Toulouse

France, the 23rd of November

Hey guys,

Right now we're about 200 km from Toulouse, where we're playing tonight. Our last blog was before our gig in Lindau. Since then we've played in Germany, Switzerland and France at some very nice venues.

The Lindau gig was great. There were two backstage rooms, so we shared backstage with Týr. We were treated really well and had a great show, even if the turnout was one of the smaller ones on the tour. 

After Lindau we played the two Swiss gigs of the tour. We were quite nervous before both shows because there are strict volume limits in Switzerland. The limit is 100dB, louder than that lands you a considerable fine. We didn't have any problems though. Since we are the first band on the bill we are the only band which gets a real sound-check, and Fríði has been doing a great job making us sound good.

Anyway, the Dietikon gig went great. We had our own backstage room and the other three bands had one room, which didn't really make sense. And, apparently, a crate of beer in Switzerland is a six-pack. We're not complaining though, we had a great time and we had a big crowd. 

Monthey is the most beautiful place we've been to so far. Dietikon is in the German speaking part of Switzerland while Monthey is in the French part and must be close to the alps. Instead of getting food at the venue we were all taken out to a restaurant where we got a 3-course dinner and wine which was magnificent! We stayed at a hostel in the nearby Montreaux(google some pictures!) and it's definitely not the last time I'm going there.

When we were in Monthey we found out that five of our passports had been left at the hostel in Zürich, so we had to take a slight detour back into Zürich on our way to France to pick them up. It all worked out well though, thankfully. We still haven't been required to show our passports, but you never know when it might happen.

After Switzerland we headed into France where we played in Colmar. The special thing about the Colmar gig was that we had a day off after the show, so we didn't necessarily have to hold back on the partying. France is strange, you can only buy cigarettes in designated tobacco stores, but their supermarkets have a HUGE variety of alcohol which is very cheap. 20 euros for a bottle of Glenfiddich and 1.15 for a bottle of cheap red wine. Not too bad. :) We stayed around after our show and checked out the other bands properly, and they are all great! Two of the local guys from the venue gave us rides back to our hostel after the show, which made everything a lot easier. All in all we've had a fantastic impression of France so far and Colmar was no exception.

Yesterday we had our day off in Lyon. Lyon is a beautiful city. The hostel where we stayed was the nicest one we've been to yet, with a large terrace overlooking the inner city. We all went out during the evening and had fancy three-course dinner with white and red wine and cognac, which was a fantastic experience. Needless to say the dining culture in France is in a different league to where we're from. I and Jenus walked around the city for a couple of hours and watched Lyon's Champions League game against Ajax in a local pub, which was also very interesting(couldn't get tickets to the game though).

We're on our way to Toulouse now, it's getting really warm outside and the sun is shining. We're playing Madrid tomorrow, Barcelona on Friday and Bilbao on Saturday, so the tour shows no signs of getting any worse for us. We'll keep you posted.

Until next time,

Theodor