BAL-KEN ODDESSY
SARAJEVO, 3/20
We ended up missing our train back to Paris, and I spent Sunday night furiously packing, putting things away, counting out merch, skype-ing with Jon Auer, etc. In the morning I was pleasantly surprised that my cab to CDG was about €10 cheaper than usual. The check in line for Croatian Airlines, which is done at the Lufthansa check in desk in Terminal 1, was long but went quickly and they didn’t even charge me extra for my extremely heavy suitcase, filled with CDs to sell on tour. The passport control line was long too—until I realized no one was in the non-EU line. And then the security line was immense—two completely full flights to the US and a pretty full flight to Krakow were boarding from the same satellite as our relatively sparse flight to Zagreb. I pushed my way up to the front and got thru as our flight was boarding before the United flights, but it didn’t matter—they held the flight until everybody was thru security and on board. I found a few empty seats and eventually we took off.
Originally I was booked a flight to Sarajevo from Zagreb in the afternoon. As often is the case with an Expedia-booked flight, the details changed unexpectedly for the bizarre some days before my trip, and I was facing an 8-hour layover in Zagreb. I couldn’t change it at check-in in Paris, but I was planning on trying in Zagreb. However, as it happened, the security-oriented delays in Paris meant I would have missed my original connection anyway. So, I got to Zagreb, now with a 7-hour layover, and headed into town on a very cheap bus that Croatian Airlines operates. It’s about €2 (the Air France bus to go a similar distance from CDG to Gare de Lyon is €11). On the way into town, you pass the American Embassy, which is hardly on embassy row—it’s a massive fortress out in the middle of nowhere, built far, far off the road. Evidently cabs can’t go there, so visa applicants have to suffer the humiliating act of approaching on foot over about 100 yards of muddy grass.
The bus let me off the main bus station and from there I took a tram to the Esplanade Hotel, one of my favorite hotels in Europe, where REM stayed in 2005. They have free wifi in the bar, so I ordered a tea and dried off (torrential downpours/blizzards have been the ongoing theme of the first week of my Balkan tour) and checked email. Natasa Rohan, who helped organize my show in Zagreb last year, had offered to help me out when I was in town for my show this time, and I asked her if that help could include finding a nice restaurant to have an early dinner at during my layover. She obliged and met me at the Esplanade, and we walked to the edge of the old town, the part that sits on a rise above the rest, and parked ourselves in a homey restaurant (the owners made their own wine, and it was quite good). I took the bus back to the airport, went thru security and sat at the gate. The 9.05 flight to SJJ was the last international flight leaving that night. It was to board at 8.35. About 20-25 of us were assembled at the gate, where a TV monitor above the gate showed the flight information. Suddenly the monitor went black, almost precisely at 8.35. A man then came and announced a few things in Croatian. There were two American businessmen also on the flight who asked the man to translate the announcement. The flight had been cancelled due to high winds in Sarajevo. Evidently this is a common problem, as Sarajevo is situated in a bowl surrounded by mountains, and the planes must take a tricky drop when they are on approach, and any heavy crosswinds can be very dangerous.
Now, in my dimwitted confidence that everything would go reasonably close to as planned, I didn’t even have the phone numbers for the promoter * or * my driver—but the promoter, who was waiting at SJJ int’l for me, saw the flight was cancelled and called the general number for ZAG int’l and had me paged. In an act of supreme kindness, he offered to meet me when my bus was scheduled to come in, around 3.30am.
We boarded the bus and headed off. There was no sign of the bad weather that had soaked me in Zagreb that afternoon and had disrupted my flight. In fact, the road was bone dry and when stopped for a coffee break for the driver at around midnight, it was warm and pleasant out.
We bounced into Sarajevo at roughly the time predicted, and I sms’d Vedran to come meet me at the bus station’s restaurant, which was, despite the fact the rest of the area was deserted, rather lively at this hour. By 4.30am I was at last in bed.
The event that was bringing me to Sarajevo was Winterfest, which is a 6-week cultural celebration, originally part of the festivities surrounding the winter Olympics, but it has been continuing since then, even rudimentarily during the worst parts of the war. The war’s evidence is brutally apparent everywhere you turn in Bosnia (that I went, anyway). Bullet holes riddle 75% of the buildings you see. And the main park in downtown Sarajevo is full of Muslim graves—yes, there is a very old cemetery there, but there are quite a few graves thrown in there from wartime. One of Sarajevo’s loveliest buildings, the old town hall, which was later a library, was ruined by a grenade of some kind that ignited the books inside. And so on and so on. Bosnia itself has yet to come out of that period fully; it’s catching up, even to its neighbors, let alone mainstream Europe. The Bosnia I navigated was mountainous, with villages that remain as they have been for many years, no major highways between cities, etc. Bosnians are much like Croatians and Serbians—educated, energetic, and highly hospitable. The general level of English comprehension is higher on average than, say, Spain—and most of the people who don’t speak English speak at least German and perhaps something else.
