...as Matt put it while traversing the millions of tunnels it takes to get there. We stopped once so far, and were treated by down home yokels from the good ole US of A. I know that it s exactly how we sound, but hearing other Americans order cappuccinos, coffee, and various food items makes me ashamed at how stupid our accent sounds compared to the whole of Europe. I've lost track of how long we've been in the van already, which I guess is partly a good thing, but makes me anxious to know how long we have left. Best just not to think about it and enjoy the scenery.
Bummer town, population: Rosetta & City of ships
So...the van broke down again, and not the temporary way like last time, this was pretty bad. We were stuck on the side of the road for about half an hour to 45 minutes when a truck came by to 'tow' us off the highway. I use the word 'tow' loosely, mostly because it was more like a tugboat action. The dude tied a rope from his tiny little truck to our gigantic van and pulled us to the next exit toll. We still had to pay the toll, and to actually get through the toll, we had to manually push it through.
We ended up setting off alarms because the toll booth sensors thought we (the dudes pushing the van through) were another smaller car trying to sneak through the toll. Once on the other side, we waited for the actual tow truck. This felt like forever. When the tow truck got there, the dude told us to get in the van, and he was going to hoist us onto the flatbed of the truck. This, we all thought, was a bad idea. First attempt, he was unable to lift the van onto the flatbed, so he immediately gave up, and decided to just pin up our front end, and tow us. We were all still in the van while we were being towed. This was both exciting and nerve wracking, especially since we bounced up and down, and the stirrups holding the van to the tow truck kept bouncing and scraping on the ground when we hit bumps, and made sharp turns.
We finally arrived at a Mercedes-Benz dealership, and boy, when we got inside that building, it was like walking through the gates of heaven. Comfy waiting area, air conditioning, and a television (though it only played Italian shows and really crappy pop music videos). We waited there for a good while to eventually find that the van was, for all intensive purposes, screwed.
Now, in the US, we would be boned if our van broke down and had to have massive work done to it, but in Europe, we're working with a German company, and as Mike says, "I love working with Germans. They have no sense of humor, but they know how to run a good business." The van was fully insured, and the only thing we had to worry about was waiting, and maybe being late for tomorrow's show (though, we did have to cancel the show today, but we much needed a day off anyway). Even greater, someone is going to drive a new van for us to Italy, from Germany, now that's service. So we get to spend the night in a miscellaneous Italian city, which is a thousand times better than any city in the US.
We took a bus to the center of town in an attempt to find a place to sleep. There was a lot of wandering, but we finally found a hostel to sleep.
We got a recommendation from one of the locals as to where to et cause they overheard us talking. It was pizza again tonight, but where better to have pizza than Italy! We walked for a bit and found the pizza place. It was almost unbearable to stand inside the building to read the menu it was so hot. I finally settled on a margarita (I don't think that's the correct spelling for the pizza, spell correction) pizza, everyone else got their respective food and we wandered for a place to sit and eat. Once we're done, we wander for a bit, but decide we want ice cream too, so we returned to the pizza place to ask where to find some. We walked for some time, which was long enough for us to almost think we're going the wrong way, but finally we see it. We had some amazing gelato, and we're off back to the hostel.
The next day: On to France
The new van is being driven down to us from Germany, ridiculous. It' was supposed to be here at around 9am or so, he got here around 9:30. We picked up some food from a local grocery store and headed out. We had to get the driver to the train station by 11:30. We were late getting there, not cause he was running late, but because we had a hard time finding the Mercedes dealership, trying to move the gear from one van to another (this van being epic and amazing, but having less room in the back for gear), and then, we hit horrid traffic on the way out of town. The drive said he could just take a later train as he had already missed his scheduled train. We got him there, said our thank you's and goodbyes, rearranged some things, and we're now on our splendid 9 hour drive to France.
We entered the longest tunnel ever that led to France. I fell asleep mid tunnel, but was woken up on the other end to a border guard knocking on the window, and everyone telling me to wake up and open the door for him. We all said 'hi' and he heard we were American, and sent us on our way, weird.
Mike got tired, and so now our Mike [Armine] is captaining the van, since he's the only other dude here that knows how to drive manual. We're well into France now, and we'll probably be late to the show, but we'll make it. It's weird, the lapse of time while in tour is a completely different animal than when at home. We broke down yesterday and had one unscheduled day off, only one day, but it feels to all of us like we haven't played a show in a week. Hopefully all goes well the rest of the trip today, and the show tonight.
We arrived late as expected. The show went pretty well, but the crowd didn't seem that energetic and, in turn, didn't feel as exciting. We were mostly just happy to have a new van and that we got paid. I think we lost a good amount of money yesterday.
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