Vladia in Praha, Czech Republic

I woke up three hours after my sleep, to make it to the Nuremberg station on time, but miss my train because I had to go pee and didn't foresee my bad time management. I caught the next train that unfortunately demanded 4 changeovers before I get to Prague, but figured "how hard can it be?" to hop from one train to another, with only 3 minutes of changeover time between each...
Germany had definitely softened me. The high speed ICE trains, soundless and fast as bullets, they'd always have a display of the next station, along with a beautiful female voice announcing one minute in advance what station would be coming up. When I got to the town of Ceska, I realized I was no longer in Germany.

Reminants of the communist era still linger in the countryside. The train stations in the small villages, some of the rural people that ride the trains, never mind the trains themselves! Dinosaurs made out of strong metal with nicotene stained windows that rattle back and forth on the tracks between small villages, the old trains hope one day to see the urban sprawl of magestic Praha but will never get a chance due to their decrepidness...

Once on the train cart, I was approached by three men dressed in some uniform...a cross between an army uniform and a police uniform. One of them shouted some words at me. Guessing he wanted my boarding pass, I pulled it out. He became angrier and shouted words...eventually I figured he was shouting the same word but in several languages. After the slavic languages and whatever else inaudible muttering, he got to what sounded like german...then italian or spanish and that's when I understood: Passportza!

I pulled out my passport and all three seemed surprised to see it was Canadian. They inspected it for a good 5 minutes, asking questions and debating amoungst themselves before the leader said it was legit, and after that they were the nicest men to me in the world. Thank god I wasn't whatever they thought I was...

As for my stay in Praha, it was wonderful!

Germany

I arrived from my German tour yesterday. It went very well, and the weather along with it. Let's just say that Europe may be feeling much more the effects of Global warming than we are here at this moment, in Canada.

I started off in Koeln. The show was on March 8th, International Women's Day. It was a quartet, with Albrecht Maurer and I on violin, Christian Eckert on contrebass and Achim Kramer on drums. We played free jazz. And what exactly that was...can be somewhat summed up eloquently by Albrecht Maurer. He described our goal that evening as this: if acknowledging that the genres (or styles of music ie. jazz, classical, world etc) played are like islands in an ocean, then the water in between those islands is a pool of sound that can shift, morph, be under the influence of an island or not...etc. And we were to touch upon these islands, and most importantly...explore the waters in between them.

Needless to say that the evening went very well. There's a review in german at www.suelz-koeln.de

From free jazz, I went to funk. From an art gallery, I went to the closing weekend of a bar 45 mins away from Koeln. The team was a group of young men and I. Michael Flossdorf in keyboards, Jan Wendeler on bass, Andreas Hammer on sax, Steffen Hoff on drums, Lars on guitar & me on violin. Man did these guys know how to groove. We played some Herbie Hancock, Prince and more at the Stellwerk Hoffnungsthal.

I spent a few days off in Koeln with Michael before I hopped into a car with a Turkish German guy by the name of Kiwi (no joke) and zipped off to Fuerth (right next to Nuremberg) to play the Klezmer Festival with Geoff Berner. Kiwi and I had a blast. Turns out his girlfriend lives in Nuremberg, so I got them on the guest list and we played a great show on Friday night. Fuerth is celebrating it's 1000th year anniversary (1007-2007) so they went ahead and celebrated with an extra bang by holding the Fuerth International Klezmer Festival this year (although it is usually a biennial event). The line-up during this weeklong festival is exemplary, from the Klezmatics to Dobranotch, to the Budapest Klezmer Band...they had everything klezmer from all corners of the world! We played at the Kulturforum, had three encores, they brought us whiskey on stage, and it was great to play with Geoff and Wayne again. We stayed up late drinking, and I was sad to part with them at 4 am saturday morning so that I could get three hours of rest before my trip to Praha to visit Vladia...