But the openness of the scars of war—both in Sarajevo and in Belgrade there are ruined buildings that the people seem to want to remain there, so as to avoid sweeping the memory out of sight—make Bosnia a very stimulating and affecting place. Closer to the Croatian border, where the roads are lined with bootleg DVD shops, often made from shipping containers, you will see many houses whose owners simply never returned to patch the bullet holes and rebuild. I found myself visualizing—what if shells struck the familiar sights of Seattle or Bellingham? What does it do to your psyche to see the place you call home deformed by violence?
The rim of the bowl that surrounds Sarajevo was taken by the invading forces, which means, snipers and artillery could fire at will on the town. In the midst of this, Winterfest actually took place during the fighting—a few artists from outside Sarajevo were smuggled in via a tunnel that was still in operation. I wish I could say that after taking all that in, after walking around the town all day, after marveling at the spot where Gavrilo Princip shot the archduke Franz Ferdinand—which is, incredibly, unmarked (the Austrian and Yugoslavian markers that were there were taken down, and nothing has been agreed upon to replace them—in fact, the old markers are still being kept and may be put back at such a point as the political stalemate surrounding this issue is resolved—in fact, as we say that history is written by the victors and Bosnia has suffered something that could only be called survival, not victory, perhaps history is not yet ready to be written here), after eating burek for lunch (a burek is a very greasy pastry that can be filled with meat or cheese—it’s considered a breakfast item but I ate them for lunch on several occasions, with much enjoyment), after all that, I wish I could say my show was a spectacular success, but unfortunately the show itself was a bit of anti climax. I played in a lovely little theatre, but as I was a late edition to Winterfest, and playing on essentially the last day, I think I was just a blip on the mind of the people of Sarajevo. They had just experienced six nonstop weeks of bands, films, plays, etc. from all over the world, and an obscure songwriter who sort of played with some obscure bands and one well known band was not enough to tickle their curiosity to the required degree. Maybe 20 people showed up, and some of them were older folks who either go to everything Winterfest has to offer, or everything the Kamerni Teatar 55 has to offer. There was an elegantly dressed couple who were about 60 years old who arrived late and had a look of instant regret when I launched into my introduction for “When U Find Someone”. Ah well. They headed for the exit when I started to wail, “Sharing a dream as a prisoner screams…”.
After the show, we had been invited to a reception at the US Embassy, but it was taking place pretty much during my show—we pulled up to the gates just in case but the guests had gone home. I went back to my hotel and listened to the howling wind and the rain spattering the roof.
TRAVNIK, 3/21
My driver, Matthias, and I breakfasted and drove into the mountains north of Sarajevo and found our way to Travnik. Travnik was the capital of the region for about 60 years during the Turkish occupation—Sarajevo was burned by the forces under Prince Eugene of Savoy—and thus enjoyed wealth and importance for couple of generations. The town straddles a road—the valley has had an important road running thru it since Roman times—and also runs up into the steep hillsides on either side of the valley. There is massive Turkish fortress, and dozens of mosques. The most elaborate mosque is at the south end of the town center, and the calls to prayer ring out in that eerie (to western ears) wail—the source of the line in “Je Vous En Prie”—‘all religion can sound like weeping’. Also on that end of town is something quite incredible, what is called “Blue Water”—a huge spring that just materializes out of the side of the hill as a vigorous trickle, and in 3 yards becomes a river, with enough force to turn a mill about 10 yards downstream. The water is collected by a dam, and feeds two trout ponds. All within about half an acre.
The club in Travnik is a cyber café run by an organization called Alter Art. It has just moved in to a building that until recently was a ceremonial hall for the local military garrison. The actual ceremony hall is a theater that can hold a few hundred people. The cyber café is pretty tiny, but always busy, it is the meeting point for anyone young and interesting in the area. Darko Saracevic, who runs the place and puts on the shows there, is a man with tremendous energy, great ideas and impeccable organization. For my show, I was paid well, treated like a special guest, had the use of great equipment, and played to very interested people, more of them than in Sarajevo, a city ten times larger. I had perhaps 30 or 40 people there, and really got a great reception. After the show we were taken to a fantastic bar, in the attic of a building in the center, where a local musician was playing, just singing and playing acoustic guitar. At one point I thought that this Bosnian song had a familiar ring to it, until I realized he was playing “Leave” by REM…followed by “Imitation of Life”! A couple of Beatles songs later, I was ready to head back to the hotel…snow was falling on the first day of spring in huge, sticky flakes, and I was told that the most representational Bosnian folk song, almost like the national folk anthem of Bosnia, has a title translated as “Snow is Falling on Blossoms and Fruit”.
Special mention should be mentioned of the hotel Onicks, where we stayed, which is family run and has just 5 rooms, and who included dinner as part of my stay (this was true in Sarajevo as well). They cooked me a wonderful meal of liver and salad and let Dom call me on the house phone (there were no phones in the rooms).
