Saturday, November 6, 2010

Day 10, Milan, Italy

October 31st

- We woke up around 8am.  By this point I was surely on my way to being sick.  I was coughing a lot and head a head cold and feeling weak.  I was toning down the drinking the past few days, but with the inconsistent sleep and eating, the tour was taking its toll.  We packed our gear (fuckin' piss bag!!) and thankfully had an easier time getting out of Rome.  Traffic going North was significantly less so the drive was pretty smooth. 
- We stopped along the way for lunch.  It was pretty nice there as they had a pasta station, salad bar, desert bar, antipasti, a selection of breads and wine, all at a freakin' truck stop. 
- We gladly munched on salad and felt some health regained.  The wine was so-so.  Shit, we were turning into quasi snobs as we had experienced the depth of Italian cuisine and wanted only the best.  Or at least, could discern what was crap and what was good.
- By this point, Chris was totally constipated from eating only bread and cheese. It  was this really funny thing because each time we would do a stop, most of us would go to the can; after a while Chris would come back and report in on his status.  Despite the extensive availability of food and amazing designer interior design for the bathrooms, there was apparently a lack of toilet seats in the bathrooms, as reported by Chris.  John, on the other hand, was crapping like a king.  Like the other night in Viacenza, he had trouble sleeping and was up all night just puttering about and managed to take a crap 7 times.  I felt sorry for the Averil though, as I'm sure there was waaaaay too much information going about how and when people were shitting. 
- It was dark once we hit Milan.  I had thoroughly examined the GPS and made sure we had the coordinates set in it correctly.  Though when we arrived at the address, there was no indication that there was a venue anywhere.  In fact, it looked more like a hospital or government building.  So then Camillo took a turn and again went through the same frustrating attempts to find the right street.  Almost instantly John and Chris got all agitated and started pressing on Camillo really hard to NOT make fruitless attempts to drive around.  At once point we were at an intersection where the left lead onto a freeway and the right lead onto a regular street.  As Camillo was veering off to the left for some reason, Chris yelled out: "Don't even fuckin' go there! That direction is fucking EVIL!  Don't even fuckin look that way! "   So Camillo went right instead and eventually it was clear he had no fuckin' clue so John forced him to stop and call Silvatorre for specific directions.  Chris got out and stormed off, totally pissed and incredulous that things were getting screwed up so easily.  John saw a bar down the street, so it was decided that we were going to the bar to have a drink and we were not going anywhere until Silvatorre or someone from the venue would come and pick us up.  We had enough of Camillo and didn't trust him anymore. 
- We calmed down a bit while having a shot of grappa and a beer.  The bruschetta there was delicious.  After a few minutes, Silvatorre showed up and we were at once relieved.  We followed his car to the venue, and sure enough, we were at the correct address.  The hospital thing was  a hospital.  In fact, part of it was also an insane asylum.  We just didn't know that the venue was inside the compound, past the gates.  It was hard to tell in the rain and dark.
- We came by the side of the venue and it seemed more like a school than a venue.  Kind of like a community centre or something.  Except it had a full bar on the ground floor.  We loaded in and then did our soundcheck.   They served us supper downstairs.  Their antipasti was great, with coldcuts, pickled vegetables, olives and varying types of cheeses, but the primo was not very good.  They had ordered delivery pizza, and it was horrible.  Even the other Italians that were eating with us were joking that this must be the worst pizza in all of Milan.  But we ate it anyways.
-  Our lodgings were at another building close by.  It was a hostel and a few people already staying there.  Again, very large and institutional feeling.  We joked around as it was like the movie Shutter Island, where the whole point of being on the tour was to get us to believe that we had a gig here and that we were just "staying" in the "hostel" for the night. 
- It was a cold and rainy night, perfect for Halloween.  I saw a few people kind of dressed up like zombies or something.  One person just had white make up on but didn't have much of a costume so I wasn't sure what he/ she was going for.  There were some extra fezzes going around so people had fezzes on in spirit of the Feztones. 
- The opening band was a full on garage rock band, with the beatles shoes, matching striped shoes and all that.  Our show was pretty good, the response much better than our show in Rome, though it was no comparison to the show in Valcenza.  No matter, we rocked out and gave a really good encore. 
- Bobby, Averil and I hung out a bit afterwards as it as our last night of the tour.  I ended up taking a photo with some old dude, who, I guess was someone important or at least seemed like some dude that ran shit there.  He was rapidly talking in Italian and I didn't know what was going on until I saw that he had a camera and there was a paper skeleton thing with a fez on it and he wanted me to take a photo with him with the skeleton in the background.
- We hit the sack around 2:30-ish. 
Now that's what I call truck stop food!

Supper at the old insane asylum

The garage band before us

Wait, Bobby are you also in the other band?


Farewell to Silvatorre and Luka

Fuckin' A! Ramen noodles at Amsterdam Airport!

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