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Chapter Nine "Europe Part I:
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Hey kids, move your cursor over the photos for Bobs fun-sized captions!
Dateline: July 7-8, 2000 Somewhere Over the Atlantic
5 hours into the 10.5 hour flight to Zurich I feel pretty darn terrible... despite the Chong-ing out with an empty seat between me and Alexa, a recent college grad on her way to Hannover.
Dry Air Headache despite massive quantities of water.
Slightly cheered by goofy postcards in the galley (I collect them).
Once in Hamburg, we easily find the Inter-Continental (this European tour is ALREADY better than the last one!) where the lobster-potato soup hits the spot and I am promptly unconscious.
Dateline: July 9, 2000 - Hamburg & Bitterfeld, Germany After a lovely fruhstuck (a huge spread heralding our return to Meat and Cheese) overlooking the river, Joe
Bob and I vroomsch (note use of German verb) to Bitterfeld, where we meet Matthew Bob at the hotel. He
regales us with creepy tales of boarded up train stations in dead or dying towns throughout the former East
Germany - having taking the train up from Switzerland.
After Richard arrives, we trek out to the Goitzsche Pouch, a huge open air stage where we are performing at
the Kurt Weill Festival - a celebration of what would've been his 100th birthday.
It's windy and cold, here on a vast expanse of ... what???
Water? A nature park?
One of the coordinators tells us Bitterfeld is the "former chemical capital of the DDR," prompting us to unpack our geiger counters before soundcheck.
Matthew's quite the sight, pretending he's not freezing
On the way home, Matthew entices Joe with second-hand tales of the rather forward behavior of Finnish
women (we are spending 4 days there at the end of the tour).
I can't dial out on the all-rotary phones in the hotel (sometimes this happens in the former East) so I hop down to the sauna where Joe Bob has already
claimed the hottub as his soveriegndom.
Dateline: July 10-11, 2000 - Rain-Soaked Austria A rainy, rainy, rainy (did I mention it rained?) and long drive down to Dornbirn, Austria memorable for
Ode to Billy Joe playing on the radio as the scenery improved dramatically - right after the border crossing).
Dornbirn's a storybook town I swear I played years ago in a bus and truck tour of JESUS
CHRIST SUPERSTAR - but that's an entirely different and not half-as-amusing story. Joe, Matthew and I
dine at the Hotel Rosa, next to several older local gentlemen playing cards and laughing with the waitress,
where our eyes roll back permanently while consuming the gorgonzola nudeln, rostipizza and turkey breast.
We laugh about the meal being so cheap since the dollar's kicking ass, then figure out the miles to
kilometers conversion to see how far we drove.
Amusing conversation: Amy: Hey, Matthew, you read a lot, right? Matthew: Yeah, I read about 50 books a
year. Joe: Wow. I don't read 50 books...yet.
Dateline: July 12-16, 2000 - Can We Have More Bread & Cheese, Please?! I drive to Bern with Richard and Michelle, swapping lyric ideas for the new CD (to be recorded in August) and grooving to Ben Folds Five.
Matthew's in-laws, John and Rosemay McGuigan, bravely allow us to invade their house for a few days to rehearse and write new material.
The first day, however, we have an important appointment to keep.
We board the train to Worb.
Yes, I said Worb. We head for the brewery
post haste for intoxication/mind control liquid dispensed by a wee beer machine that takes special tokens -
you get the tokens when you buy a huge take-away container of beer, which we... did several times.
It's a Wednesday and Friday tradition here (we went both days, natch) on the
no-chairs-better-find-a-wall-to-hold-you-up
brewery porch!
Alles soon become geplotzed,
Expecting a gorgeous Swiss summer respite, we all packed our bathing suits.
Think again, cowBobs.
It's so chilly and gray, Rosemay loans me her fleece-lined coat ("for Scottish summers," she says).
So we have to eat a lot, in between trips to the brewery.
