jan lives in northern holland, in a very very very VERY small town called Eesveen. population: 500. i don't think i've ever been in an american town so small, let alone a european town that small! :) it's very cosy, though -and jan's house was much nicer than the hotel i was staying in in scheveningen- and jan let's me relax and recover from the last 2 fast-paced days.

jan and i spend an afternoon in the nearby town of Steenwijk; we take a nice walk through the park and along the big ramparts and moats left over from ancient battles.

after picking frank up at the train station, the 3 of us hop in jan's car (an opel, which happens to run on *either* gasoline and petrol!!) and drive to groningen for our second David Byrne concert. groningen is about an hour northeast of jan's house, and is supposedly a nice college town (much like utrecht). unfortunately, we arrive too late to get much sightseeing in...

frank has a surprise for me today: he & i have a spur-of-the-moment opportunity to travel to Brussels tomorrow to see *yet another* David Byrne gig! so i take the opportunity at tonight's show to *not* take photos and just enjoy the music. we stood front & center, and made friends with the road manager; he offered to let us see soundcheck in brussels if we made it down there. and, in fact, frank & i decide to go (surprise, surprise, eh?), so we travel home from groningen after the concert, and prepare for a looong train ride to brussels the next day.

we wake up very very early, and frank & i board an international train to brussels. we have a 1/2 hour 'layover' in rotterdam, so we take a quick walk around outside the train station. and during this very quick visit to the town, i concluded that rotterdam is pretty much like any big american city: dirty, loud, lots of shopping, and several mcdonald's.

when we arrive in brussels (4 hours after we left Jan in Steenwijk), we quickly realize that we're a little unprepared to be here. we need to change our Dutch guilders to Belgian francs. and we need to quickly brush up on any French we might know; this is a french-speaking part of brussels, and asking directions to get ourselves to the club was quite a chore. (thankfully both frank & i are fluent in pantomime.) ;-)

we finally arrived, though (after perusing several record stores for obscure Talking Heads records) and managed to walk into soundcheck like we belonged there. :) we had the opportunity to have a nice chat with David too, and he ended up giving us backstage passes for after the show!

frank and i celebrated our luck by dining in a nice little italian restaurant, and found ourselves being serenaded by over-enthusiastic italian waiters. get this: frank speaks dutch (and some english), i speak english (and a touch of french), and this waiter was speaking -very animatedly- to us in italian. somehow, through active gesturing, i was able to determine that the waiter(s?) were opera stars of old, and proved this fact to us again and again, with loud and bubbly renditions of arias. i haven't had so much fun in a long time; i left that restaurant with a huge smile on my face.

our 3rd David Byrne concert was the best (even aside from the drunken frenchman who kept kissing the back of frank's neck!!), and afterwards, backstage, we were thrilled to have a nice conversation with David himself. frank & i are both rabid fans, so this was a great moment for us.

after the show, we were to travel with frank's friend, Rudi, back to his house about a 1/2 hour away. however, when we left the club we found his car missing! we didn't know whether it had been stolen or towed, but we finally flagged down some police officers. i got the distinct pleasure of riding in the back of a belgian cop car, as we finally found out that the car had simply been towed.

an exciting and unpredictable ending to an exciting and unpredictable day (i never thought that when i left on this trip to the netherlands that i'd end up in belgium!!). exhausted, we were glad to finally get to Tielte-Winge, Rudi's home town.

back

next