Wednesday, May 23, 2007

exactly 36 minutes...will it be enough??

ciao!

I am back in italy in one piece and gearing up for band shows in May and June...but first, I would be remiss if I didn't give a proper wrap-up to the end of the Dutch tour...and I know you were all sitting here with bated breath (what exactly is bated breath, by the way? I have always thought it sounded kind of gross.) and so I will launch in...now! Ah, lax punctuation. :)

Okay, so Friday night was the smashing-success house concert with Hugo and Margriet. Saturday dawned sunny (again??!) and I headed to Rotterdam to meet up with Marco, who I think has the distinct of being my first Dutch fan. He bought "Sparkler" way back when and has even seen me play twice in Austin. He's the one that started asking me to come to the Netherlands and so at the root of all this I have Marco to thank.

He picked me up at the station and we headed to Velvet Music in the center of town, where I played an in-store and sold a few CDs (as well as purchased a few that I haven't even had time to unwrap yet - very sad story). Then we headed to the radio station to do a show that he co-hosts on Mondays and Saturdays - www.lonradio.nl - and I did 6 songs on-air. And THEN he took me out for dinner at this amazing Greek restaurant and THEN (it just gets better) I got to do another incredible house concert (thank you Dennis!!), this time totally unplugged. I did the show with Eva, and she started off with a spine-chilling set - really lovely. I actually loved the songs in Dutch, though I had naught idea of what she was saying. Bonus: my Italian friends (from the last blog) came to the show and brought two of the German friends...so we had two Italians, two Germans, an American, a Japanese-Dutch guy, and a handful of true Dutchies....and we had a smashing good time speaking my language, thank you very much. :) Whew. I'm really pretty spoiled. All of us English-speakers are. It's quite lucky that my cards fell that way. I think about that often - if I had been born a speaker of another language, would I have wanted to write songs? Or poems and short stories? Is that a stupid question?

Anyhow, I woke up Sunday and bid farewell to my kind kind friend Marco, and then I headed to Amsterdam for my last day in the Netherlands. I dropped my stuff with Anne-Marie and went for a walk around the canals (while, predictably, the sky began to swirl with dark muddy grayness). I stopped in at the FOAM, a photography museum that was alternately lovely and horrifying. There was an exhibit called Sacrifce by James Nachtwey, an American photographer from New York, and it included photos from Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, 9/11, Romania, Sudan, Indonesia....you get the picture. I loved it, and I wanted to sob for every second that I was looking at those photos. In my opinion, that's the most powerful medium - there's nothing fake about the man in that photo, the man who is just shy of being a skeleton crawling for food. There's no pretense there, no fancy words spinning metaphors - there's just a man who is entirely bones with a touch of skin, trying to make it to the next day.

Perhaps appropriately, it began raining almost as soon as I walked out of the FOAM, so I headed for a cafe, finished off a few postcards, and then went to the KHL, the koffiehuis where we were playing our last show. And really, it was a humdinger, if I may say so myself. First of all, the venue is amazing - great stage, great sound, just all around lovely. The food was great (I had the tilapia!) and Marijn, who did sound, and Richard, who seemed to be the co-host for the night, and Sido who ran the door...they were all so nice. Alex and I played a fun set (so nice to finish the tour playing one more show with Alex) and Sera Jane Smolen and Tom Mank, two musicians from NY, joined us on stage for "Love Story." Sera played cello and Tom sang harmony with me - it was so great. Then we got to watch their set, as well as Mike Alviano's (from Canada) and it was wonderful to actually be audience members for a change. :)

More greatness from KHL - Anja, a new Dutch friend of mine, came and she brought me a HOMEMADE APPELTART (yes, you read that right), and I ate half of it that night - the other half got me through staying up all night at the Schiphol airport. (Ugh). I got to meet a lot of my Myspace friends (Anja, Joost, Anita, Edwin, Inge, Sido, Marijn, and countless others) and it was such a perfect way to end the tour. So thank you a million times over to everyone who loved me and fed me and traveled with me and biked me around and played songs with me and who generally made me feel at home so far away from home. I have nothing but happy memories (and some funny ones as well) from this tour. THANK YOU!

And now I have to go unpack and unwrap those new CDs, among other things...get caught up on email...and practice, because we have a band show on Friday in Bologna! Hooray!

love and noodles,
vanessa

Friday, May 18, 2007

bet your bottom dollar there'll be SUN!