Culinary discoveries include small, vinegary-peppery onions ("pickled by a Scotsman," John says), and Sardinian dessert cake mixed in with the usual delights of rosti,
raclette, infinite cheese, wines and endless, wonderful conversations.
One of the stranger highlights of our Bern week was "Jass."
Matthew's pals Pesche and Mia brought us to a
When not "working" - that is, presenting/debating the merits of/learning new tunes for the new CD, we tour
slick-streeted Bern and some of the soggy countryside...
Richard and I type lyrics into his iMac, trying in vain to banish the Office Assistant guy from the screen.
We search the help for both "get rid of dude" and "kill dude" to no avail, then simultaneously give dude the finger.
Laundry is done and then hung to dry - which takes days in the cold rainy climate.
Before I left home, I'd pitched a travel article (a side job of mine) about beautiful Bern in the summer - and now I'm glad I didn't sell it -
"A cold, windy hamlet where everyone is depressed, Bern in summer is..."!!!
I was also plagued by decidedly not neutral
Swiss mosquitoes the whole week.
Dateline: July 17-18, 2000 - Bremen Somebody once told me that guests, like fish, tend to smell after 3 days.
So I'm sure the McGuigans, despite their sunny Scottishisms, were secretly relieved when the Bobmobiles peeled out of the driveway.
Matthew and I head north into the clouds playing Chet Baker CDs using this super cool device he must've
picked up at Back at the Garden Hotel, we reconvene at breakfast after riding The Triangulator -
an isoceles triangle-shaped elevator that's entirely too small if you have any luggage (like the Inclinator at the Luxor in Las Vegas, only with a completely different hypoteneuse... jeez, I AM SUCH A GEEK!).
Mister Mister is playing on the seemingly all-80s radio.
Matthew, Joe and I hit the town, passing the "China Snack Point" restaurant and
The show at the Schlacthof is spectacular - par for the course in Bremen, practically the Bobsí German
hometown.
Guest vocalist/fan Anke Dombrowski rocks us with her rendition of Tweak Your Peak,
White Room shakes the rafters (Joe's doing the lead and I'm doing the guitar solo now), and a beer I
bring Matthew in the middle of Krishna explodes all over the stage.
After the show, Matthew and Richard become Abbott and Costello as they completely
wipe out while attempting to carry the merchandise bag down a ramp.
Dateline: July 19, 2000 - Hamburg The show is at Fabrik; The Bobs last played here in 1992.
Bremen groupies Kai, Simon, Mathias and a few others have made the drive up to see us - one of them brings a specially brewed beer labeled "Krishna Beer"
in honor of last night's explosion onstage.
I'm having a blast doing the guitar solo in White Room
although it's quite discombobulating dealing with two mikes at once, I gotta say!
We also do Bulky again although I am shocked there is no actual polka-ing despite our location...
Tina Turner is apparently in town, as are the House Jacks, but neither shows up to see us, oddly.
To follow the Bobs to Finland, click here.
©2000 Amy Engelhardt (text), Alex
Stein (page)
During the 4.5 hour layover before the flight to Hamburg, Joe Bob and I sit outside in the fresh air a bit, then promptly pass out on the extremely uncomfortable beds (disguised as chairs) at our gate.
I wake up drooling - in German.
in shorts and sandals amongst the myriad of black-clad techie guys.
(Somehow when European men wear leather pants it's lots cooler than when American men do.)
An ABBA-type band called Experience Ace of Bases the place before we rock the appreciative crowd
of several throusand with Purple Haze and premiere our Weill-penned barbershop tune The Trouble With Women.
When we're done with our 45-minute set, the media is waiting at the artist trailers - but
before I can say "No pictures, please" they are snapping away - at Die Prinzen, Germany's teen sensation
(a.k.a. The BackStrasse Boys), who are closing the show!
When we get the check, Joe promptly begins to convert it into kilometers.
Later, we visit Conrad Sohm, a club in the forest where The Bobs used to play in the 80's. -
I am head over heels in love with the scenery - even in the rain it's stunning.
