Thursday 17th February Tonight we play in the Kulturkeller in Fulda. This is a great room: a cellar under the town hall and the crowd are very enthusiastic. For our tea we have Feurkuchen which is a sort of Alsatian pizza – woof woof. Friday 18th February Today we leave Germany and venture to Dudelange in Luxumbourg and a festival featuring Sligo’s finest export, Dervish and Mercedes Peon from Galicia amongst others. We have not seen The Dervish mob for nearly six years so it is great to catch up and hopefully it will not be another six years before our paths meet again. On this occasion we also get to meet up with our agent Petr Pandula and his wife Mary so a truly festive night is on the cards. There are 3000 folk here everybody plays great and the soup of free beer and ridiculous multi-lingualism makes the night pass swimmingly.

Woof etc. No anchovies please.

Saturday 19th February

Another day, another Jurgen. We have played in Taunusstein many times and as always, we get a big crowd and a great reception before our slippery trip back to our digs – a local hotel for local people.

Sunday 20th February

Tonight we are interviewed by and play for Volker Rebell – a smashing moniker if ever I’ve heard one – on HR3-radio in Frankfurt. Volker plays lots of Scottish and Irish music and is a right cool fella to boot. We are doing the first hour this night followed by Stefan Stoppok (www.stoppok.de) in the second hour. Stefan is a Great German guitar player and singer who writes and sings songs in German.

Ziggy; Our host and break dancing coach

Monday 21st February Today is a travel day and as our next three gigs are in Switzerland, we decide to spend our night off in Basel, a beautiful city on the river Rhine where you can get a street car to either Germany of France. We organise to meet Alan and Rob in Paddy Reilly’s Irish bar at 9:00 p.m. and in the interim we seek our respective hotels. This can be an expensive city so after several attempts we find suitable accommodation and immediately head out for a pint. This is a great international city which differs completely from anywhere across the border. After a meander around town we arrive at the pre-ordained rendez-vous to meet Alan and Rob and as chance would have it we also meet some local pals – Amar, Daniel and Sam. A night of Guinness and Kebabs in the middle of a German tour; quite an odd concept indeed. We weave our way back to our hotel for a nightcap, a march,strathspey, and reel and a spot of polish step-dancing. Or was that Steppe-ish pole dancing? What a fine country.

Tuesday 22nd February

Our first Swiss concert is in Davos – a very posh ski station two kilometres up in the alps. This is my first time in the Alps and the drive from Basel is breathtaking: We are at one moment driving through hills and then after a tunnel several kilometres long we emerge into a completely different topography – Massive mountains seemingly from nowhere. All of this wonderment accompanied by Sam’s record of Swiss men singing Sea shantys; I could not have predicted this for all hash in Holland.

We are playing in a hotel run by Ziggy, a retired olympic speed skater. A generous and flamboyant character, Ziggy offers us superb hospitality – wine, beer, delicious cured meats and cheeses as well as an entire piano full of single malt whisky. As an added bonus, the restaurant is both Swiss and Chinese. The audience is hugely varied both in age and nationality and we get two encores, partially aided by Ziggy’s party-piece of dancing on his head. Nevertheless, He and all his staff were great. At the concert we meet Bryan Carbis and his lovely family who is in the business of making and breaking bones. One of Ziggy’s best mates, Bryan is a Scotsman living here since a long time who is himself a retired Olympic speed skater. His current business ARGO – employs 80 handicapped people from the surrounding area who make plastic replicas of human and animal bones which are then sent to doctors and vets around the world in order that they can practice repairing them before they are let loose on the real thing. This company also recycle ski boots and scrap copper.
The next day we feast on Swiss mountain specialties, Raclette, Fondue, and of course Chow Mein, before making our way down the mountains to Baar.

Thursday 24th February

Back to Basel for an absolutely storming gig in the Volkhaus. We have had many great shows in Basel over the years for Thomas Durr but this is the first time we have played in this venue. Before the show Pat and I take a walk down by the Rhine and come across a documentary being filmed in a Riverside café about Jean Cocteau(We think) and after a couple of beers and a small antipasti we head off to the hall. The crowd were great especially considering the local football club,F.C. Basel, were at the same time being eliminated from the UEFA cup by Lille. After the show we have a couple of pints with Christian, whom Pat knows from a long time ago as well as Sam, Amar et al.