I should be in bed. It's late - 1:30 am - and I have just finished a concert (well, a few hours ago). I am very sleepy. Therefore it's possible this will make even less sense than my previous posts. Prepare thyself.

So Thursday was a lovely, lovely day. When I left you all, I was marching out into a dreary Den Haag day, fairly certain I would be rained upon. It was Ascension Day, and most of the town was closed, and I was having trouble finding even a cafe open to feed me. When I got closer to the center of town, I saw a pleasant looking Greek cafe, so I popped in for a gyro. Next to me in line were two Italian guys and I couldn't resist striking up a conversation with them. They invited me to sit at their table and we began the usual "so how do you speak Italian so well if you are a musician from Texas, currently on tour in the Netherlands?" Never fails. Anyhow, Emanuele and Daniele were super kind and took me out for coffee after our gyros, and piano piano, the day brightened. Literally. Where before there had been only gray gray skies, I began to see the hint of sunshine.

So after coffee I hopped on a tram to the Gemeentemuseum (Municipal Museum), where I saw an incredible exhibit of the works of one Helene Schjerfbeck, a deceased Finnish painter. She was amazing. Really. I am shocked she is just now getting recognition, 60 years after her death. Go hunt her down online - it'll be worth your time. Anyhow, I wandered around this very good museum for at least an hour, and then I went to the cafe, which is in a courtyard - and there I saw liquid gold. Pure, unadulterated sunshine, cascading in through the tall glass windows. Giddy with glee, I ordered a hot tea and some sort of cranberry cake and headed outside to bask like a lizard in the sun. I had no idea that I was really that tired of the clouds but I felt better than I have in days.

Happily rejuvenated, I headed towards Haarlem, where I had a gig with Eva. I got there a few hours early and I wandered around the charming town center - one of the prettiest I've seen so far. I plopped down on the steps of the town hall and started sketching bicyclists, no doubt inspired by the works of Ms. Schjerfbeck. It's funny how seeing amazing art makes me kind of think I could do that too, much like hearing a great songwriter made me think that I too could write songs. You'd think it would be the opposite, that it would be intimidating, but there's something about the approachable-ness of artists who have a touch of the down-to-earth about them, be it Van Gogh or Aimee Mann, that encourages me to pick up a pen or a guitar. Whatever the inspiration, I sketched my childish drawings quite happily until the shadows grew long, and then I headed to my dinner - at an Italian restaurant, natch. I had stopped by there a few hours before to reserve a table and got to chatting with the owners, who asked the same question from earlier in the day, and we got around to my music, and I left a CD with them to listen to. When I returned for dinner, "Little Films" was playing over the system and it was to my own album that I ate my pizza that evening. Very odd indeed.

The show that night at Cafe Briljant was a lot of fun - Rob, the owner, is a fantastically nice guy, and it was so lovely to finally hear Eva play - you really must check her out, www.myspace.com/evamusic I think. We'll play again tomorrow at a house concert in Rotterdam and I am so looking forward to it.

As has been the theme of this trip, we scurried out as soon as the last 5 strings rang out on my guitar (I busted the E string while tuning for "Love Story") because we had to catch the last train back to Den Haag. The last train we made no problem, but the last tram to Eva's place was a different matter. She lives at least a km from the station, if not more - I'd say 2 km - and she pedaled us home at 1 in the morning, God bless her, with me on the back of the bike. I'm getting pretty good at Holland from the back of a bike.

Which brings us to today (I swear I'm almost done). This morning I headed to Utrecht to meet up with Hugo and Margriet, the organizers of tonight's house concert. They have been marvelous hosts - incredibly kind. Margriet lent me her bike (for once I was actually doing the pedaling!) and Hugo took me on a bike tour around the old center of Utrecht. It was so lovely - a bit like Amsterdam (because of the canals), but different too - it's a lot smaller, has a medieval feel to it. We spent the afternoon in town and then headed back to get ready for the house concert. This was their first concert to host but you would never have known it - they were pros. Likewise for the audience - easily the most attentive crowd I have had in a long time. They set a new standard for my house concert audiences. Really an amazing, lovely evening. Thank you so much to everyone who came.

Two days are left on the Dutch tour - I'll be sad to see it end (though I'll be happy to get back to my own bed and get the backpack off my back and unpacked for good). Stay tuned for Rotterdam part one and Amsterdam part two.

