12/8/94
Sorted out the (loose) dates with Bruno first and also met Tomaz from Slovena there who we arranged to hook up with later when we got to Slovenia so he could show us around. We then headed to our friend Jorbst’s house in Gottingham, Germany who’d organised the gig with their bands (Peace Of Mind) practise place. Arrived to loads of excellent food, played football in the excellent summers evening. Very cool! Head off to the gig later which had a really good atmosphere. A great start to the tour!

13/8
A long drive over Germany to a squat gig at Pottsdam (near Berlin). This town has/had the most squats in Germany. Quite an amazing place. One of the squats had an old (anti-cop) machine gun / rocket launcher on the roof! Wow!! The cops here are shit scared of the squatters. To prevent the cops from being attacked by the squatters when they drive past the squat, the cops have to slowly reverse down the street so they can get away easily if attacked. It felt as though we were in a war-zone! We were supposed to meet with Force Macabra (members of Selfish) from Finland who we’re supposed to be touring with. They didn’t turn up (!) except for the drummer Otto who’d organised the Eastern dates with Lenka his girlfriend (he didn’t know his band had cancelled!). Later it turns out that they couldn’t make it as their bass player had to do his civil service in the army. Voorhees player the gig by themselves, and the crowd wouldn’t let them off! They ended up doing a set lasting two hours including such classic covers by the Undertones, Sex Pistols, and even a “happy birthday” to someone. On man! We decide to bring Otto and Lenka with us for part of the remaining dates since they knew where many of the venues were and knew the languages.

14/8
We stopped off via Berlin on our way to Lepzig. We tried to find some part of the Berlin Wall, but discovered that it had almost completely gone (chipped to bits by get-rich-quick locals selling parts of the wall to tourists). We played a semi-legal squat in Lepzig (Zorro’s), an autonomous centre reminding me very much of Bradford’s own 1 In 12 Club but with better equipment in many ways, such as having their own offset printing machine, photo developing equipment and so on. Great place, Great gig. Great atmosphere. 

15/8
Headed to Prague in Czech. At the Germany/Czech border we were told by the bordermen that we should have had papers for the band equipment, so we had to give the bordermen a Voorhees LP each for them to forget about it! (Their suggestion, not ours!!) The first town in Czech (Dubi) was absolutely full of prostitutes on the streets touring for German men during the day. Totally crazy. Apparently it’s giving the locals a real problem but the authorities can’t do much due to some ancient local law. On our way to Prague we stopped off at an old concentration camp used by the Nazis in the war. Seemed a really solemn stirring many emotions inside us all. We all would have liked to stay longer but had to get to Prague. When we did get to Prague we found the gig wasn’t on! Apparently there had been some confusion over the dates… But tomorrow we were to play at another venue in Prague so they agreed to let the band play tomorrow early in the following evening. We stayed at the big squat, the place of tomorrow’s second gig. Prague is supposedly the most beautiful city in the world. I could see why.

16/8
Most of the day we spend blending in with the tourists looking around the museums, shops, and so on. At the squat we met up with The Bad Genes from the USA (ex-Necacedia) who we’re playing with at the squat tonight. Nice people. We ask them if they also want to play the earlier gig as well, so we all played there, then back to the squat for the second gig. Really hectic moving everything around but lots of fun. The squat gig being especially lively!

17/8
A long drive over Czech to Bohumin near the Polish border. On our way we stopped off at the remains of the infamous Countess Batheree’s castle. The Countess, according to local legend, used to have local virgin girls slaughtered so that she could bathe in their blood to retain her beauty. The castle was pretty awesome. We then headed to the gig of Otto and Lenga’s. The venue was pretty small but pretty cool. Lots of hassle on the door though as several assholes wouldn’t pay in. The girls on the door ended up getting loads of abuse and being threatened. And for what? This really pissed me off, especially at one point when they tried to drag one of the people out of the door and to beat them up. Others at the gig didn’t even want to get involved, despite some large iron bars being produce. I had to stop Voorhees in the midst of their set and get the band to help sort out these assholes. It seemed like lot’s of people there couldn’t give a shit about what was going on which was really pathetic. And the language barrier proved to be a real drawback in me trying to figure out the situation. A little later, the band started playing, but the atmosphere had been killed! Later, we try to chill out by getting to a lake up the road for a midnight swim! Me and Graeme ended up totally stripping since we didn’t have any swimming gear. Total fun, which cheered me up no-end after the incidents earlier at the gig.

18/8
Another long drive to Bratislava in Slovakia. We ended up playing in a row of pretty much disused garages out in the open under a road! We had lots of hassles by the cops who tried to stop the gig. Tensions were pretty high between the crowd and cops. Even though there was loads of people at the gig, the band ended up being paid about 10 quid.

19/8
Headed to an outdoor gig in the middle of a pretty remote forest in Slovenia, via picking up our friend Tomaz in Ljubljana. We also hooked up with the Bad Genes again. The gig itself was good but yet again, loads of sexist assholes were there unfortunately. The gig had loads of people from all over, such as Poland and Italy. We were also told that the venue also sometimes got attacked by bears who roam around the forest. We try to remain calm about this! I had an interesting conversation with a guy from Croatia about the war there up ended up in tears after talking so frankly about some of the incidents that happened during the war there. We also found out that lots of the future gigs we were supposed to be playing had been cancelled because of Force Macabra cancelling. We’re all fairly pissed off about this.

20/8
For most of the day, we were at the beach at Koper (in Slovenia, between Croatia and Italy). We had fun there. The weather itself was really hot and the sea was great for swimming, being nice and war -–much better than England’s heavily polluted and radioactive seas (despite being told later but a local that they thought the beaches there were “disgusting”!). Later we headed to the gig at the squat in Ljunliana after leaving Otto and Lenka there with friends since we now had Tomaz and a guy called Dave from the US who was travelling around. The squat was absolutely huge, situated inside a disused army barracks! The gig itself was okay but really very violent. Tonnes of assholes were there, some with more iron bars! I really questioned myself as to why I was part of such goings on there, such dick-heads!

21/8
We were supposed to play in Spain, although the gigs didn’t seem certain, as were the remnants of the gigs booked, which seemed to be disintegrating as we went along. The rest of the band, as was I, were pissed off since so many dates had been cancelled. We thought there wasn’t much point in driving over 1000 miles to Spain, so we decided to hook up with the Bad Genes again in Augsbury in southern Germany and call it quits. Our tempers were flaring since there was so much financial pressure on us to re-coup the cost of the hire van. The longer we stayed in Europe without gigs, the more money we lots on the van, so we set our early for Augsbury after saying farewells to Tomaz and Dave. The venue in Augsbury seemed to be quite a commercial place. The gig went fairly well even though there wasn’t really many people there and our spirits were fairly down. 

22/8
Another massive drive heading to Ieper to sleep the night at the Vort’n Vis. We caught the remnants of people staying from the 3 day HC festival there and were all pretty pissed off that we missed the festival there. Got there late at tonight and ended up having to climb through a first floor window to get in!

We all had a good time on tour despite the problems and after being on the road for 4000 miles. It’s certainly a great experience to be had and in the end, we didn’t loose out on the cost of their van hire. I’d certainly to it again! A big thanks go out to Bruno, Otto, Lenka, Tomaz, the Bad Genes and to everyone’s floors we slept on. Thanks for your help!