Tour of Eastern Yurp – April 2011 – Part II

Note: To aid your reading, you may wish to check out the whole set of photos on Facebook.

BRNO

At Stara Pekarna, Brno

Our driving seems to be perpetually punctuating by traffic jams in Praha/Prague. Just before we arrive we get done by the motorway patrol people – I don’t think they’re police, but I’m not sure. (I didn’t test their trigger-happiness.) Nobody informed the idiot musical tourists (us) that you need a vignette (sticker) for the window while driving on the motorways of the Czech Republic. We would’ve got away with it too if it wasn’t for a toilet break we took on the outskirts of Brno with just 800 metres of that motorway to go. Shit. So close, and yet so… broke. Dave returns to find the car empty, and no sign of me. I’m sitting in the back of a van handing over hard-earned cash as a fine for our offence. So the moral of the story is : never stop.

We make it to Brno after my experience , rolling in beside the main train station, where we meet up with Ivi and Iva, the finest ambassadors for Slovakia and the Czech Republic you could ever meet (and the first ones I ever did – years ago back in Dublin). Dave & I stuff ourselves with food, which is often what one ends up doing on tour to compensate for the tiredness and fatigue, when one doesn’t have the cocaine budget of, say, Fleetwood Mac at their peak.

The language barrier is in evidence again. Soundcheck at Stara Pekarna is navigated ably via a series of hand gestures. (Not the ones you’re thinking of. Honestly.) This is the first plugged show we play, which is quite a change. We have a great crowd. I’m not sure where they’ve all come from. Yes, some have come all the way from internetland, and I recognise them. But the others seem to have followed posters and flyers! Old school.

After the show we trek to a pub up the road called The Immigrant, where we get involved in Irish Immigrant activity like drinkin’, fightin’ and playing more music. The smoking ban is not in place in the Czech Republic yet – so I carelessly shred my voice singing in it.

BRATISLAVA

Scherz Kafe, Bratislava – Taken by Ivi

Tonight we play the Scherz Kafe in downtown Bratislava. We’re staying with the lovely Ivi and
Anton tonight, in their magnificent apartment. My voice is tired, so we spend the day running around buying herbal remedies and honey.

Scherz Kafe was in a lovely part of the town. Unusually, across the street from the cafe was a Tesco Express. Globalisation is a real blight! (Tesco are a massive supermarket chain… apparently, the world’s third largest after Walmart and Carrefour.)

The sound is fantastic in the café tonight, and great craic to play. My voice holds up thanks to the diet of honey and some incredible fresh mint and honey tea made by the lovely cailíní at the Kafé.

I’m always amazed and really impressed by the energy and enthusiasm people have for concerts outside of Ireland. Some music fans regularly travel to multiple shows on the same tour separated by hundreds of miles. We’ve seen it all over the States and all over Europe. It’s a great honour to have people making that effort, and I can only hope that our gratitude translates and we send them home happy.