Love and goodnight,
Vanessa

Thursday, May 17, 2007

from the back of a bicycle, from the window of a train

Just a short note today, folks - no marathon-length blog for me. I have a few more things to do today in Den Haag (The Hague) before I head to Haarlem for tonight's show with Eva.

Where to pick up? Much has happened since we parted ways after the Arnhem Fire Alarm Extravaganza 2007. I headed the next day to Groningen, a lovely town in the far north-east of the Netherlands. I had two shows there - Cafe Roezemoes and Cafe Marleen - and each was fun in their own way. Cafe Marleen was, at least on that night, a true listening room - Alex and I played for a very captive audience that even included two songwriters from Baltimore who I know from Indiegrrl. Can the world shrink any further? I met some great people - Klaas, who mentioned in the last blog, took some excellent photos at our first gig. We met Curtis, a guy from Wisconsin who has been living in the Netherlands for about 25 years and who has hitchhiked his way across most of North America and parts of Europe. Very interesting fellow who was also kind enough to give us a lift back to the hotel after the show. I met some of my MySpace friends in person, which is always entertaining - actually, I've met a lot of my Dutch Myspace friends. They are very good at actually coming to the show when they say they will - major Dutch up, that one.

After Saturday & Sunday in Groningen, Alex and I were going to head to Heerlen (in the far south of Nederland) for our show Monday night. We were supposed to meet at the train station but I missed the train due to the line outside of the shower that morning. Walking to the station I struck up a conversation with a guy from the Congo (well, he struck it up with me) and I yet again found myself talking to a foreigner who loved living in the Netherlands. His English was rudimentary at best but the main thing I understood was his extreme joy at being here, even after 8 years. He just kept saying what a great country it was - how free.

Anyhow, Alex and I played train tag all day long, trying to find each other at the Zwolle and Nijmegen stations and finally succeeding in Venlo, where we hopped back on the train for the last leg to Heerlen (it really is in the very far south). The whole journey took about 6 hours, but we were rewarded that night with a fantastic and unexpected show. We played at an Italian restaurant called Il Paradiso di Angelo. Angelo is a Dutch-Italian who plays accordion and guitar and many other things, and he has a son, Gino, who was there that night. He had brought his cahon, which is a wooden percussion instrument, and about halfway through the show, he asked if he could join us on stage. It was fantastically fun - Alex on violin, mandolin, and bass, and Gino on percussion, and wham, I had myself a Dutch band (Vanessa Peters and the Appeltaarts?). I think I'm actually going to start a new band in every country I visit, just collecting musicians here and there. It's more fun that way.

The crowd was small that night but amazingly appreciative (thanks to Elsbeth and Bianca for cleaning out my CD inventory for the night!!) and we invited Gino to come play with us the next night in Tilburg, and then we ran out of the venue and caught the last train to Venlo, where we were staying for the night. I stayed with Hans Peeters (!) and his girlfriend Mariet, and their three lovely cats. They were great hosts, as seems to be the trend here. The next day dawned sunny (I know, I could hardly believe it), and Alex took me on a tour of Venlo, his home-town. For the first time ever, I was actually a bike passenger, and once I got used to it, it was really fun - I actually took some hilarious pictures from the back of the bike that I will post as soon as I can.

On Tuesday night we were in Tilburg at a place called Little Devil that is normally a hard-rock/metal venue but that once a month does a singer/songwriter night, organized by a very nice songwriter named Gerton:
http://www.myspace.com/giveusthelightbrigade
Gino joined us on stage again and I really, really wish we had had a way to record the show - Gerton was able to catch a bit of one song before my memory card was full on my camera, but it would have been nice if we could have captured the moment. Sigh. So many lovely moments often go uncaptured. In any case, I have a feeling we will all play together again - our Holland Reunion tour can't be far away...

Wednesday I met up with Eva at long last - I feel like I know Eva very well, because we've been emailing for 6 months. She's the one that helped me get this tour started, along with Alex and Marco and Hugo (thank you thank you to everyone). I kind of feel like she's my Dutch twin, actually. She's great fun to talk to and she has a lovely dog, Pika, who sings quite nicely. We all hung out yesterday and I made pasta and it was wonderful to have a day off. I got caugth up a bit on some sleep and now I am ready to head out again into the great big world....and so here I go... I am headed to a couple of museums in Den Haag, and then on to Haarlem, which I have heard is quite lovely. Right now my only requirement for lovely is a clear blue sky. What do you think the odds are?

love and vlaamse frites,
vanessa

ps - i did it! i broke through the barrier and wrote a few new songs - maybe i'll try them out this week with my remaining Dutch shows? very exciting.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

The art of balancing Dutch downs with Dutch ups.

