European Tour Diary 2018: Day 10 Villengen-Schwenningen

I am not feeling my best when I wake up.  There’s a bitter taste in the back of my throat.  A heavy fog fills my head.  Rudy the Cat stares at me judgmentally.  Oliver wakes up and looks at me sitting in the kitchen area.  “Yes.  It’s like being run over by a truck or something, yes?”  We team up to fry up some potatoes, sausage and eggs.  Strong coffee brews.  We sit in the sunshine on his roof overlooking the Stuttgart city center and slowly morph back into being human.  The sun is warm, but the smell of Fall is in the breeze.

We re-group at Antje’s apartment and then retrieve Hector and Chanda.  They are staying at a weird little hotel that Christoph always books.  It is run by a group of Chinese that don’t seem to speak any language useful to them in their current situation.  Hector tells us the story about how a Chinese guy knocked on their door when Chanda was showering.  He wanted to come in and use a tape measure.  Hector tells him to come back later.  The door closes, and the man quickly knocks again.  Hector opens the door and the man tries to walk in with his tape measure.  Hector now has to literally shove him out the door telling him more forcefully “later!  later!”.  Chanda is now out of the shower and starting to dry herself when the sound of a key entering the lock is heard.  The man lets himself in, Chanda dives under the covers, the Chinese man walks into the bathroom like he’s alone in the room, takes a measurement and then leaves without a word.  This is not the type of service that gets you four-star Yelp reviews.

We drive out to Christoph and Antje’s mother’s house for a traditional Swabian lunch of Schwabische Maultaschen.  These are like a cross between pierogis and meat filled ravioli but are cooked in scrambled eggs.  It is a heavy meal with a capital “H” but very good.  She’s a very good cook.  Sugar at one point lifted her plate to drink the salad dressing, a dining move that even Leo regards as a bit over the top.  Sugar continues her efforts to wedge herself into the Roth family by posing for a photo with them all.  She has constructed a loose plan of moving in, changing her name, and living her days as a new German.  Christoph is very firm in his view of this scenario being “impossible”. 

We wind through the countryside to the small village of Villengen-Schwenningen, a place I reflexively call “Finnegan Shinnegan”.  It’s a pretty little town where at any moment a gnome might pop out of a corner and do a little jig.  The place we have played in the past, Café Limba, is either closed or not doing shows any longer.  There was some high drama when the maim character at the café, Bernard, was ousted from control by a midnight change of the locks and cast out from the kingdom.  He and his minions were rightfully pissed, and now do shows elsewhere while looking for a new club to call their own.  I spot a “#notmyLimba” sticker on a post driving in.  Hence, the show tonight is at one of those Euro youth center/cultural space/coffee shop/ café multi use areas.  It is clean, welcoming and well appointed.  Yet, it does not have the element of mayhem and chaos the old Limba had.  There the fans are inches away from you and the entire room became one energy.  This is just a show at a club for some cool people.

We are all pretty wrung out from our Stuttgart night.  I got back with Oliver around 3:30.  Dance Party went until 4:30.  Leo, of all people, pulled the plug on the night and tore Antje away from The Gigolo Cowboy.  Hector and Chanda discovered their entire floor had been rented out to Oktoberfest Bros that sung traditional songs at the top of their lungs until daybreak.  We are not very well rested.

It takes a few songs to get the juices going.  Bernard and some women with the Bohemian Finnegan Shinnegan Counter Hippie Look are dancing hard.  A couple guys are videoing everything.  For a Sunday night at a youth center, this is well beyond expectation.  The second part of the set is actually pretty good.  We get a couple of encores.  It is a fun show as it always is here.  It is inspiring to see that this group of people has pulled together to make a scene for themselves. It is a DIY Socialist idea that is working.  I hope Bernard’s scheme for a new club by the train station is realized.  These folks need their own space.  We eat some post show sausage and cheese and hang out with the people.  I like it here.  Eventually we crawl back into the van for the 75-minute ride back to Stuttgart.  The Riesling has made me sleepy.