BELGRADE, 3/22
The snow had stopped by the time we were up in the morning, and it hadn’t stuck anyway. The surrounding hills were fully flocked but the road was clear. Well, mostly, the road back to Sarajevo was closed for some reason—and even on our road, there were two awful accidents that blocked traffic; one was a head-on collision, likely the result of trying to overtake on a blind curve. We worked our way up towards Croatia, and eventually got on the Zagreb-Belgrade highway, the only real highway in the region, and certainly the best one. The Dr. Seuss jumble of hills in Bosnia (sadly punctuated by filthy rivers—the environment is low on the list of priorities as the society regains its functionality) flattened to the rolling, orderly charm of Croatia and flattened further still to the endless rectangles of rich, black earth that cover much of Serbia.
Belgrade was once the capital of a very large country, and of course is still the biggest city in the region, but it was constructed on a scale that is just a bit oversized for its current role. Along the highway from the Croatian border (the highways in Serbia are much rougher, and of course the bridges were bombed by NATO; thus some of them that were only damaged instead of destroyed are rather dangerous and rickety) there is a parade of giant buildings, the socialist pyramids, gargantuan housing projects, convention centers, hotels, etc. all menacingly huge. The highway is perpendicular to the main drag in Belgrade, and there is a bottleneck perpetually where everyone has to enter and exit the freeway—compare Seattle, where the freeway bisects the length of downtown, and thus provides half a dozen exits to disperse traffic to and from the freeway, here, everyone entering Belgrade has to get on and off at the same place. But, Belgrade is composed of, again, huge avenues, and navigation is relatively easy. We headed for the tallest building downtown, as directed by our hosts, the promoters, my friends Ivan and Svetlana, who I met on REM's visit to Belgrade in 2005, who were then working on Radio B92. Ivan met us and guided us around the corner to the SKC, which I had eyed when I was there in 05 and thought, “someday I will play there”. And here I was, just 2 years later. The venue is a small bar called the Living Room, which had a lovely old piano and the perfect space for a show of mine. As Ika, the duo that opened for me, performed, the place really filled up. I spoke to Serbian and Montenegrin TV and suddenly it was showtime—I received a very warm welcome and having a real piano really inspired me, so I played for quite awhile, and had a great night. At one point, Ika’s guitar player’s guitar was claimed by its owner—he hopped up on the tiny stage between songs and apologized for the intrusion, but he had to go. He asked if I could play “Never My Love” before he left. And so, I obliged; he busted out the guitar and played along—nice moment! It was really late when I finished, and people were starting to fade but it was really a successful night. We headed back to the hotel Union after having a last glass of wine with my friends (the owner of the venue has a young son who is, like Aden, interested in playing drums—we talked about what kind of band they could form!). The singer of Ika has a Decemberists tribute band, I think it might be all female, too, and they are making a documentary about their project! Anyway, the Hotel Union is a typical Balkan city hotel, meaning that it was decorated in a kind of 1980 that looked more like 1960, and a British 1960 at that. The tenets of socialism would have dictated that a luxury hotel cannot exist, since there is no luxury class, so hotel quality differs in terms of a kind of formality, and also of course in terms of size. Hotel Union is not huge, but it does have a groovy neon sign and rather a lot of staff at the front desk. They have wifi in the restaurant, too.
ZAGREB, 3/23
Ivan came and met us in the morning, and insisted that my pressing bill get thrown in with the cost of the room. I have had two outfits pressed now in Serbia, playing like maybe 2 Euros each time. Normally I prefer to iron my own clothes in my room, but Serbia is one of those places where they are hesitant to let you do that, but they make up for it by providing cheap and quick pressing service that as mentioned above, is most affordable. Then Ivan hopped in the car with us and guided us out of town, getting out on the edge of town to take a bus back in to the city—and this from a guy who is a very well known radio personality in his country, who puts on shows just to get good people to come to Belgrade (he brought Alex Chilton last year). I really have to thank Ivan and Svetlana for making the effort to get me there, to what was for sure a warm and special evening.
I was a bit nervous about returning to Zagreb. My show there was unexpectedly well received last year. In fact, I had been told word had spread and attendance would be much better than the last time, which had a been a last-minute addition to a festival a la the Sarajevo show on this tour (I was playing against James Brown last time). I didn’t want to think it was going to be an even better night and get let down if it wasn’t. So I tried not to think about it! We managed to get to Zagreb on time, despite the fact that the Serbian customs had searched us on the way out of their country (I mean…what is the point? Any problems we might be carrying are being taken away from the country if we're leaving—so what is the message? Do your drugs in Serbia or sell them to the citizens there?). The venue was part of the complex where I had been to a reception following my last show, the Student Center for the university in Zagreb. There is a larger, seated theatre there (Chris and Carla had just played there that week) and then the room I played which is small, round theatre space without seats. Black walls, black floor, high ceilings. Somehow it works out to be a wonderful place for singing, just enough reverb to give you an assist but not muddy the sound. Well, I was nervous enough at the start to be just a little unsure of myself, but I needn’t have worried. The place filled up, and people were anticipating me to be good in such a fashion as they were going to love whatever I did—so I relaxed and was able to perform at the top of my abilities. 2.75 hours later (!) after Neil Young and Beach Boys covers, after playing two new songs (I opened with a new song that I had never performed anywhere before), Posies and Big Star songs, even a mutated version of ‘Purple Rain’, after dragging everyone into the foyer to play songs on the grand piano there, after taking a pee break, we were all tired and happy. The rain was absolutely thrashing Zagreb; I walked back to the hotel and was drenched. I was exhausted, but somehow was still sucked in to watching “State Property”, a gangsta’s-rise-and-fall tale starring Beanie Siegel and Jay-Z.