So this trip has been comprised of Dutch ups and Dutch downs. Usually there are 5 or 6 of each in any given day, so it's kept things interesting. Dutch up - my show went really well last night. Dutch down - lost 50€ on the way back to my hotel. Hmmm. Dutch up - delicious appeltaart again. Dutch down - everything seems to be closed on Sundays. Dutch down - most of the delicious cafes I have found are lunch cafes, meaning they close at 6 pm, leaving the falafel option or an expensive restaurant. Dutch up - the cafes, when open, have had freaking great food. This country knows how to snack healthily and affordably. I can always find fruit smoothies and salads, as long as I am looking before 6 pm.

So I spent a day wandering around Arnhem, trying to familiarize myself with the town and its unpredictable rain showers. It's a lovely little town - apparently most of it was destroyed in WWII, during Operation Market Garden (a failed British attempt to liberate the town from the Nazis) - but the rebuilding went quite nicely. I contemplated stopping at a Swoopy Snacks for lunch (hamburgers in vending machines) but opted instead for a sausage broodje (bread roll thingie). The day clouded up again so I headed back to the hotel to change and nap before the show. I napped and woke to sunshine - the first in days - but by the time I dressed and headed out, it was raining again (big Dutch down). I wandered the old town, looking for an affordable meal and found all the little cafes closed (this is when I caught on to this phenomenon) but, quite by accident, I found this amazing vegetarian cafe (huge Dutch up) and ate a Thai curry with mango. Quite delicious.

I then headed to the Oranje Koffiehuis for my Friday night show. It is a tiny little place on Noah's Ark Street ... at least I think that's the translation... Arke Noachstraat.... anyhow, it was a blast. I met a real cast of characters, none of whom I am inventing... Ro, a Spanish guy living in Holland...he told me not to be afraid of the Dutch, that they are the least judgmental people on the planet and I can share my opinions freely. Right on. Then I met Gerard, who from what I can tell makes his living as a troubadour, traveling around to castles in Europe and playing a lute...he was a Marine and fought in Africa, where he lost most of his mates and has lost two wives to cancer, plus he's a recovering alcohlic...I learned all of this over the course of about half an hour. Interesting fellow, plus he sang along to my Elvis cover in a deep baritone - gotta love that. My three roommates from the hostel even came to the show - they are three girls from Germany, Switzerland, and Israel who were in Arnhem for a dance school tryout. Only 5 girls out of hundreds were selected, and they weren't part of the five, so they took me up on my invitation to the show to ease their pain a bit. I think after the appeltaart they were feeling better.

Annet and Margriet, the two owners, were so lovely and took good care of us. After the show I was hungry (what's new?), so I tried the bitterballen, these strange gooey Dutch meatballs that were good but a bit unsettling...what else.... oh, Alex played the violin as well for the first time, and it sounds so lovely on Fireworks and Never Been Good. I hope we manage to get a recording of those before the tour is up. Folks - bring your digital cameras to the shows!!!

So the show at the OK was more than okay. And I walked home afterwards, reveling in my Dutch up. And here's where the story gets wacky. I swear I don't make these things up. Also because these stories stress my dad out, so why would I invent them?

When I was a child, I used to have a fear of fire - of our house catching on fire, more specifically. I think it was fueled (ha) by all those firemen that used to come to the school and give talks about smoke alarm safety, changing your batteries, blah blah blah. It was supposed to be educational and inspirational but instead it terrified me. After one of those presentations I couldn't sleep for days.

So when I arrived at Hotel Parkzicht, I laughed to myself when I was placed in the topmost room - practically the attic. The building, like many Dutch buildings, was tall and very narrow (apparently properties used to be taxed on the width of the facade, so everyone built up instead of out), and made mostly out of wood. My old childhood fear came back a bit, and after getting settled in the room, I checked for the fire escape route. I don't know why.

