Day 7 of our tour began with a fine breakfast and farewell to Michael and our hosts in Hildesheim. As singer Ollie was losing his vocal cords rapidly to the miserable wet cold weather, we had to make a stop at a supermarket to buy a hot water flask and stock up on medication for the rest of the tour.  It was also a chance to try out our onboard dvd player. It was a feature of the tour bus that drew ‘whoa…yeah…great..can’t wait for that…’ at the time of rental. Sadly to say, it didn’t work properly for some reason beyond our hungover comprehension. So with the smell of menthol cough sweets and eucalyptus tea  filling the bus, we drove autobahn to Erfurt, a historic charming city in  the former Democratic Republic of Germany, now since ’89 east Germany of course.

So, the first port of call was our accomodation for the night – a very new, top of the range hostel beside the opera house. It was so top of the range and environmentally aware of using too much light power, that the heating didn’t work. Well, so it seemed and so we froze. Having briefly met our french co-hostelers (who by accident set off fire alarms causing noise pollution), we  embarked on our way to Peter’s wine bar, where we would perform an acoustic set that evening. Walking through the clean cobbled streets of Erfurt, one of the oldest cities in Germany, we were able to take in many sights along the way including the cathedral and the market place. This cathedral is so big that it dominates the touristic eye, and like a magnet draws pagans, musicians and christians alike to its gates. After signing autographs and posing for fan photos, we finally arrived at Le Bar.

Having tasted and drunk a fine collection of wines presented by our generous host, we played our way through an acoustic version of ‘eyes to the floor..’ and some older songs, until, well, Ollie couldn’t sing any more. One of the audience that night was an old woman sitting in her car outside with the window rolled down, moving her head and smiling at Marc the whole time we played. A decision to have an early night was met by all, and after the gig we headed back to the hostel. Günther proved his culinary skills and cooked up a tasty pasta midnight snack in the hostels kitchen before we drew the curtain on a tour date in Erfurt. Next day a fine breakfast from Peter warmed every part of a tour broken metabolism – we’ll see Erfurt soon some day again!

26/03/09

Tags: erfurt, eyes to the road, le bar, photos, tour

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 18:10 and is filed under photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.