On Tour - Heidelberg and Frankfurt

Saturday 20th May - Heidelberg

...This part of the tour gets a bit hazy, not the least because there was actually a mistake in the organisation of the dates. Our first gig in Bonn was fine, but it was originally meant to be Frankfurt and then Heidelberg, but it was only because of Soph looking at the poster on an in-store gig in Bonn that she noticed that the venues were advertised as the other way around!
Some frantic calls I'm sure thus ensued, but a slight change of plan was all that was needed.
Our venue was the old train station, a large but cute house shaped building sitting right next to the railway as it tunneled into the hillside, a short walk from the old town. Looking like a well-worn tourist stop, old Heidelberg is classic oldey worldey Europe (Gothic architecture, jewelery and chocolate stores ad nauseam) sitting in the middle of a narrow valley at the edge of the modern city, overlooked by a giant 17th century castle still relatively well preserved, visible from every street.
The daily window between brunch and soundcheck opened up, and after umming and arring and mooching around I figured I may never be here again, so dashing up the back lanes of the village and up the steep slope, I found some random staircases that led past absolutely gorgeous old period homes, buried in trees.
Scaling the top of all that, it levelled out above the castle ruins, and the tourist entrance appeared. With limited time I spedwalked through, ogling as much as I could. Strangely, in one of those vague moments that seem to happen to me too often, where I know I should've done something plainly obvious but didn't for some inexplicable reason, I had left my camera behind.
Incredible! A hazelnut brown wall of four or five storeys of almost perfectly preserved windows, stone sills and frames, stood high and alone into the air above maybe what used to be the moat? A carpet of green led ones gaze to a tower at the corner. Strangely reminiscent of some sort of expensive nut-filled chocolate, a major chunk a couple of stories high had fallen off the tower, revealing a cross section within of how the wall was built. The entire vista, castle, valley, town, was glazed in a perfect sunset.
And that's about all I had time for.
After the gig we met up with this audience member who took us to the nightlife, a cavernous dive not far from the bus, where he then proceeded to crack on to everyone in the band! After he got the vibe and left, some drunken mayhem dancing ensued before the wander back, before the speed off into the black, the next autobahn, the next town....

Sun 21st May - Frankfurt.

Not too much to report here I'm afraid. Suburban gig, like Bonn. Miles from town. Rainy day. Scrabble. End of Story.
No, hang on, there was one funny thing...after the gig, there was a DJ and this open free dancing session, where single middle aged people presumably from the nearby neighbourhood leeched out of the woodwork to come and let themselves go, to 'freely interpret' the sounds, while of course standing the regulatory couple of metres away from each other. Trying to stifle our laughter, the band couldn't resist joining in - I think D the guitarist grabbed a tablecloth as a cape or something before being told off by a regular....fruity!....