Rockapella has launched its summer German tour, where we hope to bring our thing successfully to the Deutsch masses...
Thursday evening, Fred The Sound Engineer and I journeyed from NYC to Frankfurt while the other guys were en route from Florida.. I secured a sweet 3-seater row to myself in the back of the plane and, after a couple hours awake reading from my stash of magazines and periodically seeing the back of Fred's head nine rows in front of me, I stretched out and slept for hours. That's the proper way to do an 8 hour flight...
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Meeting us at the Frankfurt airport was the rest of Rockapella and one of our German agents, Andrea, who also serves as a de facto tour manager during the entire trip. Kevin and Scott have brought a few family members along for this voyage, so it's quite a large bunch moving around.
We set off on the two and a half hour bullet train to lovely Basel, Switzerland, which is just over the border from our first show in Rheinfelden, Germany. Take any American train and picture it narrower, ridiculously fast, and totally quiet. Just like the legendary Japanese trains Rockapella's been riding for years. I have my new Rough Guide German phrasebook, which I use to throw non sequiturian statements at Andrea in an attempt to make her choke on her schnitzel while I practice pronunciations. "Wo tut es weh?" (where does it hurt?) "Ich bin überfallen worden!!" (I've been mugged!!)
Basel is, needless to say, the German part of Switzerland. Lost of pretty buildings and churches, and they make good meat-and-potatoes food, in addition to all the cheese the Swiss are known for. From what I can tell, the American "hash browns" look like they started here, with the addition of mild cheese.
We had a half-day to sightsee, so we all split up in smaller groups and wandered the area. Basel sits around the Rhine river (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine) which totally enhances the city's Euro- ness. Many people hang out in the evening right next to the river on concrete steps. My new slogan for Basel tourism ads: "Basel: can't take a bad photo here!". Which replaces my previous and less snappy "Basel: more than just cheese...".
Saturday, and time for the first concert of the tour! After much needed sleep, we hop back over the border to Germany (20 minutes) for a festival show under a big tent, opening for the USA acappella group, Naturally Seven, who are the big dogs of a cappella over here. It's a form of karmic justice because they opened for us in the USA a few years back!
More later...
-Jeff
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