One thing made quite apparent to us on this tour is the vast availability and open display of porno mags mom dont stop reading this just because this is the first sentence. Last night we had our show in Denmark cancelled so we started our trip to Sweden and stopped to see a new friend in Hamburg and hang out for a bit. This city is well known for its district known as the Reeperbahn, its red light district, which after a really nice long walk along the ports along the elba river we found ourselves in after cutting through a very public street lined with prostitutes, all of which had fanny packs which I found the most interesting part about it.
The guys in Heartbreak Kid informed me that a lot of these young women are taken from their homes in eastern europe under false pretenses and forced into prostitution. Its one thing if the circumstances in ones life forces them into such an unpleasant and dangerous line of business, its another if you are forced into this line of work at the hand of another. So as we got food at subway in between the sex shop and strip club and got a good little laugh at the ridiculousness of it all i noticed that the absurdity was capped off with a large gunshop across the street which gave me perhaps the best idea that will come to me overseas. ARM THE HOOKERS! To hell with the pimps and the sleaze, if we could make enough money on this tour to put a small pistol and a ticket home in the fanny pack of each young woman it would be well worth it. This is of course no solution but at the time seemed like a start. In a place where we were so fortunate to breeze through and bask in the absurd the realities of that which created this atmosphere were inescapable. The mutilated silicon enhanced flesh advertised in each window was more obscene than the product itself because it turned the human into the product.
ANYWAYS, unpleasantness aside Peterson and I drove straight through the night in what i like to call the U.S.S. Bismark into sweden which was a gorgeous drive across two bridges that brought us through denmark, copenhagen, and into sweden. The darkness that loomed over the first bridge in the early hours of the morning led me to proclaim how awesome the view was "it looks like were driving into hell!" at which point reign in blood the anthemic Slayer hit came across the stereo followed by a barrage of Enriques finest Black Metal, known to come from scandanavia. It was glorious but appropriately adjusted by a most gorgeous sunrise behind the fields of wind turbines and farms as Billy Bragg escorted us into Swedens beauty. We are now in Joenkoping the site of our first show and I am quite in love with this cities beauty. Its small, very walkable, and absolutely gorgeous and thoroughly interesting from end to end. We play just across the street from the sea which flows through a canal across the city. This is the most gorgeous place we have seen thus so far and is has exceeded our hopes of what we might find in Sweden. It cost quite a bit to come here but we should make it all back and a bit on top if all goes well.
Oh and our last show in Germany was amazing, great venue, joined with a skatepark, around the corner from where we played where in the loft they built two massive bunk beds that fit all 9 of us comfortably on our own mattresses. it was paradise... or something like it.
viva la revolucion, arm the hookers,
-Sean
