Time To Finish Up These Europe Posts: Antwerp

Sorry, folks, I've been terrible about finishing up the Europe blog posts.  I've been home for nearly a month now, and need to post pictures and commentary from Belgium and France.  I guess reality hits when you get home from such an amazing trip and there is a gigantic pile of catch-up work waiting for you, and suddenly a blog doesn't seem so important.  Now that I'm feeling a bit more caught up, I'd like to finish the Euro-tour off, starting with Antwerp...

After my two day "vacation" in Amsterdam, I caught a train into Belgium, as I was playing the next two nights in that lovely country.  First off was Antwerp, the former diamond capital of the world, where I was playing a house concert series called "What's Cooking In Jeruzalem?", which usually takes place in Ghent.  The hosts were nice enough to move some things around for me and it was an extremely well-run and attended concert.  A wonderful listening crowd and one of my favorite gigs on the tour.

The next morning my new Belgian friends Attila and Ruben showed me around the city before it was time to move on.  Here are some of the pictures from that excursion...



Antwerp's train station, probably the most interesting and beautiful station I have been in anywhere in Europe.


A champagne bar in a shopping center in downtown Antwerp.  Notice: its shaped like a champagne glass.


A giant hand.  More specifically, a giant's hand.  More specifically, the giant was Antigone, and he was the scourge of Antwerp until someone cut off his hand.


A downtown cathedral and town square.


Really dig these old row houses that you see in Belgium.  Most seem to be from the 17th century, and I saw many more in Ghent.  Coming soon...

Tour Break in Amsterdam

After my last gigs in Germany (Hamburg), I had a two-night break before the next gigs in Belgium.  One major city was perfectly situated for a couple nights off, between Hamburg and Antwerp: Amsterdam.



I stayed at a hostel in Amsterdam, my first one in many weeks, and it was located in the Red Light District, with coffeeshops, headshops, and prostitutes galore.  Its actually not that seedy of a Red Light District, though, except for the streets where prostitutes actually sit in windows and make faces at you, that was pretty damn seedy.


A monument to remember the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during World War II.


One of Amsterdam's many canals, with a tour boat zipping along.  Some call Amsterdam the "Venice of the North".  I call it not nearly as warm, but at least not sinking.


Some cheap rental homes on the canal.


I really enjoyed the charming, seemingly slapped together homes that line the canals.

Hamburg

After Berlin I took a bus to Hamburg, where I once again had two shows in two nights.


The first night was a show in a trailer turned music venue, the Mobile Blues Club.  Located in an alternative part of Hamburg, this was a super unique venue.  Unfortunately, it was the one sleeper show I've had so far on this tour, probably due to it being Sunday night and freezing cold.  My only audience was the bartender and her friend, but it was fine, because the three of us sat around the stove to keep warm and chatted in between songs.  I can't complain about only having one sleeper show so far on this tour, and at least I had good company!


Hamburg's city hall.  Impressive, no?


The ruins of a church that was destroyed in World War II.  It has been left this way as a monument against war.  Its amazing how much of this you see in Germany.


Apartment buildings on Hamburg's canals.  Hamburg is a port city in the north of Germany, located on a river very near to the Baltic Sea, so there is lots of water everywhere.


This is an entirely new part of the city that Hamburg is in the process of building.  A futuristic business center and downtown, within twenty years this should be an ultra-hip commercial area rivaling just about anywhere else in Europe.

The Berlin House Concert

I am very fortunate and honored to have the privilege of playing house concerts in people's private residences.  The idea of a house concert is that a host will have a living room space or somewhere that would suit an acoustic concert, and then invite friends.  Most of the house concerts I do are set up through couchsurfing, and so they become also couchsurfing meetings for the local hosts and traveling surfers to attend.  I already had played a wonderful concert in Prague at my friend Rolf's place, and this one in Berlin was the second of the tour.  I still have two more to do, one tonight in Antwerp, Belgium, and in two nights in Bordeaux, France.

While I was honored to have such a great audience for my concert, the best part of the evening, for me, was meeting all of the locals and travelers from so many different countries.  Enjoy the pictures from the after party...


We decided to have an international guitar exchange, and so everyone who could play anything at all was required to show everyone else something from their country.  This crazy Ukrainian guy sang some rowdy Russian songs.  Other nationalities I can remember sitting around this circle: Indonesian, Bulgarian, South African, and of course, German.


Hearing some German children's songs!





Sophie packing some strawberry flavored tobacco into the hookah, while Alice watches in amazement.


At the end of the night, and Fachreddin is ready to pass out.

Thanks, Berlin!

Sightseeing in Berlin

One of the new cities for me that I was looking the most forward to  on this trip was Berlin.  I had two nights in the city, playing one show each night, and also was able to do some sightseeing with my couchsurfing hosts, Alice, Sophie, and Fachreddin.  The pictures from those city excursions are below.

