The hotel bathroom had tiles that depicted the NYC and Paris subway maps.
It was weird to put your bags down on a Tuesday night in a quiet town on the Rhein, go to use the toilet and come face to face with a (somewhat outdated) map of NYC. But then again, after nearly 24 hours of travel (house to airport, two planes, a stop in Iceland, then 5 hours in the car after landing in Amsterdam), things start to get pretty surreal feeling anyway. That’s part of the reason why we do this travel thing - to break out of the everyday routine, to experience things that are just-different-enough-to-be-interesting, to make sure the world hasn’t gotten too small and tight fitting when we weren’t looking. I think that’s why many of us travel, for recreation or for work. But unlike traveling as a tourist, for vacation, this type of travel, touring as a working musician, is different in quite a few not so significant ways. One main difference is that we’re actually trying to earn a bit of a living, so we’re doing everything on a budget. Everything extra we spend is less we take home (since we’re not on vacation, we don’t get vacation pay, so if we want to pay our bills when we get home, it’s in our best interest to be sensible.) There are some things that it would be amazing to do that we don’t have the time for, as we’re either traveling, or performing, and every day off is a day we’re losing money, not making it. So there’s less time for sightseeing than you’d imagine, and we can’t really leave the car unattended for long since all our gear is in it, and we rarely stay more than one night in the same place. It’s awkward having all the instruments and luggage with you at all times. Also, many places are not equipped with elevators, so we get to lug all the gear up and down several flights of narrow stairs many, many times. I guess that counts as a workout? The emails and social media demands don’t stop either just because you change time zones, so you have to carve out time to keep up to date on those or risk losing gigs down the road once you get home.
Don’t get me wrong, there are A LOT of AMAZING things that happen on the road - part of what keeps us coming back to it again and again. But it beats you up pretty good sometimes too. It felt good after such a long travel ordeal to finally be able to unload the car, take a quick walk along the Rhine, and watch the boats - among them a tourist river cruise, a garbage barge, and a giant barge loaded with at least 20 brand new John Deere tractors. The swans were lovely but quickly grew bored and disillusioned with us when we didn’t give them any treats. The hotel restaurant turned out to be well known for its wine list as well as food, so we availed ourselves of a lovely flammekuchen and a glass of incredible local riesling. When in German wine country, after all… Tomorrow the tour part actually starts, so bedtime!
