A rare day off where both band and crew were in the same town.

Dusseldorf, an unlikely contender for best day-off city was in the event, a perfect place for the touring party to recharge. A quiet Monday on a balmy summer's day, there was a lot of hardcore resting going on. With a tour that moves around as fast as this one does, it's nice to be able to just chill and regroup, which is exactly what I did and many of the guys thought the same. Dan and I wandered the town a little in the late afternoon and couldn't help stop for a quick Altbier and sausage. Altbier is a local brew, meaning 'old style beer' which is a dark bitter type beer quite unlike most UK brews. Utterly delicious, it's not surprising to see multiple bars along the river in the old town serving this one and only brew from a single keg placed on an archaic block arrangement.

The evening band-dinner generously arranged by our long time German promoter Marek Leiberberg lived up to all expectation, we ate at a truly fabulous Italian restaurant nearby on the Western side of town. A couple of us wandered back to the Altbier for a nightcap.

Some of the guys had been talking about the Curry Wurst, which I forgot to mention in the Berlin diary. Very popular in Germany at the moment, the curry wurst is a hot pork sausage (Wurst) cut into slices and seasoned with curry sauce (regularly consisting of ketchup or tomato paste blended with curry) and generous amounts of curry powder, or a ready-made ketchup-based sauce seasoned with curry and other spices. Utterly disgusting BUT in Berlin apparently, a delicious evening snack. John had one this afternoon and confirmed Dusseldorf is not the place to enjoy one.



Some nice chaps from the venue presented Mark with his Walk of fame paving slab which will I presume be laid somewhere in the front of the hall.



Show-day was upon us once more and a relaxing afternoon in the hotel room catching up on some Wimbledon and computer stuff before we assembled in the lobby for the short rush-hour drive to the next show. Oberhausen has its history in coal and steel and is known these days for having the largest shopping mall in Europe. I can imagine little worse than the thought of a visit. No chance of that and I suppose the fact that the venue is outside of town and there's not too much really to do there was why the crew spent their day off in Dusseldorf. we arrived at the gig and there was a big screen TV set up in catering for the France - South Africa match. Very sad to see the French depart with so little dignity. One has to say though that their karma was bad ever since the goal that put out the Republic of Ireland. We did a short sound check and were ready for the show at 8pm although a decision was made to hold for ten minutes as the crowd were slow coming in. Another great sold-out arena with a good sound and another fantastic crowd. A small set list change and we went on and did our thing feeling the benefits of the day off. Another runner back to the hotel and when we arrived Tim showed me a video he'd shot on his phone during the car journey..John and Mike serenading Paul Crockford.




Fifteen minutes later we all found ourselves gravitating towards the old town Altbier bars lured by the smells of sausage. We were just in time as for some reason, all the bars were closing at midnight, must be a Tuesday night thing. We managed to find said sausages and refreshed and mellowed by the delicious Altbiers we wandered back to the disingenuous luxury of the Breidenbacher Hof.

Some show pics from Dirk Nowitzki