As far as the shows go, both were amazing, and I was astounded with the Berlin audiences.  The first night I played at a place called Cafe Hilde.  For some reason, I had a really bad feeling about the gig beforehand, really felt it was going to be a bust.  The place ended up being packed with people who listened intently for the entire two sets.  And during set break and after the show, everyone I talked to said that they came out specifically because they had seen my name in the local music rag and took the time to listen to the music online beforehand.  It is a seriously amazing feeling to be in a gigantic city in a country you've never played in before, and have that sort of crowd, I felt very fortunate.  The next night was also an amazing gig and audience, and the venue was my couchsurfing hosts' flat.  More on that in my next post, for now enjoy Berlin...



Potsdamer Platz.  Before World War II this was Berlin's vibrant downtown, and became a no man's land afterwards as the Berlin Wall ran through the middle of it during the Cold War.  Since the fall of the wall, it has been transformed into an uber modern business and entertainment area.  This is the "ceiling" on the outdoors Potsdamer Platz, it kind of feels like you are in the middle of the Death Star or something.


The Brandenburg Gate.  The only one of Belin's old city gates still standing.  Napolean carried the equestrian statue on the top back to France with him, but it was later returned to Berlin.


The Reichstag, Germany's "capitol".  It was nearly burned to the ground in 1933, and this fire helped Hitler rise to power, as he blamed his political enemies, the communists.  Most historians think that Hitler himself ordered the burning.  It sat abandoned from the end of World War II until it was resurrected in the last decade or so, and now once again houses Germany's government.  It has a very elegant glass dome, but unfortunately I couldn't get a good vantage point to capture the whole building.


What is left of the Berlin Wall has been transformed into an art gallery.  Walking along the east side here would have been impossible 25 years ago, as guards and machine guns guarded its entire length.


A check point between east and west.

Unna, Germany

So I admittedly didn't plan the German part of my tour so well.  My excuse is that I took gigs where they fell, which is sometimes the best you can do, but it meant criss-crossing the country in a nonsensical fashion.  After leaving the eastern side of the country and Dresden, I had to take 4 different trains to get to the far western edge to play a show in Unna, a town of about 60,000 near the bigger city of Cologne.  After Unna, I would have to catch a train back to Berlin on the eastern side again.  And, I underestimated how expensive the trains are in Germany, as they are much cheaper in the east and in Italy.  So the money got a bit tighter, but luckily I was making enough at every show to cover the next days' train ticket.  Anyways, though Unna is a much prettier town than Chemnitz, it is also not a touristy area, so here are just a few pictures I took of the quaint town, which does not seem as big as it really is.


A church tower that greets you at the train station.


Entering the pedestrian central area of Unna, full of stores (mostly chains, many that we have in the U.S.A.) and restaurants (not chains).


Lively shopping area at dusk.


The central town square, it looks very new, but distinctly German.


My show was at the Spatz Und Wal, which means "Sparrow and Whale".  It was another well-attended concert with yet another great listening crowd.  I'm beginning to feel spoiled in Europe...

Dresden

After the gig in Chemnitz on Tuesday, I had Wednesday night off before crossing the country for a show in Unna on Thursday.  I decided to spend it in Dresden, which is only an hour by train from Chemnitz, and is the capital of the region of Saxony.  I set up a last minute couchsurf with the help of my friend Rolf (Prague), and had a lovely evening.  My host Maria invited some other cs'ers from Dresden over for Poker, and I even taught some of them how to play Euchre.  It turned into a bit of an impromptu house concert, as well.  After getting the hell out of Chemnitz asap I did a bit of sightseeing around Dresden before meeting up with Maria, and so below are some pictures from that.  



Dresden is a beautiful city in the eastern part of Germany, and is still rebuilding and re-inventing itself.  Towards the end of World War II it was the target of a massive bombing campaign by the British and American air forces, and the city was pretty much completely destroyed.  It remains a very controversial military operation, as 3,900 tons of incendiaries were used on a town that was not a strategic military target, and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 24,000 to 40,000 innocent civilians.  Kurt Vonnegut wrote about the firebombing of Dresden in his book, "Slaughterhouse-Five", and the author actually witnessed the attacks first hand as a prisoner-of-war at the time.  All of the buildings in the pictures have been rebuilt since that destruction, even if they look old.


The domed building in the background is the Frauenkirche (church), a proud symbol of Dresden's re-building.  More on that in a moment.





A piece from the original dome of the Frauenkirche, which has been set in this main town square as a memorial.


Ok, so the Frauenkirche is an important symbol for Dresden, because it was almost completely destroyed in the bombing and was only recently reconstructed.  Only one wall remained standing after the bombing, and the ruins of the church sat untouched under communist rule for nearly 50 years, and the ruins became a sort of memorial to the city's destruction.  After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany, the city began to plan to rebuild the church.  It was only finished in the last few years, opening in 2005.  The few darker blocks you can see are the few usable pieces from the original church.