Day 9, Rome, Italy

October 30th

- I woke up to an abrasive 7:45am.  I went out to wake up John and Chris, who were already awake.  I had left my cel phone by Bobby's bed as he was a slow riser and needed more persuasion to get up. 
- We loaded up the van and quickly headed out to meet the next driver.  Silvatorre was switching off the driving position with his friend as he had to head back home for the day.   We  had already met Camillo once back in Alessandria.
- We had a 6 hour drive ahead of us, so I tried to sleep most of it as possible.  Going into Rome, there was heavy traffic as it was some kind of holiday for that weekend.  As we near the core of the metropolis, the insanity of traffic and degree of urban development soon became apparent.  Graffiti everywhere.  Cars driving around weaving around within a hair of an inch from us at crazy speeds.
- We were nearing our destination, as we took an off ramp.  Camillo was relying solely on his GPS, which, spelled the pending doom that was soon to come.  We missed a turn so we had to drive around a round-about that spanned 2 city blocks. Camilo couldn't quite figure out how to get back in the right direction and ended up on a overpass.  Eventually he turned around and made it back to the same street and got us to the venue, but the experience definitely raised the blood pressure level with our patience.   We had no idea how insane it was to try to navigate through Rome, Camillo had never been there before and his navigation skills sucked. 
- The venue was a swanky discotheque.  We loaded our gear through the side entrance, through kitchen, through the smoking section, and across the disco floor.
Thankfully this place had a proper backstage.  The place was large as it had 3 long bars, a disco floor and lots of tables and crooks and nannies.  It was downstairs on the a cellar level, so with the archways and such, it had the cavernous feel.  We put our gear down and we had some time to at least go by our hotel and drop our bags off.  Back to the van again, but it was frustrating as Camillo couldn't find the right street and had a stupid tactic of trying to figure out where we were going by just aimlessly driving around.  His GPS wasn't working too great for him, as it couldn't tell if we were on an overpass or a normal street.  The GPS couldn't locate the address for the hotel, so we were up shits creek.  John was getting more and more aggravated as this was getting no results and Camillo couldn't just stop and ask for directions.  Eventually, we had no time to find the hotel.  We had to go back for sound check. The tension rose. 
- We did sound check.  Supper was provide for us, but there was distinctly this feeling that, as it was a swanky and probably expensive place to be, the sense of gratitude or attention towards the band was minimal if non-existent.  We joked around saying that we were probably lower than the dishwasher on the hierarchy of importance of the place. 
- We ate quickly and headed back to the hotel.  John was adamant that we leave the van parked close to the venue and take taxis to our hotel.  It took a while for Camillo to grasp that finding parking on a busy Saturday night would be next to impossible.
-  The hotel was just a number of apartments clustered together. When we arrived, we had to wait around in the street for the receptionist to show up.  Fuuuckkk.  We just wanted to rest.  We slept for a little bit before having to get up and do the show.
- Back at the venue, we had to go through the front entrance where a bouncer in a tuxedo was standing by the ostentatious entranceway.  He escorted us down the carpeted spiral staircase to make sure that the staff knew we were the musicians.
- Once inside, we retreated to the green room as it was really clear  that the social scene here wasn't our style - Them:  these stylish Italian clubbers on Saturday night party mode.  Us: Normal looking exhausted musicians playing a niche-style era music dressed in cardigans and fezzes.
- We went through our set and Bobby had to try really hard to get people into it.  Some people were bopping around a little, but it was a hard sell for these people.  With no encore, we quickly retreated back stage.  We didn't even try to sell any Cd's.   As we had a great experience yesterday but with our social time cut short, Bobby and John wanted to hang out  and experience the italian club scene a little.  We had a few more drinks and scoped out the flashing disco floor, checking out the italian party people.
- Soon after we wanted to head home, so we packed up our gear and got ready.  I stuffed about 12 bottles of SanPerigrino in our bags as the venue had a case of it for us to drink.   We had this moment where we gathered our wits as we knew it was going to be shitty being a convoy of musicians pushing through the oblivious crowd with our gear. Things got pretty hairy, where a few times I mashed an amplifier against the backs of dancers as they couldn't hear us yelling out "Skuuzee!! Skuuzee!!"  We had no reservations getting out of there and almost aggressively plowing through the crowd.
- Once in the van, we gladly got back to our hotel.  We saw a fry station at the end of our street so we decided to go down and grab a greasy bite.   I made the mistake of ordering the "piscado speciale" (seafood special).  And what the fuuuuck ???  I had to wait for fucking 45 min. for some fried fish!  I had already ordered and was waiting around for my food.  Chris and Averil already finished eating their fries.  A group of other people showed up, ordered and finished eating their food as well.   I was getting hopelessly impatient.  Finally the order came through but I was non-plussed about it.
- Back at the hotel, people were hanging out.  We had to wake up Bobby so he can enjoy the fried fish.  They were small fish, so you had just eat them whole.  We finished up and went to sleep at around 3am.  Oh, and I left the pissy gear bag in the hallway. 

...yep, we're in Rome

Inside the venue

The greasy shack, waiting for food

Hey Zen, we're almost done eating, so we're heading back...

Was this worth 45 min?

Bobby eats his fish.  Camillo stares off into space.  John brushes teeth

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!