VARAZDIN, 3/24
I got up the next morning and hopped a tram downtown to buy a plastic tube to collect posters in—the promoters of the shows on this tour have made really cool posters, all of which are a little different. We weren’t in a hurry, as the next town was just an hour or so away. But once we had checked out of the hotel, we figured it was time to head to Varazdin and see what there was to see. The town is small enough that we just had to drive to the center, and we found the venue right away, walk to the main square, finding a small bar/café near there, and say, “Hey, has anybody seen Hax [our promoter]?” and everybody in the place said that he would prob. be here in a few minutes. And sure enough, he showed up not 5 minutes later. He treated us to a nice lunch, showed us Varazdin’s fortress (which survived being besieged by the Turks), and showed us different places related to the war, telling us quite a few interesting tales—how the Yugoslav army, whose officers were largely Serbian, received orders from the high command in Belgrade to shell Varazdin—but the Croatian troops of course not only defected, but since they knew the codes being used by all the units, could send out misinformation which resulted in the Serbian garrisons around town shelling each other—and thinking the Croatian fighters had heavy weapons as a result. The quickly formed Croatian army had an officer in a key position in the local division, who arranged that the massive amount of weaponry in the area—over 100 tanks and two underground weapons caches, each one a storage unit about 200 meters in length--went to the Croatian side.
The venue, GimNet club, is the basement of the local high school, which itself is a building a couple of hundred years old. The basement is the typical brick cellar with curved ceilings you find all over Eastern Europe. The ceilings are not low, so it doesn’t really feel like a basement at all. The “Gim” part is for Gymnasium, the European word for high school, and the “Net” part refers to the fact is used to be a net café…but Hax told me they took the computers out because the kids “ruined” them…not by physically abusing them, but by hacking! Anyway, about 40-50 people came, local high school kids plus fans from Zagreb, and I entertained them with lengthy intros, at least three Long Winters songs, and my songs which thankfully often border on emo, esp. with the live delivery, so it worked quite well. The kids didn’t get too giggly about some of the insane subject matter of some of my songs (“When U Find Someone”, “Uniforms”) and the support act was one of their teachers, who also remained calm throughout. In fact it the night went really well. My throat was a bit tired from the length and intensity of the Zagreb show but that didn’t impede progress at all.
BECEJ, 3/25
We had a long and early drive to Becej (which is pronounced Betchay, and should have a little mark above the c that makes it a ch as in church), which was basically going all the way back to Belgrade and then way up into the sticks. I had to be there at 2pm for rehearsal, which meant leaving at 9—which was basically 8, as daylight savings had begun at 2 that morning. The breakfast at my hotel was an eclectic mix of substances, including truly awful coffee, and—I had to try it—little containers, like kids’ juice boxes (where you have a tiny straw that you poke the sharp end thru a thin spot in the packaging), of goat milk. All of that didn’t mix so well. I had wondered if the goat milk was off, or if it was supposed to taste like that, and was giving myself a psychosomatic food borne illness. I fought it back. And slept it off. We turned off the highway just before Belgrade at a town called Ruma, and started to crawl up to Novi Sad. Novi Sad is the second largest city in Serbia, and the road to get there is basically a two-lane country road, shared with horse-driven carts and tractors. The countryside is stunning, but it’s a long haul—knowing that when you get to Novi Sad, you are still and hour from Becej. And there’s almost no signage to tell you the route. The Novi Sad road skirts the city, staying on the side of the Danube that Novi Sad’s huge fortress rests on. The ‘tranzit’ road takes you up over the city; you cross on a bridge that puts you on the north end, and in theory follow signs to Becej. Not today. It was the Novi Sad marathon, and the route crosses on that very bridge we were trying to cross. We had been ecstatic to find a sign saying ‘Becej’ but then found ourselves in a queue. Everyone had gotten out of their cars and trucks, not a good sign. But strangely, cars were coming off the bridge towards us. We couldn’t see any runners and we had no idea of the reason for this predicament we found ourselves in. So we gave up and took the road that goes down the next bridge, which is by the fortress. Thinking we would turn right on the road that goes up the river on the other side, and rejoin our intended route. Wrong again. Police blocked that road. We tried to turn right a little further down, and found ourselves in a rat’s nest of one way streets, dead ends, and, again, police roadblocks. We speculated. Civil unrest? Martian pod landing? Of course, all the local * and * truck traffic had been relegated to the main road in town, and so traffic was awful, at midday on a Sunday. We crawled north and finally it started to thin out. It was just 2pm when we stumbled upon Becej, which is more or less like the