Better late than never. Some of you may have noticed, that this blog has become quite inactive. Why didn’t anybody inform us about the wild adventures of the three bon vivants? Did Hendrik get lost in the green hills of some beautiful islands in western Europe? Did Tim loose his fingers while manically playing a sick bass solo, so he cannot type anymore? Whatever could have happened to Benni is not of any importance here, since he wouldn’t care about this present-day blogging internet stuff anyway.
The answer is as simple as it is shocking. The Strainful Train tour 2017 is over. The last song was sung, the last beer was emptied and the last kilometres were driven. The bus, our allegiant ride and home, brought us safely back to Germany.
From the beginning of the end: we were on our journey from Dover to Calais. The last time we passed the French border, we had a nice party and an awesome Reggae-Session in the Kilimandjaro Bar. Even though, we were not able to recall the whole night, we wanted to repeat it. So we braced ourselves, put our war-faces on and walked straight into the Pubs of Calais and offered them some intense hours of folk music and pure entertainment. Nobody was interested. Pfff. French People. Fed over by culture. So we retreated, licked our wounds, and turned our backs on this beautiful and discerning country. We will be back for you, France!
We found shelter and gained new courage in Mechelen, Belgium. Steven Troch, our friend and an outstanding harp player, organized one of the best concerts of the tour and even a place to sleep for us. Thanks Kafee Zapoi, for hosting us, thanks Pieter, for spontaneously supporting us live on stage and thanks sons of Steven, for giving your beds to the smelly and drunk Band. Especially the breakfast was memorable. Few people know the intense pleasure of eating full grain bread, after being on the sponge-bread-islands for so long.
Some of you may remember, at the beginning of the tour we were granted a short glimpse of the squatted wonderland, the ADM near Amsterdam. We really wanted to return to this place, absorb a bit more of the open mindedness and full time festival-feeling and maybe play for its inhabitants. So we did. Brei, a talented animal-sculptor of the ADM-community celebrated his birthday the day we arrived in Amsterdam. We took our chance and imposed a little celebration-session on him. In return we were allowed to stay for two days. Yay, ADM-adventures! We took Shi-Kung lessons, learned how to replace a front axle of a bus and smoked a hell lot of very usual cigarettes. But we were not able to stay longer, because we had a promise to keep: to make our path cross again with the beautiful little paradise called Groningen.
We wrote a song about this one special place on earth, that the people of Groningen still weren’t able to listen to. Back in the Betonbos, we teamed up again with the percussion magician and bundle of energy Jorris. He supported us for the concerts in, who would have thought, Café Kult and the Wolkenfabriek. Thanks a lot Eva and Wildrik, we should repeat that every month! Groningen will forever stay in our memories as the town that even amazes Benni. And yet again, we had to say Good Bye (My Love), because there was still so much recording to do and only so few days of the tour left. Home was calling.
Even though Hendrik nearly got shot at the border, because he wanted to have a cigarette during a usual border control, we made it safely back to Germany. But since everybody, who even read that far, has lost concentration at this point, I will describe the homecoming adventures of Strainful Train in the next blog. See you in a few months!