Klon, Koln, Cologne?

So, I am writing now from the venue one hour before our set. I think the name of it is Gerbaude 9, and it's all extremely east bloc. Reminds me of a place where vampires might come to hang out on saturday nights. There is lots of concrete, lots of bad graffiti, lots of stickers from performances past, and lots of Germans. Germans are a funny lot, I find. everyone is extremely friendly and full of smiles, but it seems as if they are constantly on the verge of snapping and totally flipping out. I'm aware of the fact that this is pure conjecture, but seeing as it is my first time in the country I might as well put my first impressions out there.

Even in spite of the dingy, grungy, run-down vibe of this place, I was surprised to find a pretty healthy wireless connection and an unbelievable spread in our dressing room. Seriously, we felt like royalty when we walked in. For dinner we ate green curry, and made sandwiches with excellent cheese, quality lunch meats, and a variety of healthy juices and teas (this aspect of the spread was immediately appealing to me, the sickly member of the bunch). I expected to see some sauerkraut and some kickass brats, but they were nowhere to be found. Our opener tonight is a very Tori Amos-y German singer/songwriter with an extremely gregarious manager whose name I can't recall. As we finished up our sound check with "No Quarter," I looked over to see him bobbing his head with a huge smile on his face. After we finished he informed me that he had been in attendance at the only two Led Zeppelin shows ever to take place in Frankfurt, his hometown. I believe his line was, "that is one of ze cool tings about being oold..." Having obviously never seen a Zep show myself, I agreed. Three of our shows so far have had similar types of gentle, sensitive openers, which is funny considering that our set ends up being extremely loud and aggressive. That's always a funny contrast for the audience I figure. I have only about 45 minutes before we hit go-time, so I figured I'd just give a little update on things.

An observation: time on tour seems to pass more quickly than time in real-life. The past five hours at this venue have seemed a quarter of that. I blame the delicious spread in part for this phenomenon, but I also attribute it to the strenuous nature of this whole tour thing. One's mind seems to turn off in the interim between sound check and performances. It's weird. I wonder if that is true for real day jobs, and the time between lunch and going home. Feel free to respond to this question with your own opinions. I'm genuinely curious.