It's that time of year again! Holidays mixed with the frantic realization that I only have a few short, sweet weeks left at home before I reside in a bus for a few months. I get lots and lots of questions about how I pack small for these shenanigans. I'm not going to lie - it's hard. However, I've created somewhat of a formula to this whole mess so it's gotten a tad easier.
Happy Friday, my loves! It's currently 5:30am and I have been in insomnia town for about 3 hours. Blah. If you listened to Popecast numero 4 then you probably remember that our roof sprung a leak during Nashville's latest torrential downpour. Because of that we've been sleeping in the guest bedroom ('cause we have one of those now, whaaaaaat) so maybe my brain is just out of sorts. I don't know. I'm not a brain scientist. Anyway, I decided to give up the fight against awakeness and go ahead and make some tea and write about my feelings.
Since my brain has been all "tour tour tour" lately, I thought I'd take you guys backstage to see how we live on the road. I'll keep this up through the upcoming tour. I actually really dig checking out the green rooms at different venues. Sometimes they are TERRIBLE (nasty bathroom, smell like puke, no food, etc)... sometimes they are filled with magic. Magic meaning, good stuff to make sandwiches out of, a well stocked refrigerator, and a couch that doesn't look like it's 2000 years old.
So, everyone always asks about the bus. I mean EVERYONE. Like it's some grand thing. The reason I have never written about our giant mode of transportation is there's just not really anything to say about it. We sleep in coffin sized bunks (no telling HOW Kyle gets by in them), we sometimes eat on it, we make it a mess the instant we set foot on it, and I change in a teeny tiny room in the back and pray to God that no one comes barging in. However, this is not to say that I don't love the bus. I actually really enjoy being able to go to sleep and wake up and be in the next city. Pretty neat. And much more leg room than our stinky old van.
Well, it's been a little over a month since we got home from tour and it's time to catch y'all up! If you've paid attention so far at all, you know that we LOVE Sweden, so that's where we shall start. To kick off the tour, we spent a couple of extra days in Stockholm to adjust and hopefully outsmart the dreaded jet lag. It might have worked... but we didn't account for the fact that the sun stays up until 11:30pm. That was a bit of an ass kicker, but pretty cool to see. Plus, can I mention again - WE LOVE IT THERE! I love the people, the city, the culture - alllll of it. So much so that we even took a few Swedish lessons before tour (Hej hej! vi ses! tack så mycket!). If it didn't get so damn freezing in the winter, I might consider living there for a while, but this southern lady needs a few months of mind melting heat.
We wrapped up 5 of 5 German shows in Berlin. In total, we visited Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, and Berlin. Aside from LOVING the people we worked with for the shows, we had a pretty great time in Germany. The only place we got to spend any real time in was Berlin, though. We drove in a little early so we could walk around a bit and be a little touristy. Plus, we upgraded a bit on our hotel room (more on that in another post), so we couldn't wait to get somewhere cozy in the world's coldest place (not really, but it sure as hell isn't warm).
I do, though. It's so charming! Its teeny, curving streets, old buildings, and crazy bike riding culture - I could eat it up! We had a rare day off in Antwerp, so we had a chance to relax and take in the city. Scratch that - I spent the morning in a Belgian laundromat trying to figure out how to read instructions written exclusively in Dutch.
