Germany! (July 25, 2009)

We left Utrecht at 7:00 am (some of us had way too much fun hanging with our friends in Utrecht and didn't get back to the hotel until 3:00 am) by train to Germany. After jumping trains once we arrived in Mainz. We then took a van and two cars to our hotel (we kind of take up a lot of room).

We stayed in a lovely hotel that was kind of like a B&B. The hotel was actually closed that day, but they were open for us. No, I'm not making a joke here... seriously. Our gig was a little ways away in the village of Boppard. It was an outdoor venue in the courtyard of a church. It was beautiful, but halfway through our soundcheck the bells of the church started ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. Fortunately, we all thought it was funny that they were ringing for so long; Unfortunately, the bells were letting everyone know that church was starting. We continued our soundcheck and a (understandably) upset church goer came out and asked us to keep it down during the service... woops.

We started the gig and everything was going pretty well. The audience was enthusiastic and we all were having fun. Then... (this is where you would usually hear a dum dum duuuum sound effect. I'll let you make the sound yourself... I'll wait) during "Walk the Straighter Road" as soon as Randy started his first solo in the tune, the clowds opened up and started poring rain down on the poor audience members. Normally, something like poring down rain would be a gig ender; not in Boppard. They ran for umbrellas and pulled out their ponchos and sat out the rest of the gig. Not only did every single person watch the entire gig, they had us do 3 encores on top of the entire gig. After meeting with some of the audience, we went back to our hotel and ate some amazingly wonderful homemade German food.

The next morning, we left the hotel and drove from Boppard to Rockenhausen (I truly agree that Rockenhausen is the greatest name ever and you can be sure that we made all of the bad puns possible). We got an amazing oportunity to do a bit of sight seeing along the Rhine river. We got to our hotel in Rockenhausen and discovered that the venue for the performance that night was actually at the hotel (we knew a little earlier than that, but its a better story if we found out when we got there). In fact I could see the stage from my hotel room. It was another outdoor venue (if you didn't pick up on that earlier) and fortunately for everyone involved we had a rain free performance. We were fortunate enough to have another incredibly enthusiastic crowd. It was a fantastic end to a wonderful tour and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Peter
GFT