small towns you would find in the middle of the US, meaning the commercial center for large region of farmland—except that it has wonderful old Austrian-style buildings, as it was one of many towns established by the Austro-Hungarian Empire during their occupation. The town square has an Orthodox and a Catholic church, the Catholic one serving the large Hungarian population that Becej has a relic of the occupation. And our venue was also more or less on the main square, as well: the Theatre Club of Becej. It’s a youth center, school, art gallery, theatre and pub all in one. The pub was where our show was being held. It’s a café by day, a tranquil and elegant place serving espresso. At night it transitions to a lively bar, all told it’s open nonstop from 9 to 2am most days. There’s a little stage, a decent PA etc. When we arrived we found that we were the only folks who took the time change into account, so my band for the night was just arriving and setting up by the time we pulled up. We sms’d Goran, who I’ve known by correspondence for some time, and who I met on my REM visit, and who also introduced me to the B92 folks. Goran put tonight’s shebang together (wow, Microsoft word recognizes ‘shebang’). As we waited for him to arrive, I laid down on a bench and took in the wonderful sunlight, which had been pretty scarce thus far on the tour. Goran arrived, and my band started to trickle in. I told Goran I wanted to get a burek before we started, so we found a bakery still serving them, and I sat down at a table in the café, took a coffee and started to write this blog (it’s Tuesday now as I write, and who knows how long it will take me to finish writing about these last two shows, and get it posted—and I have show every day, so, it’s pretty hard to catch up).
The band that was to be my backing band for this unique occasion is called Rebel Star, a mix of Hungarian, American, and Serbian musos, now based in Budapest. But Milan, the ringleader and singer, is a Becej boy so he was happy to come back and help make an event for his hometown. They, and Goran, chose the set list, which was a mix of Posies songs, songs from Touched, and covers (“September Gurls”, “Never My Love”, “Down to the Wire”). Milan’s band in the 90s used to “Dream All Day” in Serbian, which I insisted on including. No, I didn’t sing it! We rehearsed for a few hours, until the main theatre upstairs had a play on, and I felt pretty good about the set. We headed out to our hotel.
I say out because the Hotel Fantast is about 15 km outside Becej. Built as the country home of a wealthy landowner in the 1920s, who died without an heir in the 1940s and left the place to the Serbian Literary Society. In about 1979 it became the hotel it is today, and hasn’t changed much since then. It is technically owned by the agricultural collective that effectively governs the region, and is only now being privatized. The hotel is fantasy based on a medieval castle, but small—it’s smaller than your average mansion, but it does have a crenellated tower as its centerpiece. There is a gargantuan swimming pool, now in disrepair, and two clay tennis courts. Well, as soon as we pulled up I was in love. It’s extremely shabby, in need of a lot of repair and repainting, but it has beaucoup charm, and massive potential. The restaurant in the basement is basic Serbian chow, and of course it’s there to serve the hotel, not really a stand alone restaurant, and seeing as there are only 5 rooms, you can’t get your hopes up too much as to the amount of effort they will put into it. But really, this place could be dazzling. The view from the tower is magnificent; the area is very flat so you see miles and miles of the surrounding farms and woods. Immediately adjacent to the place is a horse farm; in fact, ‘Fantast’ was the name of a successful racehorse that was raised there. After dinner, as we walked to the car, I found a frog by the path, I picked it up and let it crawl on my arm, it was speckled green and really beautiful. A small white owl swooped among the trees by the parking area. What a fantastic place…my mind set to working.
We came back and found that the club was packed—in fact, by showtime it was completely full, over 100 people there. Rebel Star did a short set, and then I came on and did some songs solo—incl. ‘For Your Sake’ and ‘Somethin’ Stupid’ with the singer of Ika, who also sang with Rebel Star—but the crowd was there to hear some rock. No problem—we assembled the troops and let ‘er rip. We, or should I say, I, turned up the fury quite a bit—I screamed, wailed, played extremely bad lead guitar, etc. I have to admit, it was incredibly enjoyable to explode in such a fashion...
NOVI SAD, 3/26
I found that the next morning I was sore and exhausted—it was not even an hour-long performance…and yet, I felt like I had played a full-blast Posies show…that’s called being out of practice.
I spent the morning pacing the grounds of the Fantast; checking out all the different little facets of the grounds—the pond, the ostrich pen with two ostriches living in it, the tennis courts, the stables, the woods, the chapel (yes, the place comes with its own tiny church, with lovely icons painted in a modern representational style), the vegetable garden etc. and thinking about how it could fit together into something amazing—a self sustaining haute cuisine restaurant, with guest rooms, and…well, I was dreaming up something amazing. And then it was time to go.
