Euro mouth

I've got a wicked bad case of Euro mouth today. That's when, after spending the best part of two weeks in the company of folks who understand every third word out of your mouth, you spew vulgarity so freely that it would make ODB blush. As is often the case, I roll into a country (like Scotland, for example) where people understand me quite clearly, and it takes serious restraint to control myself. Either that or I get knifed in Starbucks for saying 'can I get an espresso, or are you going to be a dick about it?' All's fair in love and festival season though. In Switzerland our bus was parked directly next to an active sewage treatment plant for 14 straight hours. Really?

















I suppose it could have been (slightly) worse.

















Wait, what? The Swiss are devastated.






















At this open-air freak fest in St. Gallen the organizers decided that rather than simply feed traveling bands and crews a few solid meals in a cafeteria-style catering setup, that it would be a gas to print up tickets bearing varying denominations of Swiss Francs, and issue an arbitrary number to each person, so that everyone has to do the impossible math of ordering chicken fingers from a Swiss waitress while counting little pieces of paper. All rather frustrating until a few of us stumble upon a stash of tickets at the end of the night, and the catering staff, rather begrudgingly, fork over three bottles of champagne and two bottles of top shelf wine because we had roughly $17,000 in fake currency. Take that.






















Dear god, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away from here.






















The few winners of the festival season so far. Mogwai, Grace Jones (who is solidly out of her mind, but it's an amazing show in spite of/because of it)....






















...and Nick Cave (who has an ever-evolving case of Euro mouth, evidenced by the off kilter remarks about his own genitalia made to a Belgian audience).

















And then some of it has just gone sideways.






















In other news I won the last round of 'wallet chain buckeroo' the other day with a soup ladle trump card.






















Yesterday our merch guy, Zeke, told me that the British once hung a chimpanzee in a public square because they thought it was a french man. How's that for European cultural relations? Also, don't ever drink with anyone named Zeke in Prague. Several of us got laid out by what was only described later as 'the green ferret.' Sort of like the green fairy, but a bit nastier, and with more fur. The following day was pretty unpleasant, as our bus driver can attest. He was cursing as he vacuumed up broken glass and glitter from the carpet in the back lounge. That said, it is always best to ease yourself into Germany with a screaming headache and a short temper. Send it on.