Breakfast was an individually packaged danish and explosive yogurt.
The Bitter Tears landed at the Schiphol Airport in The Netherlands.
For this tour we are a quartet: Alan (guitar), Mike (bass), Reid (keyboards) and myself (drums).
We picked up the van in a suburb of Amsterdam.
It's a nicer van than the last one we had.
It's a Ford version of a Sprinter with only 46k kilometers, and mostly importantly, it has seat belts!
Mike drove to another suburb through the endless canals of Holland. We saw strange leafless, lifeless trees that looked like giant ginger roots. We saw windmills, cyclists, tiny bridges, cows, and sheep along the one and a half laned biways. Eventually we were in an industrial park and picked up our gear from Gijs, a well-humored Dutchman. His name is pronounced "high-sh", not "jizz", you American smart asses.
I'll be playing a smaller Ludwig kit with a 12" snare, a 14" floor tom, and a 20" bass drum.
Jizz told us to follow him to "the most famous cafe in all of...the world."
We thought maybe we were going to Paris, but instead we ended up at this place.
We drank a total of 10 cups of coffee, and ate assorted Dutch fare, like bread with ham and fries with mayonnaise. Jet lag made everything taste tired.
Mike continued driving to Amsterdam, where we met my friends Rod and Lieselotte.
Alan and Reid split off to find Alan's friend Greg at a squat for a vegan feast. Oddly enough, Lieselotte had met Greg earlier in the week, and could describe his girlfriend. Small world.
Mike and I crashed at Rod and Lieselotte's flat until the simmering smells of dinner aroused our spirits. Rod had made a traditional Dutch dish of rookworst with stampot, sausage with mashed potatoes and cabbage. It was delicious and comforting.
Plans for a boat ride and an evening of open mic jazz were aborted when Amsterdam's cold rain decided to blow down on this Tuesday. Instead, we walked a few blocks to a groovy bar, where quality beer flowed inexpensively and conversation veered toward cooking.
Back at Rod's we enjoyed fine generic chocolate and stroop waffle with hard candy butter waffles made by Dutch Masterpieces.
I crashed upstairs with Mike and a hard copy of Curb Your Enthusiasm The Book.
Verdict: Win
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