The funny thing is, more than one person told me that night in Novi Sad “when you buy the Hotel Fantast…” it was as if my dreams were visible floating above my head and quite believable to all. I took that, at the very least, as a supreme vote of confidence and a gesture of welcome.
The promoter in Novi Sad had told us to make our way to the main bus station in town and he would meet us there. As it turns out, that was a rather tall order. There are no signs for the bus station in town, and even street signs are in Cyrillic script so we found ourselves pretty much able to drive somewhere in the center, park, and wait. There was an Italian restaurant across the street from our parking space so I texted the name to the promoter and told him to figure it out. Then Matthias and I went for a burek. The promoter was there before we were even done eating the things. We had paid for parking while we went out, seeing traffic cops in the area, and they * still * gave us a ticket. I guess they saw the Austrian plates and just assumed we weren’t going to bother paying. And, of course, we had no way to pay, really—we couldn’t read the ticket’s payment instructions. And, of course, it didn’t matter. The ticket was not going to chase Matthias into Austria and haunt him.
We went for a café at the hipster café in Novi Sad, then went and explored the fortress that sits looking across the Danube at Novi Sad. The fortress has incredibly complex fortifications that extend for perhaps half a mile away from the actual rise of ground that the main fort is built upon, and inside the earth there are evidently very complex catacombs. It’s really a wonder of military engineering, of course with the murky intrigue of its Turkish design adding to its appeal.
After spending an hour or so in the old garrison town at the foot of the fortress—which used to be the main town in the area, with Novi Sad remaining an insignificant neighbor across the river until quite recently—took dinner at a traditional Serbian place that sits incongruously amongst architectural odds and ends that comprise the local university, and facing the back of those odds and ends at that; and eventually made our way to soundcheck at the brand spanking new club Route 66—the Americana is maximized by making the logo of the club a cross between a US highway sign and the Harley-Davidson logo. I didn’t have the heart to point out that Harley’s are made somewhere near Hull. Oh, Milwaukee, I find out. Shit. But anyway, it’s a two level club; the stage is immediately to the left of the entrance and faces the bar, and also a balcony above the bar. For whatever reason, but prob. because of the high ceilings, the sound is excellent there. Even though many of the people at Becej were from Novi Sad, and even though I ran into fans on the streets in the old city that afternoon * and * I was on the cover of the local TV Guide (!) it was looking doubtful that people would show up on a Monday night. There were a handful of people there at, say 9pm. But, incredibly, people started to dribbling in at about showtime and we ended up with, again, about 100 people all told. I was a little fried after the big rock show the night before, it was a little like having a hangover: I was giddy, and pushing my voice in crazy directions. The sound was great, so it was inspiring to sing. I pulled out all kinds of crazy things—“Time and a Word” by Yes, and a version of “Route 66” that reflected my experiences in that part of Serbia! I set up a table and chairs on the stage and brought a few fans up to enjoy the show from that perspective…I did “Solar Sister” on the staircase that leads up to the balcony…oh, an addition to having excellent sound, the club being brand new also means it has totally modern lights…I had a spotlight that followed me everywhere! Brilliant. After the show the promoter needed some Euros to pay my fee so we went to 24-hour moneychanger—I changed most of my dinars to Euros too—I had incredible luck with guessing what I would need—more on that later.
IZOLA, 3/27
The next morning we went to the same money changer with all my Bosnian marks to change (yes, the irony of heavily Muslim Bosnia calling its money marks while overwhelmingly orthodox Serbia calls its money dinars is not lost on me—but evidently the Bosnian convertible mark was tied to the Deutsche mark, a reflection of Germany’s strong role in Bosnia’s reconstruction). She refused to change them—saying the notes were ‘damaged’. I told he “find a Bosnian note that isn’t damaged, by your standards”—I told her she was insane and stomped off. Another moneychanger didn’t take Bosnian KMs, and the big bank I went to didn’t either. The guy at bank suggested a big hotel in the center, so I headed that way, but spied a moneychanger sign in a galleria I was passing by. I waited as a woman took an extraordinarily large pile of dinars from the window, and translated for the woman in the window that the supply of dinars was effectively cleaned out. I asked if she had Euros—yes. Do you take Bosnian marks? Yes. Success! I came away with about 100 Euros and handful of dinars in change. Incredibly, the dinars I kept aside for tolls played out perfectly—after buying a sandwich, a bottle of water and a candy at the last gas station in Serbia I left the country with exactly 1 dinar, which is worth considerably less than a penny. I had also conserved a small amount of Kuna for our transit of Croatia, which, after paying tolls, filling up the tank, etc. both that day and today on our way to Hungary left me with 10 Kuna: just a couple of Euros.
