Essen

Not the Best Venue Pic. Oh well.

Got into Essen after a long drive from Copenhagen. We had to take the ferry back across the Baltic Sea and then go about 5 more hours in the van.

Fun fact: Did you know that they charge to pee at many restrooms in Europe? We paid 50 cents each and walked through a turnstile just to go to the bathroom. Later we found out that they give you a coupon when you pay which you can reuse at other rest areas. Mark, the packrat, of course kept his. Pat was not so lucky. Later on, we saw someone obviously gaming the system peeing outside.

We arrived in Essen. It is the definition of a sleepy German village. Walking around, there did not seem to be much going on. Not even a convenience store to buy snacks near the venue. We found the city center, but there didn't seem to be much happening. The show was again, well attended, we got paid and sold a bunch of stuff. Ralph (our driver) said it was easily our best show of the tour so far. I think we felt like we had a lot to prove because the other bands had a lot of energy and were very good. The first band was called Coming Up for Air. They were a German local band and they hadn't even practiced in 4 months. We couldn't even remember our songs if we stopped playing for 2 weeks! Dominic was the second band. They were from Norway. Also very good....Both bands were full of nice people too.

Some video from our set can be found here, enjoy!

The next show is in La Louvière, Belgium....