Friday, 21st of July, 2000

Firstly, in quite disturbing news today, it seems that Einstein was wrong. Well, a bit wrong. Paul Davies reports in the Sydney Morning Herald today that scientists at Princeton have managed to accelerate light to something like 300 times the speed of light in a vacuum. Those that know something about relativity will not be surprised that causality and time seem to be working backwards in this situation. Quite bizarre.
Being himself, Paul Davies can’t help a gratuitous religious reference though (the devil is in it, he says). Gratuitous being the word. Take Davies’ word for it on the physics, but don’t please for a second let him convince you that there’s anything in science that implies god-like nonsense.

So anyway. Finally eh? Finally another blog entry! Well I’ve been busy ok? Let me tell you…

When I finished up the blog last time, I was in an EasyEverything internet cafe on Tottenham Court Rd, feeling very tired, and so I didn’t write up that last day. That was Sunday the 9th of July. Well, it was in fact an altogether tired and tiring day. Had to get back from the Docklands Travelodge to our place in Bayswater… Then Tim & I walked down to Notting Hill and I poked my head into the various second hand music & bookshops there, and bought some old Eddie Campbell stuff I didn’t have yet [Eddie Campbell is a brilliant comics writer/artist from Scotland, now living in Brisbane.] From there we walked up Portobello Rd because I wanted to visit the Talbot Rd branch of Rough Trade. Sadly it was shut until 1pm and we didn’t have time to wait around, so that’ll have to wait till we’re back.

We’d talked to Oma (our grandmother), who was in London at the time, and she was staying with some relatives of ours in Hampstead. Since we wanted to go to Camdem Markets and stuff, it was quite convenient as it’s only a few stops up the Northern Line from there, so we went off to Alan and Joanna’s place and had a very pleasant BBQ with various different members of Dad’s side of the family.

In the meantime I’d been talking with Kirra on our mobiles, and we were going to meet in Camden. It turned out that she was flat broke and we decided to meet after Tim & I wandered around. Of course it had started raining, and in addition to this, Camden Town station was only open for people exiting, so we would have to walk up or down to one of the next stations on the line to get back to Tottenham Court Rd station and meet her.
Anyway, I said to Tim I’d meet him in a little while, and went wandering the shops a bit. There’s a FANTASTIC comics shop just down from the station in Inverness St (I even remembered the street name from last year!) called Mega City Comics… It’s almost up there with Gosh, although not quite ;) I found quite a bit of interesting stuff there.
Then went around the corner to the Music & Video Exchange and found the Tipper single I’d been looking for for ages. Wanted it for the µ-ziq remix, but the Phoenecia remix is gorgeous, and the Buckfunk 3000 mixes and the originals are great too.

I then went off looking in another record store and a great bookshop, so by the time I found Tim it was getting on to time to go to Kirra, and it was also starting to really pour. Naturally I didn’t even make it to Camden Markets - oh well, next time. Any attempt of mine to get new clothing or suchlike is likely to be foiled by such circumstances (ie my lack of urgency in doing anything about it).

But anyway, after finding an umbrella for Tim, we found a bus which took us all the way to Tottenham Court Rd, where we met Kirra, over a year since we’d last seen each other. We went off to the wonderful Wagamama’s for dinner again, and then after a little wandering around and a stop at the Blue Room (lovely cafe in Soho that we frequented along with Danae last year), and I was off to the EasyEverything to write the blog and all. Coincidentally I’m writing this blog entry in the EasyEverything off the Remprantplein in Amsterdam…

Uh… that’s quite a lot of writing for one day isn’t it? Perhaps I’ll be a bit more concise from now on?
On Monday the 10th of July we were finally out of the mouldy old room in Bayswater, and trouping off to Prague. A 2hr plane flight (horrible British Airways food making me wish for QANTAS already, but the service and comfort is the same really), and then a taxi bus to the hostel. We already were experience language-barrier problems, and it took quite an effort to ascertain that we actually were at the right place. Once this was sorted out, we found our rooms. The hostel was this big complex of buildings that must have come straight out of the Soviet era - horrible rectangular concrete monstrosities with these prison cell rooms (well I exaggerate, just a tad). It was also somewhat out of town… So once we got on a bus & train into town we kept our eyes open for places. We went straight into the main square, and I was surprised at how much I remembered from last time I was there (1997, with SBS Youth Orchestra). Had sausage & frites (pommes frites = hot chips, and everywhere on the continent they’re called by this French name) - already most happy with Czech food ;)