It was a pretty long haul out of Serbia (again, the road from Novi Sad to the main highway is just a two lane rural road—but the countryside is stunning, in my opinion), across Croatia, and deep into Slovenia—plus crossing all the borders adds time to your drive. It was getting dark as we drove out of the coastal range, over a very high bridge that shoots out over valleys that fall away with breathtaking steepness, and descended into the area of Koper, Portoroz, and Izola on Slovenia’s Adriatic coast. Soon I could see the tile roofs of Izola getting closer. And then getting smaller behind us. Hmmm. I wondered if Matthias had started to drive to Austria…we took a winding coast road, and then turned down a tiny road that led down to the water. We pulled up to what appeared to my eyes as a rather fancy shack. Welcome to the Shoto Klub—except there was nobody there, even though we were a bit later than the time we were supposed to arrive for soundcheck. While we sat for a minute taking in the view, a car pulled up and a woman got out and handed us hotel keys. She said we could go there and they would come get us when they were ready for us. We had turned thru the hotel to access the road that wound down to the club, so we drove back up the hill, located our particular villa, and took our rooms. Mine had a spectacular ocean view, with a full view of Izola straight off my balcony. The shutters, tho' held in place to the wall, rocked and shuddered with the winds that scoured the hillside. We spent some time waiting and after an hour or so, we called Chupa, the promoter. Chupa is a nickname in the Serbo-Croatian/Slovenian language that implies a huge, fluffy hairstyle, which is something that Chupa himself did not have in the least. The owner of the club, who was occasionally referred to as the father of Chupa and Chupa’s brother (who was also working at the club), was a dead ringer for Albert Einstein. It was he who poured drinks and made café’s behind the bar. Wine, by the way, was served from a two-liter plastic soda bottle—it was made by somebody they knew. I didn’t get a chance to write down the name of the cepage, but it was something particular to the Izola region. Acidic, but very drinkable. Anyway, Chupa told us to come on down when I called, and we arrived to find appetizers on the table, and the backline set up. So I wandered between the bar/lounge area and the show room, sort of munching and soundchecking in alternating bursts. The place is like a kind of tree house, it’s certainly a private club, and we managed to get some 40 people to come out on a Tuesday night for my first ever show in Slovenia. Several of those people were the larger than life character Rick Harsh, author, teacher, existential-riff-maker; one of those people who will become your favorite person right away. He is a friend of Adam Snyder, a musician I have mentioned on these pages, so introductions were made online, and Rick showed up on cue and hilarity most definitely ensued. The audience members were all friends so it was really like a living room show. Afterwards, oddly, more than one person, when looking thru the CDs I was selling, asked me which one had the song I played second to last in the set-which was one of my new songs. I thought that was bode well for the next record. Anyway, as I was selling CDs and having an after show glass of local wine with Rick, and his friends, a French-Albanian couple, Chupa bade me good night, and went home. About 20 minutes later I was ready to go back to the hotel, and discovered that the show room—which contained my coat, my phone, my hotel room key, my guitar, etc etc.—was padlocked. I asked the owner to open it for me and he said he didn’t have the keys. “Way to go, Einstein,” I said. We called Chupa and he sounded like he was already in bed. He said he’d be there in 20 minutes and probably went back to sleep—we never saw him again. Thankfully, Albert pulled out a bunch of key rings, and bless his heart, he tried every key in the two padlocks that sealed the place off. One of them worked, and my stuff was at last liberated and we could go to bed.
PECS, 3/28
I woke up and stood admiring the view from my room for a bit. The sun was out. The day was looking promising…
We turned in our keys—as it turns out there is somebody at reception during the daytime—they just don’t answer the phone, thus Dom couldn’t reach me there. I called Rick to see if he wanted to meet us for coffee as promised but his phone was off. As he, Jerome the Frenchman and Booboo the Albanian were ready to continue the night when I tactfully declined at 2, I was not surprised. But Chupa’s brother met us at a lovely little café in the intricate center of Izola. I couldn’t help myself—it had such an Italian feel that I was trying to order in Italian but the Slovenian girl waiting on us of course preferred English. I was enjoying my marmalade-filled croissant when a guy who looked a bit like the second-in-command guy on Star Trek: the Next Gen., the trombone-playing guy with the beard, got off an ancient bicycle and then stood right in front of me and started to take a picture of me. I thought it was some kind of tourist b.s. where he was going to offer to sell me the pics afterwards—like a good celebrity, I hid my face and said “No photos!”. He sauntered off, picked up his bike, and circled around again…trying to snap photos from behind a column…I wracked my brains to imagine what italo-slovene pop idol I might resemble…I mean, I think this was the first time paparazzi harassment had over been a problem…but I mean, in Izola? WTF? Chupa’s brother explained:
“Ah, yes…this guy, he works for the local newspaper. He used to be an architect, but he had a kind of accident, and he has like…a brain damage. Now he only works for the local paper and he is kind of strange…always taking photos like that. The first time he comes to the club we don’t know who he is and he took like 500 pictures without speaking to anyone”.
