Accommodation

One of the questions people ask me, after how long have you been playing music, and where is the rest of the foundation, is where do you sleep when you're on the road? In Germany the venues provide accommodation, except Berlin as with most big cities. Sometimes (if you're very lucky) it's a hotel, sometimes with the bar owner or booker, or sometimes a band apartment. Last night was the latter.

The show was better than expected only because I had such low expectations. Chemnitz is pretty rundown East German city but the Subway to Peter brings the neighbourhood down. I'd played there before to just the barmaid so wasn't expecting much this time around, thankfully some people did come down and I even sold a couple of CDs. I was the only non-punk rock act playing there this month. The band apartment is the pits. The walls and ceiling are covered with the posters, scrawls and stains of every band to have passed through. I've got to start bringing my own mattress. Another black mark against the booker.

Today was a day off! A good and bad thing. You can relax but there's nowhere to stay. I weighed up the many options: couchsurfing, stay with friends, another night in Chemntiz (no!), early to tomorrow's Stuttgart host, a hostel in a city along the way?... etc. The mind boggled for a bit and then I plumped for a nice hotel in the countryside 4 hours down the autobahn. Ah, the luxury, if only every night was like this.