“Ich Liebe Dich” German Tour May 2010
May 22nd, 2010
We’ve just got back from an amazing week touring in Germany – we’ve made friends, eaten heartily, drunk copiously and driven fast on the autobahn. And also played some blinding shows.
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who welcomed us and made the tour possible – especially Santiago, Felipe, Alex, Emma, Nils and Elena – and to everyone who came to see us, sang along, bought merch, hung out and generally made it one of the best things we’ve ever done.
Here’s our tour diary, there’s a video coming soon…
11/05/10 Day 1 – Leaving Town: London-Folkestone-Calais
22:30 – We’ve packed the trusty LDV van, had our final panics, stopped off to watch Pavement in Brixton and then set off for Calais. Seb’s sick so he’s joining us by plane tomorrow. James and Elena are joining us from Prague. So it’s Jamie doing the driving, Anna on navigation and iPod shuffling and Gary riding dirty in the back.
We have snaxxx!
The Eurotunnel in Folkstone is full of Fulham fans going to Hamburg – they’re gonna be our travelling buddies today #fml. There’s a sign that says ‘To France’…the jokers.
12/05/10 Day 2 – Epic Trails: France-Belgium-Holland-Berlin
03:00 - Calais – we have to remember to set our watches forward an hour!
Anna has made a tourbook (it’s pink) and it has our itinerary and everything in it – 9 hours to drive to Berlin now. We’re going through France, Belgium (Antwerp Ring!), Holland (very flat) and a bit of Germany on our way to the first show in Berlin. Gotta make soundcheck at 17:00.
07:00 – Day dawns and we all start to hallucinate – Jamie sees cars as Space Invaders, an old grey woman scrubbing the road, taxis that turn into Hello Kitty – it’s time for some sleep, we’re checking into a Formule 1 in Bochum.
It’s very basic.
The toilet is like on an aeroplane – it seems to sway, communal facility hallucination!
11:00 – that wasn’t enough sleep but we’re hitting the road again. Seb is catching his plane, he’s sick as a dog 
There are a lot of wind turbines in Germany, they can hypnotise you if you stare too long. We’re blasting out Metronomy and hitting the autobahn.
17:00 – …then we take Berlin. White Trash Fast Food tonight, it’s this cool cross between a Chinese restaurant, an American burger bar and a tattoo parlour. Everyone’s here – it’s good to have the Tigers all together again.
Burgers! Mine’s a ‘Marquee de Fuck’ burger with ‘Fuck You’ fries. And a double tequila and lemonade. Balance is restored.
22:30 – first set (we’re playing twice tonight), it’s packed, quite a lot of people are eating while we play (but the food is good so fair enough).
23:30 – second set – this one’s really revved things up, everyone’s dancing!
Time to party – Elena’s friends are here, there are a lot of English and Americans too. There’s a smoking den downstairs.
Tonight we’re staying in a hostel – it’s nice and clean and we’re all in bunks in one room, it’s like a school trip. Welcome sleeps!
13/05/10 Day 3 – To the Reeperbahn!: Berlin-Hamburg
After a good sleep and a nice German breakfast (cheese, ham, milkbread, Coke) we’re hitting the road for the 3 hour drive to Hamburg. Bye bye Berlin.
Arrived early in Hamburg – parked just by the venue waiting for Nils the promoter to arrive. Elena just called him and I think she woke him up…it’s 4pm!
The venue – Astra Stube, named after Hamburg’s beer and carrying its heart&anchor logo (this represents the whores and the sailors apparently) – is great, it’s a little German CBGB’s packed under a railbridge. As soon as we walked in we could feel the rock n’ roll spirit crackling, it’s gonna be a good show tonight.
Nils is a legend, he takes us to a local coffee bar, it’s cool, there’s a sweet shop inside, international newspapers, people doing science homework on laptops, good music. We have some Bionade.
Apparently tonight’s show is being promoted on regional radio!
We just met tonight’s DJ – he’s also cooking us dinner, it’s delicious homemade quiche and salad followed by gummy bears, we’re being kept like kings. This city is amazing, it has a true alternative, independent art vibe to it, not poncey and corporate like Shoreditch, not up itself like Brooklyn. The people are cool without having to shout “we’re cool”.
After dinner and time to check out the band apartment – it’s right by the venue, perfect for stumbling home. There are a lot of cocks drawn on the wall. It’s a band apartment, kinda comes with the territory. Full-length mirror though #win
Back to the venue to catch the support band – it’s totally packed and very sweaty, people smoking inside and outside, loud guitars, old friends, a real buzz.
22:00 – Showtime! Nils told us “don’t be alarmed, but Hamburg crowds don’t dance”. Well these ones do, I think we got them in the palm of our sweaty hand. Shows like this make you realise why you always wanted to be in a band, it doesn’t matter that we’re onstage and they’re not, we all love music and tonight feels like band and crowd are merged into one vibrating sea. We do two encores!
The rest of the night we dance, drink Jaeger (first of many times) and Seb and Jamie disappear for a few hours to the Reeperbahn. We’ve met so many amazing people tonight, thank you everyone, we love Hamburg. Time to crawl back to our apartment and fall asleep with our ears still ringing.
14/05/10 Day 4 – Into the Unknown: Hamburg-Darmstadt
Breakfast at the coffee house (ham, cheese, rye bread, OJ) and then a bit of impromptu photo-me booth snapping round the back of the shop (album artwork we reckon).
Then fond farewells and off on a 6 hour drive to the southwest of Germany to an unknown town which isn’t even signposted until about 10 minutes before you hit it.
