol poisonning. To make matters worse I was stuck in the middle of a German hens party, who were passing chunks of sausage and bottles of beer back and forth over the seats, and making me feel even worse.

This is Alexis writing set lists for the show in Jonkoping, Sweden-
And a crazy psychodelic American band called the Lexie Mountain Boys (actually girls) who we met in Gothenberg-
And this is a hideously obese cat belonging to one of the girls we stayed with; it was so fat it couldn't climb onto the couch by itself, and when it wanted to eat it just lay down on its belly in a massive tray of food and gorged itself for hours on end-