The Mistreaters | 2003 European Tour Diary

Thursday 9/11 > Vera - Groningen, Netherlands

Wake up and take my first shower of the trip. The guy from the club comes by to get us and we come back to the club for breakfast. Very excited to learn that this routine of eat-drink-play-sleep-eat is standard over here.

Drive to our driver and tour manager Seetz's hometown of Groningen, Netherlands to play Vera. I think just about every band has played here, even U2. I hate U2. Anyways, we show up and the place is enormous. There are rooms upstairs behind the stage for us to sleep in, offices and a dining room in the front of the building. Towards showtime Evert who runs Grunnen Rocks shows up and he is nice. A hostess from the club brings us a bottle of vodka and we do some shots. And a few more shots. The set was good but people here don't move around so much. We finish our set and go backstage, and the crowd starts pounding on the stage, calling for an encore. We play 2 more, and they're pounding and yelling for a second encore. We're running out of songs to play. After the show we spot Seetz making out with a girl at the merchandise table.

We ditch the club and walk around. There are tons of people out, but none of them want anything to do with us. We keep asking girls where to go and the ones that don't ignore us aren't going to the places they are telling us to go to. We settle at this bar, get some beers and the DJ plays R Kelly's car song ("Ignition") four times over the next half hour. After this we hit the streets again and discover vending machines facing the street serving fresh hamburgers and all kinds of unidentifiable fried objects. We eat a lot of fried crap, and head back to the club to sleep. On the way Christian, Srini and I decide to stop at a dance club and drive all the girls OFF the dancefloor. One dude there seems to be doing the same thing we're doing, and decides that Christian is his new best friend. We go home to go to bed. Christian wants to go back out, and does so by himself. We try to talk him out of it and tell that he's going to get lost, and he does.

Next »