Part Five: Switzerland & Austria

Saturday, March 1
Moods im Schiffbau, Zurich, Switzerland

Today we drove almost seven hours to Zurich, Switzerland. We left the hotel in Italy at 8 am and arrived at our hotel in Zurich at around 3 pm. Our driver and tech Marcello is real road-warrior and can drive for hours without a break and we feel confident is his driving skills. The scenery on the way to Zurich is breathtaking. Switzerland is truly one of the most beautiful countries in the world and everyone was taking pictures as we made the drive.

The club we played, Moods, is less than a block from the hotel and is a very hip, modern club. The club was very full, but not sold out, oh well... The audience was a little slow to get warmed up, but once they got going, they were out-of-control! They DEMANDED two encores, a first for the tour. At this point in the tour we are so comfortable with the music that we're very loose and creative with the tunes. It seems as if we are even re-writing some of the music in the moment, using the original composition as a reference, but creating something new in it's place. This is a zone that you can only get to when you have played the music a lot and the band members have played together enough that we're quite open and sympathetic to each other, listening closely and really communicating musically.

Sunday, March 2
Travel Day

Tom, Marcello and I are the first of our little entourage to check out of the hotel and get into our van at 11 am. Baron and Frank had stayed late at the gig and hung out at the "after-hours" club. Like many clubs in Europe, after the concert, the place turns into a disco, with the techno/disco music blasting and the people partying until the early morning hours.

Baron was only about 15 minutes late for lobby call but after some phone calls to Frank's room that got no response I had to pound on his door at about 11:20 am to wake him up. The penalty for being late is the "offender" pays for all the coffees and snacks on our first pit-stop, today it's our man from Australia!!

We spend pretty much the entire day in van driving from Zurich, Switzerland to Vienna, Austria. It's fairly cold out and there is snow as far as you can see. The scenery is quite beautiful with snow-capped peaks in the distance and little villages along the highway. In the van we go from everyone sleeping to everyone telling stories and laughing hysterically, back to sleeping. Baron is reading a book about Charles Mingus and he told us a few choice stories from the book that had us howling with laughter. We finally got to the hotel at 8:30 pm and, since there is no gig today, we walked down the street and around the corner to an Italian restaurant -- Grappa -- and had some very good food, a relaxing way to finish the day.

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