17th July 2015 – Sion

INTERNAL UNEASE           Geneva was hot this morning and with a line of angry looking clouds in the distance to the North East, thunderstorms were in the daily headlines once again. My Blitzortung app. was flashing away and our very short flight to Sion looked like it might be ‘interesting’. [...]

17th July 2015 – Sion2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

16th July 2015 – St Julien

HIGH SUMMER   Checking out of the fabulous Park Hyatt in the heart of Vienna this morning, I realised that due to illnesses, very few of us actually got out and explored this wonderful city. A real shame, but that’s touring. The temperatures were already in the 90’s and our scheduled flight down to [...]

16th July 2015 – St Julien2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

14th July 2015 – Sankt Margarethen

FIT STATE       "TALK TO THE HAND" The big question on the lips of the band today was who was in a fit state to play a show. The answer as we discovered when we met in the hotel lobby at 3:25 this afternoon was pretty much everyone. Thankfully yesterday’s chronic stomach [...]

14th July 2015 – Sankt Margarethen2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

13th July 2015 – Krakow

SOLDIER ON It’s almost inevitable that any tour of this size and length will include days where band or crew members aren’t in top form health-wise. No matter how fit you keep yourself, extraneous bacterias and bugs will at some point make themselves known, sometimes quite violently! I woke with every intention of heading [...]

13th July 2015 – Krakow2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

12th July 2015 – Saxen

CLAM FEST             Today’s travel logistics looked too complex to comprehend yet somehow everything ran like clockwork today. Saying our farewells to Munich, we headed off in the cars to the airport to fly onward to Linz in Austria where we were met by team B VW drivers for our [...]

12th July 2015 – Saxen2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

11th July 2015 – Munich

PERFECT BEER Arriving in Munich for a day off was never going to be a particularly bad experience especially as true to form for this tour, I had pre organised a round of golf. This time our host would be the head green-keeper, a certain Günther Mayer at a course called Aschheim Golf Club. The [...]

11th July 2015 – Munich2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

9th July 2015 – Leipzig

MAI TAI Leaving Berlin as swiftly as we arrived not 24 hours before, the band entourage found themselves on another station platform eagerly awaiting the almost silent arrival of another ICE train this time to Leipzig. The first class carriages are really not too dissimilar to those in the UK in that the difference between [...]

9th July 2015 – Leipzig2022-04-25T07:20:47+00:00

8th July 2015 – Berlin

KNIFE TWEEZERS   A one night stay in one of the most exciting cities in the world always seems insufficient but we made the most of it with a splendid session in the Augustiner bar after the show. Our 1 hour train journey on the ICE train was relaxing and we pulled into Berlin and [...]

8th July 2015 – Berlin2022-04-25T07:20:48+00:00

7th July 2015 – Hanover

AUTO STADT       Another day off and we found ourselves in the extraordinary town of Wolfsburg situated between Hanover and Berlin. Wolfsburg ‘is’ Volkswagen headquarters. It was founded on 1 July 1938 as the ‘Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben’, built to house workers of the Volkswagen (people's car) factories erected to assemble what [...]

7th July 2015 – Hanover2022-04-25T07:20:48+00:00

5th July 2015 – Stuttgart

AIR CON               “I thought all Porsches had air conditioning” Mark quipped to the audience after a couple of songs in what can only be described as sweltering heat. The crowd fanned themselves as best they could in the Arena where the temperature on stage was around the 100 [...]

5th July 2015 – Stuttgart2022-04-25T07:20:48+00:00

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