Well that night, after falling asleep about 2 am, I was awakened at 4 am by an incredibly loud, shrill, deafening, terrible noise - the fire alarm. For a minute I lay there paralyzed, still half asleep. I heard no commotion in the hall so I didn't rush to get up, but after it didn't shut off, I decided I had better go check it out. So I dressed and went out into the hall - nothing. I went downstairs and found all of rooms 1-10 wandering around in their undies (major Dutch down, as some of the men were old and scantily clad), but no one seemed panicked in any way - actually, they kind of seemed to be enjoying themselves. So fingers plugged in ears, I made my way back upstairs. After a bit it stopped, and I tried to settle back into sleep, though my heart was quite literally pounding in a way I had never felt before. True fear. Just as I started to nod off, though, I was re-awakened by the siren of a fire truck, just outside my window. I went to the window and looked out. There was a firefighter on the sidewalk, looking up into the windows. He started flashing me signs - an okay sign, a thumbs sign, and then some strange morse code with his flashlight - but everytime I yelled, "Is everything okay???" I got no response, just more flashing. For all I know he was wishing me a good stay at Hotel Parkzicht. But to be on the safe side, I dressed again and went downstairs, only to find the same folks frolicking in their undies. So I went back upstairs and waited for the fire alarm party to die down. It finally did, around 5 am. By that point, the daily trains had started running again - about 500 feet from my window, one every 15 minutes or so. Awesome.

So let's recap - some Dutch ups include: yogurt, appeltaart, fruit smoothies, super friendly people, wide command of the English language, Alex Akela, the StayOkay hostel in Arnhem, the people at the OK, Klaas and his great photos which shall be up shortly on my site, cute Dutch couples on bicycles, Anja who loves Little Films, and oh yes, Vlaamse frites (the real deal Flemish (not French) fry).

some Dutch downs - the damned eternal never-ceasing rain, slightly wonky bus schedules, running to catch trains in that damned eternal rain, smoking in bars, the closing of shops at 6 pm, when I have usually just arrived to my next town, wild fire alarm parties meant to confuse the American guests.

Very good. As I suspected, the ups currently outweigh the downs. Let's keep it that way.

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Vanessa

Thursday, May 10, 2007

it was the best of days, it was the worst of days....

hallo!

i am writing to you from cold, rainy Arnhem, where I am warm and happy to be in one piece. i have a little story to tell, so settle back in your chairs and i shall commence explaining how yesterday was one of the longest days of my young (but now much older) life.

so my dutch tour began on tuesday...i left castiglion, hopped a train to rome, hopped another train to the airport, loitered there for three hours, spent too much money on books, hopped on a plane, and at long last i arrived in amsterdam. I got my bags (no small feat, as collectively they weigh what I do - seriously) and I headed to the trains (electric green upholstery, very entertaining). arrived at the train station and walked out into a brightly lit evening (daylight here is over around 10 pm). after waiting for a while under a sign that i thought was for Tram 4, I realized I was in the wrong place. I asked directions and crossed the plaza to the other set of tracks. I found a nice looking gentleman in a suit and asked him if this was where Tram 4 stopped. He smiled and pointed at the 5 tracks in the nearby area and said that it could stop at any one of those - you just had to keep an eye out. I laughed and said, "well, that's rather exciting, isn't it?" He smiled that wry smile again and said, ït would be more exciting if"the tram actually came." I liked the Dutch already.

After successfully taking on the strippenkaart (the Dutch bus/tram ticket), I made my way to the Keizersgracht canal and to the apartment of one lovely Anne-Marie, who I met on couchsurfing.com. For those of you unfamiliar with that service, it's pretty freaking cool - a community of travelers, independently verified by other members (as to their normalness), who travel from place to place availing themselves of free couches (and offering up their own in exchange). It's kind of the coolest thing ever. During the course of our conversations, I discovered that AM had been an exchange student in Nacogdoches, TX, about half an hour from where my grandma lives in East Texas. It's a crazy small world we live in, folks. She even had Kinky Friedman books on her shelves.

I woke Wednesday morning in AM's sun-filled apartment on the canal and thus began the best of days. I found a scrumdiddlyumptious pastry shop and a fine cappuccino for breakfast, along with a strawberry muffin thingie, and I was on my way. First stop - the remarkable Van Gogh museum. Next - the Rikjsmuseum (The Masterpieces), home of many fine works by Rembrandt and Vermeer. Next - the Nieuwekerk (New Church). Stop for yummy salami/brie sandwich. Next - OudeKerk (the Old Church), built in 1306 and currently housing an amazing photography exhibit called World Press Photo. It's an annual photo-journalism competition and I passed an hour with some of the most striking (lovely and horrible) photos I have ever seen. It was so captivating that I nearly forgot to notice my surroundings (the 700-yr old church was no slouch itself). So after a morning of museums and lots of walking, I hurried back to AM's apartment, stopping for a cinnamon sugar croissant and a cranberry basil juice (whoa), and I grabbed my bags and headed for the train. I had a show yesterday evening in Amersfoort and I wanted to get there early so I wouldn't be stressed. Mwa ha ha ha ha....

