Escher and some French balls

Rodney, Patron Saint of Pancakes

It has been a blustery, cold day in Amsterdam which seems to be better then tropical weather anywhere in Germany. We got into town early for the first of 2 days off here as the band gets hounded by the press for some reason or another. Here is the group descending upon the streets of an unsuspecting city because the bus couldn't fit down the street.
















We are staying in what was, until the mid 80's, Amsterdam's town hall. It was also the site of a Dutch Princess' wedding not long ago. It would seem that it has fallen into disrepair since. While I enjoy a good day off, I'd rather not spend it in the grandmother suite, which I've just checked in to. No danger. I had a pancake this morning, which makes most things in the world seem alright. It was one of those giant, Dutch jobs that you have to roll into a burrito and even then have no chance of finishing. The pancake house was of traditional Dutch architecture, i.e. very small


















A few of us wandered to the Waterlooplein market, which I was at years ago and has subsequently taken me 2 years to find again. I sat around, had a beer and watched the impending madness of Amsterdam on a Saturday afternoon. The combination of cheap, readily available psychadelics and speeding bicycles and trams is a receipe for endless entertainment. It's a good laugh, but I must say that this city was more fun when I found drugs exciting. I suppose you could say that about anything from mini-golf to Algebra though.














Yesterday we were in Koln at some strange old church. There were seemingly endless problems and I hadn't slept at all the night before due to vicious jet lag. When I first started working with Death Cab I didn't believe that their guitar player was actually on tour at the time. While in Europe he would wake up just before the show, and be back in bed before we returned to the bus. He was the victim of wicked jet lag. I now know how he feels. That aside, it was a really long day, but it all worked out in the end. The crew was good fun, the crowd (although German) wasn't bad and the happy drunk guy hugging everyone at the end of the night turned out to be the church's pastor. Holy shit, really.















What do you do when someone passes you a note like this?


















The same thing that you always do at the end of a night out in Germany, I suppose. That's right.

















Our show in Amsterdam is at another church, one that had been the Gestapo headquarters during the war. Add this to this list of interesting places that we have tried to put a show on in the last week. Our first show in Paris was in a tent on the riverside. Empty it looked exactly like a carousel without the wooden horses. Full it looks like an over-crowded circus.














It was funny to see a set of equipment that had been in storage for a few years. You sometimes forget the time you dropped that amp down a flight of stairs or wrote some shit about Danzig on a transformer.

















Welcome to Monkey Island. The name is lifted from a friend of mine who was recently fired by a band who, I would imagine, are slightly less evolved than he would have liked. He referred to it as getting kicked off of Monkey Island. Laughter insued.















Paris. Dinner.


















Maybe I should go this route. I guess there was, at some point, a person named 'Tarzan' on our bus who was really into vitamin shakes. Strange.

















I will never understand why all European busses smell of pee.
















Last night I snuck into a German boarding house to take a shower and managed to wake up the house matron. It can be a truly glamorous life sometimes.
















ps. Kirk Cameron is a dick, pass it on.