Back to Groningen, it took a little longer than expected...

Day Off. Nice...

we slept in. it felt good. then off to Amsterdam...

The distances we had to travel this week felt very short, but I guess it is our North American perspective; when we told people in Nijmegen that we had to go to The Hague the next day, they said ‘oh that is far’, but if it is under 3 hours of travel time, it feels short to us!!...

After a nice breakfast with the flatmates, we walked a fast walk to the nearby train station. we rolled through the fields of Holland and arrived at Nijmegen...

smooth train rides north from cologne to utrecht, and then almost to groningen, but then an accident on the tracks forced us out at assen and onto a greyhound bus for half an hour.Laurens from wishfulmusic met us at the station and walked us to the place where he and Wouter had organized a house concert...

and so, another early train!! 6am rise, and marlies is kind enough, again, to drive us to the train station. all this for a day off, but Sunday train travel in germany is busy and all the trains in the late morning and afternoon were sold out.

the next concert was at Marlies' house, and we were put in contact with her by Robin Aigner, who had toured a similar circuit last july. (thank you robin!)

we had an early train to catch (again), since it was a 6 hour train trip to stockholm...

on the high speed ICE train to Copenhagen, a 5 hour ride, we had a cool surprise...

northward bound... we had two shows in Scandanavia, and one day off to get from Belgium to as-close-as-possible-to-Copenhagen...

we had to wake up at 5am and get on the road. the misty dark drive through those old towns was magical. we had to return the rental car and get our pass stamped for the month. back on the TGV, racing at 380 km/h through France..

we got back on the road, had a long drive back to angers and then to a small town called Blaison-Gohier along the Loire river valley.

I really enjoyed driving all day, in the sun, blasting classical music, and racing through ancient countrysides of Brittany...

we had heard about the Presqu’il de Crozon from a few people. it is a big peninsula with lots of national forest and trails and cliffs and beaches.

we were unprepared for how beautiful it was...

Our day off, we wanted to go swimming in the ocean. after getting slightly lost on our way to Patrick’s house in the countryside outside Brest...

we bought eurail passes for the month, the unlimited global pass. but we had 33 days of travel, so we rented a car for these first few days before using our month pass..

spent the day packing, doing all those last minute things that for some reason never get done until those final moments...

my parents drove us to airport. we arrived three hours before the flight, good thing too because there was a line an hour long stretching between two sections of the airport!! check out vlog 1 for footage of the line and our first few days in Europe!

The torrential downpour that we had experienced the day before had flooded some tracks and knocked down some power lines in the western, mountainous part of the country, which meant our train was an hour and a half late.

We were quite excited to go to Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart, and a place known for its great music. But we didn't know where we were staying, so we knew we had a little extra time to arrive, and decided to take a little detour. We wanted to see the Alps one last time on this trip, so we took the train south to Innsbruck on a beautiful blue sky morning, saw rocky peaks, lush valleys, and were amazed to see towns that seemed to be perched on the top of mountains, and that people had gardens where normally only the mountain goats can go.

My oldest friend in the world is Martin. We have been friends for something like 23 years now. We met in elementary school and my first memories of him are biking to school, big adventures going across the the local bridge (called the hump) and discovering new streets and parks on the way to class.

A few months ago, before we knew anything about the European rail system, we knew we had a tight schedule on some days and decided to reserve some tickets in advance. For some reason we got it into our heads that it made sense to go to Amsterdam first and then take an express train to Hannover, but really what could have been a three hour ride became about seven hours.

The morning leaving Amsterdam, we were greeted by strong ocean winds and torrential downpours, knocking people off bikes, and shaking the tram as we drove cross town.

We had to play on Amsterdam FM at 3pm, arrive at 2. So we had to wake up early and catch the 8:30 train to Antwerp. We were supposed to have an hour wait between connections there, but luckily the earlier train that was supposed to depart two minutes before we arrived was late, so we ran down the escalators and caught it, and so had no wait. Very lucky!

We had heard from our friend Tizio, aka Bob Corn, that he would be voyaging north from Italy on another tour. It happened that he had a show booked in Kortrijk on wednesday the 15^th, and we happened to have this day off, and also had planned to come back to the town to visit Nathalie and Tjalle, and to pick up the rest of our cd's that we had sent ahead. We had asked Tizio the week before if we could open for him, and Brecht, the owner of the De Dingen Cafe, said yes. It worked out perfectly.

We have this area in Montreal called the mile-end. It is a great part of town and is full of artists and interesting people. It is in the plateau, which is a hip place to live, and the mile-end is the hip part of the plateau.

When we just about to meet Sam in Brussels, Aliza said 'what does he look like?' and I said 'like he is from the mile-end.'

We had heard the locals in Gent call Bruges an “outdoor museum,” because it is a well preserved medieval town. I had been there once before on my last trip to Europe, but Aliza hadn't been yet, so we decided to go there for our one day off this week – we were 3 shows into 9 shows in 10 days...

Dirk had recommended us to a few of his friends, saying that we were looking for more house shows. We got two more shows from his connections: the concert this day in Gent with Joost, and Tuesday's concert with Sam in Louvain near Brussels.