And this is where it became the worst of days. I made it to Amersfoort more or less without difficulty, although schlepping that damn backpack and guitar around is not easy. I cursed my wimpy little frame on numerous occasions. My plan was this - because I was sleeping in Arnhem (not Amersfoort) after the show, I wanted to check my backpack and head to the show with only gig bag and guitar in tow, picking up in the backpack again as I headed out of town. But after much searching, I found the luggage lockers, only to discover that they only accepted Dutch credit cards. That is all. No cash, change, or begging. Sighly heavily, I resigned myself to my load and went to the bus stop outside of the train station, where I was completely baffled by the schedule. After asking around, I managed to get on the right bus, but I missed my stop - it was the very first one, and the only one "in town" - all the others were in suburban Amersfoort, and I spent half an hour looking at bleak little Dutch homes and watching the sky grow black.

Arriving back at the train/bus station (argh), I got off the bus, waited again, and got on the right one. Got off the bus, found the venue, started to feel a bit better. I explained to the owner that I had to catch the last train out of Amersfoort in order to make it to my hostel in Arnhem and he agreed to let me play first, though I was supposed to be the "headliner." Went in search of food. Everything quick had closed at 7 pm, and blast if it wasn't 7:05 pm. Finally I found a nice man serving falafel, and we chatted in extremely broken English while he lamented about how hard life must be for me, always traveling in strange cities. It was kind of funny because that morning I would have told him he was crazy, but around 6 pm I would have agreed with him whole-heartedly. At that moment, I was on the fence.

Fast-forward to the show. I played with Alex Akela, a Dutch bassist/violinist who was kind enough to find me many shows and offered to accompany me on some of them. We had never played a note together until we got on stage (a bit stressful in and of itself) but it went really well. The audience was extremely kind and attentive and they even laughed at my stupid jokes. The only bummer was that I had to haul ass out of there as soon as the show was finished so that I could catch my train. I didn't get a chance to chat with the many people who came up to me - sorry!!!

So I packed up like lightning, listening to the other band - www.myspace.com/sabinemusic - they are very good - and I headed for the door - and found it was raining. ARGH. I was told a taxi was out of the question (pricey) and OF COURSE I didn't have an umbrella, so I draped my parka over myself and my big backpack, and Alex did the same with my smaller gig bag, and we hoofed it to the station in the rain. I didn't even change my clothes, and my leather mary janes are not shoes made for hoofing-it. We arrived and saw that the train was 15 minutes late, so I thought I would change back into my Converse for the rest of the journey - only to find I had LEFT THEM AT THE VENUE. ARGH. DOUBLE ARGH. Luckily Alex was heading back there later that evening and said he would grab them for me - we play together tomorrow. But in the meantime, I am in wet shoes that have given me two large blisters, and I'm pretty cold and wet, AND my train is late, which is endangering my connection in Utrecht that I have to make to get to Arnhem. And did I mention that I was hungry? I had some peanut M&Ms from the vending machine.

Alex got me on the train - God bless Alex - and I got myself off it, just making my connection to Arnhem (which was luckily late itself). In Arnhem at long last - at 1 am in the morning, mind you - I caught a taxi, having just missed the last bus to the hostel. That 3 kilometer ride cost me 17 euro but at that point I would have paid 50 just to be out of the rain and in a horizontal position with the damn backpack off my aching back.

I stumbled 100% weary into the hostel, where I found a very kind lass behind the counter who informed me that I had my own room (hallelujah) but that they had no reservation for me for the following day. This was very very bad news. But she assured me that they would work it out, and she sent me off to bed, where I promptly collapsed. And they did work it out, and I have my same bed this evening, and I think I will head to it very, very early tonight.

And that is more or less the story of the longest day, my first in the Netherlands. I am happy to report that all is well that ends well, and I slept very soundly and dryly.
happy weekend to you, i will report soon on shows in Arnhem and Groningen.
little dutch kisses,
vanessa