Mood:
caffeinatedNow Playing: nothing...I'm at James and Rachel's house
Topic: Noz Update
I wrote this two months ago and never sent
it.
Typical.
PS - NOZ HAS A WEB LOG!!
I enter the world of the blogger on:
Personal
(Personal Noz Updates, stories, poetry, thoughts, misc garbage -
you can and probably will be offended by something on here):
Travel (Travel Noz Updates (like
this one), photos, resteraunt/hotel recommendations, etc)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Noz Update November 9, 2004 -
TUNES! - Tilburg, Amsterdam, Koln,Wiesbaden BLOG!
YO!
These updates-on-the-road rock. I'm on a
Deutche Bahn ICE (Inter-City Express ) train from Cologne to glorious (if you're
a loser) Wiesbaden, Germany! I shelled out the extra few bucks to spend
the 4.5 hour journey in the comfort of first class. I've got leg-room
and power for my laptop! Hence, I'm going to let rip a while with
the hyper-textual stylin's which I enjoy so.
Tilburg
I had a rockin' meeting in Tilburg (in the
south of the Netherlands) on Monday where I defined my first joint marketing
initiative! Yay me! I totally rocked those guys, and I didn't have
to do any begging! Other than that, work is a bit of a
mess. There's some issues with my passport/work permit which I'm not going
to go into beyond: It's a mess. I'll keep you posted.
Amsterdam (and
TUNES)
I just left Amsterdam. In retrospect, nothing
much interesting to report... I have been working on my music again with The
Infernal Machine (Tim Nutman) and I've got a new track (old-school
styley) I've been working on available on http://thebigscreen.tripod.com (completed
tunes are on http://cuddlemenozzy.tripod.com).
These tracks are works in progress, but feel free to send over
opinions. The overriding comment has been "lacks something", so please be
more specific! : D
Other news in my underground music career, my old
band Deathboy (www.deathboy.co.uk) has
revamped their website and now has NO pictures or records of me to be
found. I'm mentioned in the first album's credits, but the band's line-up
is the same as when I left (or, rather, was lovingly but firmly ejected).
I've not downloaded any of their recent stuff, but I recommend all the
goth/metal/industro heads take a look. I'm not bitter about being
spring-cleaned off the website, but it sort of marks the passing of a nice
period of the last couple of years. I'm finding a lot of satisfaction in
my personal music, but nothing - nothing - is quite like being on
stage, hair painted green, rocking out in your spandex underwear with an
electric guitar in your hands.
20:29 09/11/2004 - Koln (Cologne),
Germany
Koln (Cologne) made me want to write an update
because, although Germany is one of my favourite countries, and it's like
one hard ally-oop from Amsterdam, I've still not actually
visited much... I did a day-trip to Cologne a couple of months ago for a
meeting, but all I saw was the Cathedral from the highway and
McDonalds. The cathedral is pretty unbelievable, even from the highway and
it's worth pulling over. I also did Berlin for a weekend in the summer
after working the Berlin Air Show. That was brilliant (photos
on https://fullydigital.tripod.com/).
This time around, I'm just passing through on my
way to another conference, but I have to get out in the station in Cologne
to get my connection. As I'm doing so, I get
an 5-alarm fast-food hankering. ASAP, I find a greasy
little place to get 1/2 a roast chicken and fries. I'm standing in line
and the first thing I notice is that the staff, in their primary-coloured
stripey uniforms and ugly hats, have "Herr" and "Frau" over their
name-tags! They're exactly the same somewhat morose thirdworld staff
staffing every fast food chain the first world. They're whole demeanour
always says, "In my country I was a civil engineer, and now I'm serving these
freaking burgers to you. Land of Opportunity my
ass." What struck me is that in an English speaking country you
would never have "Mr" or "Ms" on the little plastic name-tags! Oh, how I
love ze Chermans! So elegant.
Next to me is the first native German I've taken
any notice of since walking off the train. Like me, he's standing in line
getting his economically priced chicken. His whole transaction took under
2 minutes, and yet he seemed to be fuming about the lack of efficiency for about
110 seconds of it. I thought he was going to las out at the lady over the
sneeze-guard! My first time back in Germany and the first German I see is
for some reason near-explosive with suppressed rage. HA! To a
cliche-tastic stereotypologising generalisationalist like myself, that is pure
gold!
And so I share the trip's first little giggle with
you. Even those who don't find it funny can share in my epic glee.
I'm going to be running around a lot with my laptop for the next couple of
weeks, so I'll probably record a periodic note as I go. Ah! The train dude
has just brought my beer! I'm sampling a "Radeberger Pilsner" at his
recommendation. ...Ok. It can be best described as
"...meh...". Very disappointing. Ze Chermans usually make such great
beer.
I've got a little six-seater enclosure all to
myself and I've spread across three seats and the entire table so I can set up
my CD player and type while scarfing down my roast chicken and listening to my
new CD. People who look like they normally travel first class are
periodically walking by looking at me as if I walked into a Michelin-star
restaurant wearing a thong bikini... and waving and electric
guitar.
Until my next stop...
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is NOT one of Europe's hotspots.
It's about 600k people and is about half-an-hour's train from Frankfurt.
Everyone who wants to party goes into Frankfurt... Wiesbaden has got some
pretty spectacular Roman baths (according to the brochure), but I only had a few
nights and didn't get chance to go. Tuesday I'd just got in off that
lovely but long train ride and it was too late to do anything.
Wednesday we had a dinner and it would've been rude to skip. On the
Thursday, I had to choose between going out dancing with the gang from work, or
going off on my own to be thoroughly steamed and scrubbed by Germans. I
chose dancing. Next time though, I'm going to make sure to book off an
extra day for the scrubbin'
The group we were with were some reps from one of
our nicest busines partners. They're also some of our most successful
partners business-wise, so we can ignore everyone else and go party with them
with a clean conscience. They recommend taking prospects to the
baths. Appearently getting naked with potential clients opens really
warms them up to signing big checks....
On the night I went clubbing, it was November 11th,
which is a significant German day (can't remember why) so the bar was playing
heaps of those nationally-loved athemic bar-sing-along songs. They were
all in German. Nevertheless, it was a good time. At one point I was
in a 20 person conga line that was circumnavigating the whole bar. The bar
was tiny, so at all points on the circuit, people had to squeeze out of our
way. In Canada, the the conga line is never allowed
behind the bar. Especially if the space is so small the
bartenders have to press up against the walls as patrons stomp through their
workspace over and over.
This was another of these little fun things about
Europe that are allowed to happen because countries don't have the sort of "My
personal space" philosophy of North America. e.g., in France, when your
wedding party is driving from point A to point B with the flowers on the cars
and stuff, everyone honks their horns like their team had just won at
hockey. You have a right to push your happiness in the face of
your fellow citizens, even if it kind of disrupts their lives, to a slightly
greater extent than is "done" in the new world. Like sitting in a
resteraunt gaily smoking your way through someone's starter even though
you're sitting under the no smoking sign. And then of course, there's Southern
Europe where it seems you can take a toilet plunger, cram your happiness up
everyone's nose, release a bull, fling a tomato, and then shower
the crowd off with Tequila - if you've got a good enough occasion to be
celebrating. The North of Europe is a touch more reserved...
Continued in my "Paris" Update....
Posted by Noz
at 12:01 AM GMT