So as we mentioned before, Carly and her boyfriend Ben had set up this show just 4 days ago. Pretty awesome. She met us at the train station, and we were about to get on the S-bahn cross town, when I mentioned that Aliza had yet to see the Dome. Carly agreed that we should step out and see this incredible piece of architecture. It is hard to describe the gnarly awesomeness that is Koln Dome. It is a gothic cathedral with flying buttresses, the grey stones stained black from the weather. It almost looks like a giant gargoyle, it is spooky and incredible at the same instant. The detail in the stonework is meticulous.

Booking a tour in Europe when no one has heard of you before is almost as hard as hitchhiking across the Galaxy (or Canada). But somehow we managed to do it (book the tour that is – and I hitchhiked across Canada, hopefully the Galaxy soon).

Everyone always says how great of a city Berlin is. And it's true.

It was nice to be in a hotel for two nights, because we actually got to sleep in the day of the show and didn't have to wake up early and check out.

We've been so lucky with traveling, we had to have one token annoying train day. Here's our one grumpy tale, apologies (it's not too bad, really).

We woke up early-ish to catch our train. Dirk had prepared us a continental breakfast, which we enjoyed before he and Jossip walked us to the bus stop, where we spoke about Canada's strange names for its one and two dollar coins until the bus came (loonie? Twonie?..)

The Tipi had offered us an entire room in a local hostel all to ourselves- we only took two of the seven twin mattresses, and slept in a little loft area tucked away above the room, accessed only by a steep little ladder.

After a few morning errands, we had coffee with Tjalle and then got on the train to Liege.

When I was last in Europe in 2005 I had the remarkable experience of couch-surfing. This age old tradition had met the internet and metamorphed into something new and unexpected. The website couchsurfing.com had started connecting travelers with locals around the world who were willing to host them, on a couch/bed/carpet. I joined in 2005 and there were sixteen thousand members, I thought that was a lot. Now there are over two million. I was able to voyage around Europe and stay with really really nice and generous people; people that were open to hosting a complete stranger but that they greeted and treated as new friend.

One of the couples I stayed with was Nathalie and Tjalle from Kortrijk, Belgium. They hosted me for a few days, and even booked a show for me. They showed me around town and introduced to real quality Belgian beers.

so the first day of June greeted us with rain. We were leaving italy, and we joked that italy was crying because we were leaving ;) ok, we are silly. We said a big goodbye and thank you to Lorenzo for all his generosity and kindness, and we boarded the train, northward and beyond!

Lorenzo had offered for us to stay at the castle again, and since we hadn't even been there for 24 hours the previous time, we had to say yes!

Most Italians have never heard of San Martino Spino, let alone know where it is. But this tiny town is the home of the wonderful and talented Tizio, aka Bob Corn. This kind and generous man helped us book some of our Italian shows and invited us to play the the festival he organizes, Musica Nelle Valli....

The next morning we had to wake up at 7 AM after a show night. Gianni had to go work. We were slightly exhausted, and had to find inspiration to carry our heavy, hot backpacks to catch the train and make our way to Verona. But it was very worth it...

While touring, already in the first ten days, we have been to so many different places. It's so interesting just hopping on the train, and stepping off into a completely different world.

Florence

Sometimes there is an interesting synchronicity to trips. Aliza had been reading Irving Stone's 'The Agony and the Ecstasy,' a biography of Michelangelo in the form of a story. On the train from Rome to Florence, where we were going for our day off, she got to the part of the story where Michelangelo carves David. So, of course, we had to go see the real David...

we got to see an amazing thundershower in rome. we had just arrived at Roma Termini, the train station, and had walked across the street to decipher our tourist map of the town and get some coffee (but we got a beer and some pasta instead).

we woke as early as we could... 10am... and drove down to the riveside, taking badoo the dog with us. the river is mostly riverbed; a small stream that moves around a large old riverbed of limestone and marble. the cliffs up above us show the the ripples and the layers that compose the appennines. the sun is shining so bright and we wish we had time to go for a swim at the the waterfall that is a little ways further up the valley. but we have to pack and leave castel corneglio, make our way to vianino for lunch and coffee, and then drive into parma. the mountains fade into prairies like waves on a sandy beach, it is a slow but inevitable exit from the steep green mountains that seem to sing their history to us.

it is 8:15pm on saturday may 21st, we arrive the the site of our first show: an old oratorio in the village of vianino. the sun is just setting over the verdant fields, the air is thick with humidity and pollen, the trees stand at ease along the winding roads, and the stones of the 13th century houses are glowing a soft hue of orange. we have just arrived here with lorenzo, our friend and host and concert organizer this evening. the oratorio is used for community events and lorenzo thought make use of this space, there was seating for fifty, but more chairs were being brought and there was standing room too. i thought to myself how perfect of a place for our first show and how exciting this was going to be. we had soundchecked in the early afternoon, and all we had to do was set up the recording device, a zoom recorder with stereo mics, and the camera, and also set up the cd's to be sold... except at that moment i realized there were no cd's in my case or in my hands, the cd's were still back at the house were staying at, half an hour drive, an hour round trip. and the concert starts in an hour and fifteen. and we have not had supper yet, and lorenzo's wife maria has just cooked us a feast.

woke up to the wild sounds of bird calls we had never heard before. it was really loud and strange music. and out our little
attic window there was this wall of forest, and looked out just in time to see the the beige/pink glow of the sunrise
on mont blanc... amazing.

so here we are in the french alps. wow, these are some big mountains.

Had a great overnight flight, was too excited too sleep, so watched the sun rise over the clouds above the ocean.