Travel Pussy…only 5 Euros from all good German service stations (but only 4 at Eurotunnel!). Roadtested by us so you don’t have to (true).
Tonight we’re playing at Schlosskeller in Darmstadt, a beautiful 14th century university town. We’re actually playing in the cellar of the castle…it’s pretty awesome but takes a while to find because…we didn’t expect it to actually be in the castle.
We have a room with two fridges of alcohol and a nice selection of pretzels (finally!) – the venue manger has uttered the immortal words “help yourself”. Oh lordy, drinking starts early.
Soundcheck done, over to a little Italian restaurant in a pretty, old fashioned town square – “ein gross pasta carbonara bitte”…parmesan shaver confusion ensues.
Time to hit the hotel before we play. We were all imagining something fairly Travelodgey but as we cross the moat (yes) and enter the cobbled square we see a very grand building indeed – 4-star accommodation tonight, we’re all on the verge of tears, clean towels, hot showers, scented things on the pillows, German telly and lots of freebies to collect from the bathroom.
Back to the venue for showtime. On the way we see a big student demonstration, it’s really rowdy, pumping techno and lots of flashing lights, they really know how to demo. According to the promoter, they will all hit the venue by the time we hit the stage.
00:30 – Stagetime! The vaulted cellar is full of dry-ice, packed with sweaty students, partygoers, locals, Americans, English, Germans, Mexicans, Italians – everyone’s here. We hit the stage, there’s no question tonight, everyone’s here to dance and get happily wrecked, they’re leaning on the stage shouting at us “We love English bands!” this fucking rocks. We do another encore.
Back to the band room to hang out with some of the people who came to see us, sign CDs (!) and drink more Jaeger. The ensuing horseplay loses us our room…but we’ve got a 4-star hotel so fuck it, bag some booze and take the party there.
15/05/10 Day 5 – Just Down the Road: Darmstadt-Heidelberg
Amazing showers and breakfasts all round – 2 types of hash browns, 10 types of bread, 7 types of ham, 5 types of cheese (or something like that)…variety is the spice etc.
Next stop Heidelberg, another university town, just 40 minutes away, easy. We have loads of time to look around Darmstadt – there’s a classic car collection laid out in the cobbled town square (“I like that this has been laid on for us, I like that my life is the kind that can have old Mercs appearing in it”), a food market and Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker in the lobby of the hotel.
We wander around the town. Elena buys ravioli. Inexplicably they have a red London telephone box here. It’s getting cold – time to move on.
Heidelberg is another university town just down the road – the landscape gets very mountainous and imposing, lots of tall black pines (they strip off the lower branches here to make them look ultra tall and gothic) and craggy peaks.
The trusty satnav leads us the wrong side of a building site – looks like we’ll be playing in a garden centre whose mascot if a cheery looking beaver (on a tangent, it was discussed that beaver in German is bieber…ergo Justin Beaver!). Gary isn’t impressed “I’m not fucking playing here”.
We soon find ourselves at the scarily huge Halle 02 for tonight’s Physical Feeling Festival, headlined by Reading funsters Zoot Woman, whose impressive yellow nightliner is parked outside (for a while we try to pass this off as our own).
The engineer here is quite a character – he has a full set of gold teeth (later in the evening he will take out the bottom row to show James…scary!). Soundcheck…
We meet Felipe and Santiago who are running the show and they introduce us to the best catering room we have ever seen – we eat like kings in here on several occasions tonight (the schnitzel und spargel works out just great). And they have mirror balls everywhere.
Back to the hotel for quick sleeps – it’s well 70s and there are metal herons on the roof.
Back to the venue – more food! More drinks!
21:15 – Stagetime – let’s warm these folks up. It’s a big room but the show rocks, it’s a buzz to see people getting into it, there’s a little girl down the front!
More drinks, interviews and then out to man the merch stand – good opportunity to chat to people. Germans really know and love their music.
The little girl from the front row (Antonia) asks for an autograph! (Anna nearly cries)
We eat lollypops and take obscure questioning from teenagers.
Party!
(always try the gin sours).
Bed.
16/05/10 Day 6 – The Long and Winding Road: Heidelberg-Home!
We wake up to sore heads and a 1970s breakfast, complete with hard-boiled egg yolk loss and garish (but kinda cool) swirly wallpaper…mesmerising.
The German tourists in this hotel really know how to squeeze the most out of a buffet breakfast – they do a portly scuttle side to side using their back as a shield to prevent interlopers getting in and taking the schinken.
Time to hit the road – iPod on, sweet and crisps and fizzy drinks, Uri the pig neckbrace for the sleepers, coca cola for the road warriors!
Something hit the windscreen hard on the autobahn! Everyone says it was a bird but Anna reckons it’s a baseball (gets a bit upset and recounts other instances of animal squashage).
Dusseldorf airport – we wave farewell to James and Elena (but not for long) and covertly film some men in lemon cream yellow blazers.
The long drive home…
(eww bug blood on the windscreen).
…but we make Calais with time to spare and get on the train early.
England! “Land of tea, toast and proper talking” (© Gary Drain).
James and Elena’s flight was delayed so we meet them at Gatwick – an aeroplane can’t beat pedal to the metal in an LDV Convoy.
Intermittent torrential rain and a Mini rally from Brighton (about a third of them are cooling their boots on the hard shoulder though).
Crawley – auf Wiedersehen Harrison.
The final lap through south London.
Load out (ugh).
Home!
(post tour blues kick in almost instantaneously).
We’ll be back soon, ich liebe dich Deutschland <3
Photos by Elena Curdt, Jamie Harrison, Anna Vincent and Emma McLellan.
