Sat., April 25, Rheinberg, Germany, Schwarzer Adler-- I was dog tired after the Jazzhaus gig and ended up just falling into bed and blissfully sleeping as hard as I could. I had set my alarm for 10:30 and woke up at 10:29, groggy but rested. Without that crucial first night of sleep at the ETAP, it was taking me longer to get through the jet lag than usual. Dede was perky and all dressed while I still was hitting the shower. Breakfast had come and gone in the hotel. Most European hotels provide complimentary breads, cheeses, juices, cereal, and the occasional meat, along with great coffee, but you have to get up before 10 a.m. if you want any, usually served in the dining area, buffet style. Instead, Dede and I attempted to get coffee "to go" from the pastry shop a couple of doors down from the hotel. The concept was completely lost on the counter help. Coffee is supposed to be served in a pot with a cup and saucer, and you sit down to have your coffee. Besides that, apparently "to go" is an idiom unfamiliar to most Germans. You must say "take away" to be precise enough for them to get what you mean. So, coffee-less, Dede and I joined back up with the band as we piled into the van. Our destination was somewhere between Siegen and Munich. I wasn't up on my German cartography yet, and everything seemed to be moving faster than my mind could keep up. We drove, I think, about three hours, south toward Munich to arrive in a terribly quaint suburban-looking town called Rheinberg. The hotel was a chain, but very unchainlike in its uniqueness. It was more like a bed and breakfast, with only 10 or 12 rooms. Everything, again, was incredibly clean and neat. What cleaning agents are used to maintain that brand new look and feel is obviously technology unavailable in the U.S. There is not one mold spore, dust mote, mirror smear or chrome spot to be found. It's really Virgo heaven. We all got our own rooms again, and had a little while to settle in before heading to the club for sound check and dinner. The venue was about five kilometers from the hotel and nestled in a cozy neighborhood. It was an ancient building with a recently added-on larger room where the shows were held, with a 300 SRO capacity. I managed to dink around with the tom mount hardware on the old Rogers kit enough to get it to behave and tighten down into the positions I needed. I tuned up the drums a tad and discovered a way to set the cymbals closer to my preferences. I was feeling better about the set up. We ran through a tune and it sounded good in the room, but the sound guy let us know that if it gets too loud, the neighbors complain. Well, it's hard for me to have a problem with that when he's the one running the volume knob. There was to be an opening act, so we had plenty of time to eat in the restaurant part of the club. Low ceilings, light-colored unfinished wood seems popular here in Germany, and it was in abundance in this club. I ordered the fish dish which came nicely arranged and decorated along with some excellent wine and bread. We all chowed down enmasse with relish, amongst mostly 30-40-somethings who all seemed to know who we were. I caught a couple of songs by the opening act, a blues cover band, and they weren't half bad. Petra had suggested that I not let the drummer use my cymbals lest they got broken, but the other choice for cymbals from that old kit was so pathetic, I just couldn't let a fellow drummer suffer more than I (what a guy, eh?). It turned out, as is usually the case, that I was a much harder-hitting player than this dude, so my cymbals were safe. The green room was right behind the bar, and Dede had the baby all comfy lying on the special sheep skin she'd brought to soften the van ride and any hard hotel beds. Dede has a calming effect on Maryam that Joanna seems to be missing. Just more mom-type experience, we figured, and Dede's