Exploring, we found a more central hostel and decided to move there for the next few days.
Jordan was desparate to see some “Black Light Theatre”, apparently a Czech speciality - theatre with actors, music, puppetry, the black light being puppets apparently floating in the air…
We bought tickets and went in at 8:30 (sun still up - Europe’s weird in summer…) Unfortunately the music was utterly appalling, as was the acting, and the puppetry was less than impressive. We left after the first half (I was falling asleep, it was that bad!) If you want to see Black Light Theatre in Prague, just don’t go to the one doing Faust, OK?

So it was off to dinner. Naturally I would settle for nothing less te schnitzel, although it was naturel schnitzel (just fried in flour) and I had it with rice and yummy spinach with garlic (not as good as the creamed spinach we make at home though!)

And on Monday the 17th of July, we were finally off to Amsterdam! It took most of the day, some 8 hours of transit. 2 hrs to Heathrow and then a wait before the 1 hr flight to Amsterdam (this is because we were flying British Airways as part of our QANTAS tickets). We got to Schiphol airport, bought train tickets for the next few legs of our journeying, and then hopped on the train to Amsteram Centraal. Jordan went off looking for money places (but our Westpac Cirrus card doesn’t want to work for some reason), and was gone an inordinately long time. Then Tim went off looking for him and disappeared too! Lara and Petey in state of much worriedness… I went off looking and no they hadn’t been mugged or skinned alive or anything, they were just waiting in a queue at an exchange place, and Tim had thought it would only be a minute… Ah well.

Anyway, we took the tram down to the Leidseplein, just up from where I stayed last year, and found our hotel. It’s on one of the canals, a lovely room overlooking the water and street below, lots of space - great place! VERY steep stairs, but only one floor up so I guess I can’t complain ;)
It was night by this time, and we wandered in search of a dinner we could all agree on. We ended up at “Adi’s Shoarma Masada”, where we had exquisite shoarma (shawarma, doner kebab type meat) with fresh pita, fabulous baba ganoush, homous with tahini, other dips… frites… lara had felafel… One of the dinner highlights so far for all of us (why are you laughing? We just have our priorities right, that’s all) and Adi was a lovely Israeli guy who talked to us at the end and (once Jordan had dragged us out, as Veren would have chatted all night otherwise) walked us up to one of the “Coffee Houses” up the road.
Being, as I am, uninterested in such things, I went off to find some internet, but most places were closing and I very soon went home.

On the 18th of July we had a free day. Tim accompanied Veren off to the Hague, to go to the Australian Embassy and get Veren an interim passport, and Jordan went to try and get our two boxes out of customs (hopefully he’s finally got them today!) I wandered Amsterdam, marvelling (as it was with London) at how familiar it was. I still remember my way around, and last year seems like yesterday in a way… I first went to Gallerie Lambiek, probably the most impressive comics shop in the world. It was apparently the first store established just for comics, and has an amazing range of beautiful things. It’s unfortunately very expensive, so I found various small and rare things I wanted, and left it at that.
After wandering into town and finding the jazz shop I remembered from last time, I spent a bit of time in Boudisque, a great record store, and then did an hour or two of internetting at my favourite Amsterdam internet cafe round the corner (it was there that my first tour diary of last year was written).

I was then called back to the hotel to do some busking. When I got back I realised I’d left my Lambiek bag somewhere with the new comics in it. Frenzied searching did not reveal it. I rang Boudisque but they couldn’t find it… I didn’t think I’d left it on the tram, because I had a vague memory of thinking “am I holding enough?” as I walked to the tram… After busking (quite good crowds, sold a few CDs and gave out lots of flyers about our gigs), I went back into town. Boudisque was closed, so I went back to do some more internetting… and lo an behold, there was my Lambiek bag behind the counter. My mood immediately became less black (*many chortles from my friends*).
I proceeded to solve my Hotmail problem. Hotmail had been refusing to download my POP mail properly for days. It would sit and think for ages, and then eventually time out and fill my inbox with old emails I’d deleted days ago. I couldn’t understand this. In addition, www.start.com.au would download my new POP mail, but it only downloads 20 messages at a time, so it wasn’t much use.
Eventually I managed to download a secure shell program for windows, which allowed my to login to my ISP’s computer with a text terminal (Telnet access is barred because it’s not secure), and logged into my account… There were 135 emails there… What had happened, I think, is that hotmail doesn’t delete the messages from the server until it’s completed downloading them all (sensibly)… At some stage in the last week I’d tried to download my POP mail, but it had taken too long and the operation hadn’t been completed. Then gradually over the next week the email kept on building up. And because I had Hotmail only downloading new messages as well, I wasn’t aware of this…
So I sat and manually deleted about 100 messages with the UNIX text-based mail program, and then Hotmail happily downloaded the rest, and to my relief all was fine again. I don’t know whether it’s scary or cool that I remembered enough UNIX and networking stuff from Uni to be able to do this…

