Kiwifolk.com
Folk and Acoustic Music in New Zealand
Folk and Acoustic Music in New Zealand
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It can be a bit of a ruse to avoid those long ''nothing to declare" queues at customs by declaring something innocuous - like say, 500 cds. So upon arrival at Frankfurt that's what we do. The customs agent comes across to us, letting everyone in the other queue straight through while we are stuck there trying to explain why we have no documentation for $3,000 worth of goods!
However we delivered our most precious cargo, one nine year old Madelief Bowen, daughter of our fiddle-playing friend Anna, that we chaperoned to her Oma and Opa who were waiting there at the airport for her.
We picked up our car - which, I am acutely aware, we are going to be spending the best part of the next six weeks together in. Well, not the BEST part - at least I hope not! It's a brand-spanking new Peugeot 807 "People Mover" with everything that opens and shuts including doors that open and shut with the push of a button. Press button, door opens, press button, door closes, press button...that's enough now Michael.
We have three days until our first gig in Assens, and we are to stay the night before at (our tour organiser and musician friend) Eskil's house on his farm near Halkaer in the very North of Demark. So, two days to travel North through Germany and Denmark. We stop just outside of Franfurt at Bad Nauheim, a little tourist town with beautiful cobbled streets and old buildings. We stay the night in a little B&B and do a bit of exploring in the morning. The central part of town is an historic precinct with tiny buildings - a common theme in older parts of Europe, a maze of narrow streets choked with modern automobiles. Hyram led us on a small pilgrimage to find ElvisPresleyWeg, a little corner with a monument and a hotel that the man himself stayed in during the time of his military service in the US Army. A little monument with, surprisingly, posies of fresh flowers around it. Down the hill and through the park and we came across a huge thermal bath-house complex (hence the "Bad" in Bad Nauheim).
Heading North on the autobahn was reasonably painless: here in Europe we seem to cover the miles so much more quickly, arriving at places long before our (own) estimated arrival time. Speed limits - if there are any - are higher and the roads are multilane and direct. Just South of the Danish border we stopped in a tiny village called Grossenaspe. Marcus gives his Deutsch a real workout for the first time as no-one here speaks English. He does spectacularly well and negotiates a good rate at the tiny pub.
There is something about German rural pubs. The bar itself is usually small and beautiful polished oak or somesuch, there are no obvious fridges full of colourful bottles, there is one beer tap at the business end of the bar, there is one owner/operator and no cash register. Glasses are washed by hand between drinks, no money is taken when drinks are ordered and beer is beer, there is no choice. A simple penstroke on your beer mat is your tab and settling up is a matter-of-fact transaction out of a wallet or a purse. The barroom is neat and festooned with trinkets and memorabilia. This little place was no exception. I stayed and watched the fussball, a "friendly" between Japan and Germany with a highly satisfactory 2-all score. People tried to explain things to me in German and I nodded sagely. It obviously made the right impression because the schnaps came out and after one of those high-powered little shots ("Skoll!"), bade my gut nachts and beat a hasty retreat.
The next day we hit the Danish border and made our way into Haderslev (say "Hatherslew" like you're really drunk and you're coming close), a town we will be playing in in a few days time. Somehow we know we're in Denmark without even the maps and placenames to tell us, the feeling is so much more laid back. It's warm for the first time (it snowed in the South of Germany the day we arrived) and we take a stroll around a city market. Well, we thought it was a market but really the shops just fill up the streets with their wares and displays. Everywhere there is Danish design and style with a canny mixture of the old and the new and the people are smiling and quitely purposeful. Ah, Denmark. I remember you!
The Chaps are Hyram Ballard, John Dodd, Marcus Turner and Mike Moroney (the author of these pages), an acoustic string band featuring original songs and odd material from last century. Find out more about The Chaps here and listen to some of their music on their MySpace site here