From the hotel roof I watch wisps of fog float on the mountains and lights begin to twinkle like sparkly garlands amid the deep greens of the hills, brown
wood houses and blue/gray dusk.
Somehow it's just wrong to be laughing about stupid Bobs in-jokes while looking at this gorgeous site, but I'm giggling about Matthew reading the menu and saying "My
people call it maize" as I turn on CNN and turn off the light.
The last time we were here, Joe and I went off the deep end immediately upon hearing the town's name. You see, it's evil like the Borg.
(No, I'm not a Star Trek geek, I just know that
the Borg is the interstellar version of Worb.)
Worb masquerades as a quiet suburb of Bern with an amazing
brewery (Egger Brauerei), but we know the truth.
And we cannot resist its pull.
chanting "worb-worb-worb," and board the
train back home, where a dinner of gruyere/wascherat fondue with kirsch knocks us all out before 9:30pm.
Evil unnamed people (Fiona McGuigan-Stull) take pictures of us in varying states of unconsciousness,
surrounded by native fruits and vegetables.
live TV broadcast
of a Jass match, claiming was the Swiss TV equivalent of Who Wants to Be A
Millionaire (sans Regis, and that whole millionaire thing).
Town teams compete weekly at this card game
(yes, thatís right - all the excitement of golf on the radio and half the thrill!) with a vengeance as oom-pah
bands oom-pah and cowbells ring.
I can't tell you exactly what took place but I do know these things:
Joe goes to a "forest party" (aka log cabin BBQ)
where he "picked up a Vietnamese girl in LA" by proxy (via her mom).
Others view Barry, the 200-year old, stuffed dog at
the national museum (he saved a buncha Swiss folks during avalanche season, proving once
and for all that acute heroism does lead to taxidermy).
Several trips are taken to the Migros co-op where
gifts of fondue, chocolate, tubed garlic-onion pastes and other wonders live.
The McGuigans have a killer, unobstructed view of the Alps - weather permitting.
But the permits were never issued - except on our final night, following a short concert for an invited audience in the large
livingroom.
The sunset pinked the towering mountains and a full moon lit the night so brightly it was hard
to see the
aurora Alex told me was visible due to a major sunflare - but I did see the shimmer (recognized it
from my Alaskan honeymoon!).
Naturally, the temperature soared into the 80s right after we left.
Hogwarth's - it works through the empty radio frequencies. Eventually we get American radio
near Frankfurt -- ZZ Top and stoopid ads aplenty -- unbearably lame.
Richard, Michelle, and Joe detour to Koln to see jazz composer Klaus Koenig, with whom The Bobs did a
most cool CD a few years ago when Janie was in
the group.
Matthew and I dine with his sister in-law Kiri and her daughter Josie at their apartment in
Bremen, speaking of state-provided health care (but a pipedream in the world's richest country), the arts
(ditto) and renting villas in Tuscany (um... ditto!).
skeleton versions of the town's mascots (sca-weee!) while I hunt for a slick black coat like
Fiona's.
Matthew and Joe become Serge and Dieter, my personal fashion consultants, as we scour the
downtown sales (despite their super advice, I go home empty handed).
Back in
Hamburg, where this odyssey started what seems like ages ago...and it's STILL raining. Luckily,
we're going back to the Inter-Continental - but unbeknownst to us, evil construction workers have
descended upon the place, ruining the fun. It's not often we get to stay in 5-Star hotels - on Embassy Row,
on a lake, with a view, etc.! I find that black coat I want - at the mega-huge Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (train
station) - and lunch on extremely garlicky pasta at the food-court area. I reminisce about when Alex and I
had yummy stuffed broccoli/cheddar potatoes while changing trains a few years ago (from Denmark to
Stuttgart) at this very place... Later, at a nearby Internet Cafe, I'm surrounded by mainly middle Eastern
men furiously checking their e-mail.
[Flags courtesy of ITA's
Flags of
All Countries; used with permission.]