That night Lara, Veren, Tim and I went and saw the new Woody Allen movie, Sweet and Lowdown, about the swing-era jazz guitarist Emmet Ray. It’s hilariously rendered with part documentary-style interviews, and part flashbacks with Sean Penn playing Emmet. We all presumed whilst watching it that he was a real person - the name sounded familiar - but various factors led us all to gradually suspect over the last day that he’s fictional (the one song he wrote in the movie was credited to Dick Hyman at the end, and none of the performances were credited to “Emmet Ray”), and I’ve just confirmed that. The music, anyway, is wonderful (Monsieur Camembert fans will love it) and the acting and directing is superb, as is Woody’s writing, as usual. A must-see.

And yesterday (19th of July)… woke up very late, after midday… Did our laundry, just down the road from Lambiek, and had yummy bacon & egg breakfast. Tim and I posted stuff home - I sent books & comics to the tune of 70 guilders (about $50 maybe). Ouch, but worth it for the weight loss ;)
Went busking and met Penny and Marty, lovely cellist friends from Sydney. I used to go out with Penny. Now she has a baby, and Penny and Marty got married about a month ago, and are here on a honeymoon, and visiting Penny’s parents and little brother. Penny’s not-so-little brother Tim, a violinist, is also here, and it was lovely to see them as we wandered the Albert Cuyp Markets and did some busking again.
Then we were off to Paradiso to soundcheck. It’s a quite amazing venue, a big old building. The smaller room, in which we’re playing, is upstairs, and is really quite sizeable. The sound is fantastic and it looks great, with a fairly big stage (jokes about nice to be high in Amsterdam… yeah whatever). We didn’t end up playing until midnight (that’s the way it works in this town for some reason), to a not enormous but not tiny crowd. A lot of them were quite drunk, and talked loudly, but they were very enthusiastic all the same… Tonight we’ve been asked to start at 12:30! Probably more people then, so I guess we’ll do so. Considering how late I slept in today, that doesn’t bode well for a full free day tomorrow, but hey… Perhaps I’ll get to sleep a little before last night’s 4:30am (by which time the sun was starting to come up… ugh).

Which brings us neatly to Today. Today involved getting up at about 12:30pm, and exploring more. I found the “American Book Shop” which I remembered from last time, with a comics section upstairs, where I got one more backissue of Authority (still missing a few) and the new Bacchus collection of Eddy Campbell’s. I went to Waterstone’s and got the new novel by Kathleen Anne Goonan, The Bones of Time (which I’ve been looking for since the same time as I went and found Justina Robson’s Silver Screen (still in the blog’s Recommended Reading I think). I found Kathleen Ann Goonan’s first novel, Queen City Jazz while touring Ireland last year - a very interesting view of a nanotech-filled future. The new one should be more well-written hard science fiction.

After that I um… bought some cello strings finally, and found the Virgin Megastore. I wanted to go there specifically to find the first album by Taraf de Ha�douks (having bought the second & third at their gig). I went in, marched right up to the World Music section (same place as last year), straight to the gypsy section, and there it was. Nothing much else of interest, but in any case it was a successful mission.
Once I finish this blog, it’s off to get some dinner on the way back to Paradiso. It’s now 10:20pm and I’ve been here for over 2 hours. 8 minutes left on this ticket, so I’d better finish up.
As usual, I hope this has been an enjoyable an informative read, and feel free to write to me and comment if you like. I’ll be emailing out the Tour Diary so far to special friends soon!
Love, Peter.
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