I see.
Anyway, his editor is going to be pretty damn disappointed when they find out I’m not…well, anybody.
We backtracked, and in fact we backtracked all the way to Varazdin, which near an opportune border crossing to Hungary. It was going a little too well—the border crossings were easy, the weather was good. We were rested. I still dozed off (I always do in moving vehicles if I am not responsible for their operation). I woke up when we were about 20 minutes from Pecs (pronounced Petch), a small town in southern Hungary. This was the last show added to the tour. The promoter had already cancelled it once, citing problems finding a venue. I had, to be honest, hoped to get a show in Trieste this day, as it’s a hell of a lot closer to Izola and in the right direction heading to Austria. Pecs is basically backtracking 300km. No such luck—the promoter found another venue, and no venue could be found in Trieste.
We didn’t have much to go on upon arrival. The town is small, but full of one-way streets and Magyar is not an easy language to improvise. We couldn’t find the street the club was on, and we asked a couple of people, neither of whom could tell us much. We texted the promoter, who didn’t text us back. So, we drove around again, asked for directions again, and had sort of a clue where to go…we were circling the block, looking to get to a point which was now over our left shoulder behind us. I suggested we take a left, and Matthias, who was pretty tired after driving 500km thru 3 countries, took my suggestion rather literally and turned without looking. The oncoming taxi we hit wasn’t expecting us—as it, uh…* turned * out, it was not legal for us to take a left turn there. There was no “no left turn” sign, but the green light had a black forward arrow in it. A bit subtle IMHO. Still, even if it had been legal to turn left there, it’s still forbidden to drive thru another vehicle while executing a turn. The taxi driver reminded us of both of our errors when he stepped out. Police arrived. The taxi driver’s wife arrived, and was crying looking at their car. Which I thought was a bit much. No one was remotely injured, and the taxi had a busted headlight. Big deal! Our car was totally fucked! We were potentially stranded in Pecs. The promoter found us, luckily, so we had a translator to talk to the police with. We got our stuff out of the car and they towed it away. Another vehicle arrived to clean up the debris. It took about an hour and a half to go thru all of the steps necessary to settle the matter. Matthias had insurance, but not to cover his car, which was a mid-90s VW Golf (named Wolfgang, BTW). So, it wasn’t worth repairing, really. He had intended to sell it, but not that soon or in that condition…oh well.
By the time I got to the venue, I had just enough time to soundcheck, wolf down some food, check an email or two and brush my teeth. And call Dominique to tell her I was OK. And call my mom and wish her a happy birthday. Somehow the promoter had translated “digital piano” to “Roland Groove Synth” so that’s was I had to play my piano songs on…the first few tries at soundcheck triggered an automatic accompaniment program that played a kind of techno music…it kinda worked, but, no thanks. Finally we figured out how to get just a (horrible) piano sound out of it. The reverb didn’t work on the amp. Hmmm. Well, showtime came and I found out the truth—I was basically a lounge singer in a crowded restaurant. How did this happen? Did I really need a humility lesson after our near-death experience? I guess so, cuz I got schooled. Basically if you want the closest description to my show last night, it was exactly like playing in America—big, clean, venue, serving beer more than presenting music; indifferent yuppies chatting away at full blast thru the whole show; maybe a half a dozen people actually there to see me (3 of which came from Budapest); even down to the hippie burnout doing tai chi dancing, the only guy even near the front of the stage—thankfully only for the first song. I was literally counting how many songs I played in my head, and vowed to stop when I reached 12. I played 2 songs from each of my albums, two new songs, two covers, and closed with 3 more songs—including ‘Nature Boy’ (I wasn’t going to let that piano get the best of me) and ‘Take Care’. So I gave them lucky 13 as a symbol of the day. After the show, I sold one CD. I checked email, got paid, and went back to the hotel. The hotel was a nice little bed and breakfast. It was called “Kishotel Abraham” a ‘kishotel’ being a very small inn. The family who owned it were apparently Jewish, or at least wanted it to look that way—menorahs, pictures of Jerusalem on the walls—and I couldn’t help but giggle as the place looks exactly like the B&B in the film ‘Borat’ run by the Jewish couple that causes him such distress. Well, not being a hairy fictional bigot from Kazakhstan I was very comfortable and settled in. There was no staff, Matthias had gone there and checked us in and brought me back the keys (a really generous gesture, considering his state at the time). So I let myself in and went to bed, watching a movie before I went to sleep (the excellent “Nowhere in Africa”).
This morning Matthias sold the remains of the car for €200, and we have a driver and a van to take us to Graz, where Matthias’ girlfriend will drive us for the rest of the tour. I was actually writing this blog when we were in the wreck, somehow my laptop stayed on my lap even tho' I bonked my head on the dashboard. Not hard tho'.
On with the show, right? Damn straight.
Love
KS
On the highway somewhere in Hungary.
