We set out for Newark airport on Thanksgiving day, 2007, flying SAS to Copenhagen, the first stop on our tour of Northern Europe. We were four – Britta and myself, our drummer Anthony LaMarca, and keyboard player Ben Freeman. There would be no crew traveling with us, so in addition to being the singer I was tour manager and would do the bulk of the driving. Ben was the designated navigator. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I settled in to watch Wallender: Mastermind, a Swedish film based on a police thriller by Henning Mankell, one of my favorite crime writers. He’s not Raymond Chandler, but then again, who is?

It was dark when we arrived in Copenhagen, and we were happy to find a van to take us to our humble hotel, the Hotel Saga, located behind Copenhagen’s main train station. I am familiar with this area, I had wandered around these streets in 1991 after the one and only Galaxie 500 show in this city. But that’s another story, one told more fully in my book.

We slept all day, waking at 4pm to meet our guide for the next couple of days, Mads, and head over to the Studenterhuset for sound check. They laid out a nice spread for us, tangerines and assorted chocolates and Danish liquorice. And the guy who owned the club loaned us some nice amplifiers too, including his own HiWatt clone. “It’s got balls,” he assured me, and he wasn’t wrong.

We had a fine time on stage that night, played a handful of Luna and Galaxie 500 songs, by request, and then walked out into the rainy night to hail a taxi back to the hotel. This proved more difficult than we had expected. We walked about five cobble-stoned blocks to a taxi stand, causing the flimsy wheels to fall off Ben’s keyboard case. There was no real queue at the taxi stand, but rather groups of drunken young people hurled themselves at the first taxi they saw. We stood there getting annoyed, till Ben bought us each a fantastic hot dog wrapped in bacon and with all the toppings, from a late-night kiosk. And then I grabbed us a taxi, blocking two Danish kids who tried to cut in front of me. The driver didn’t like the look of our guitars though. He said he didn’t want musical equipment in the trunk because his taxi might get scratched. But we refused to budge, and by the time we reached the hotel we were all friends.

The next night found us playing a secret gig at a tiny little basement bar, and joined by a trio of Danish indie music luminaries, Rune, who sang “Moon Palace,” Klaus, who played most excellent guitar on “Chinatown,” and Nikolaj Norlund (of Trains and Boats and Planes), who sang “Ceremony.” Someone told Britta that Nikolaj was like the Danish Dean Wareham, but someone else said he was more like the Danish Leonard Cohen. What does that make me? Never mind. We drank a couple of mojitos, sold some T-shirts, and headed back out into the rain.

We met around noon the following day and took two taxis to the train station. Britta and I were taken to the back entrance, where desperate looking junkies milled about, waiting for the man, while Ben and Anthony were deposited at the front of the station. Somehow we made it onto the train, the four of us with our thirteen pieces of luggage. We were heading north to Aarhus. I can’t say that we had a big crowd on that Sunday night in Aarhus, but the Voxhall is a very nice club, and those who came along to see us seemed to enjoy our show. “Rainy night in Aarhus,” I said. “No,” shouted one audience member, “it’s snowing.” So it was. Of course we whipped out “Snowstorm.”

Monday morning Britta and I went shopping. I tried on some Nudie jeans, very tight, very expensive, but decided to save my money. Instead I bought a pack of cigarettes, the King brand, with a special striped package designed by Paul Smith. Those were expensive too — cigarettes cost even more here than they do in New York City.

Monday’s journey to Hamburg via train was a bit of a challenge, as we had to change trains twice with our suitcases and guitars and keyboards and cymbals, and the second change afforded us a scant four minutes to get from one train to the other. We rehearsed this move at the first stop, and so long as the train arrived on time, we figured to make it.

Apparently the Beatles used to live at Hamburg’s Hotel Pacific. This, then, is a historic site. They have two kinds of rooms at the Hotel Pacific – those with showers in the rooms, and those with no showers in the rooms. The WCs are all located in the hallway. And when they say “in the room”, it really means that they have installed a shower stall right in the middle of the room. I didn’t know that.

Today we took delivery of our van, provided by our German booking agency, Tapete. Instead of sending a tour manager along with us, they loaned us the TomTom XL GPS device. It’s very easy to use, our agent Basti assured me.

I happen to like Hamburg, it’s a pretty city, despite having been burned to the ground in 1943 by Allied bombings, a tale told beautifully by Hans Eric Nossack in The End: Hamburg 1943. The Hamburg gig was at a strange little club in the middle of a small park – the Grüner Jägr. We were dead tired but the show went on, and afterwards we ate delicious Currywurst at a Schnell-Imbiss (Fast-Food) on the corner. That’s a Bratwurst smothered in tomato sauce and spices.

It was cold as can be in Hamburg. For some reason we were moved today from the Hotel Pacific to some cheaper rooms up the street. We were split up – Britta and I at one address, Ben and Anthony further up the street. We made plans to meet at ten in the morning.

I picked up the van at 9:30, and Britta and I drove up to meet Ben and Anthony, who were still sound asleep. Fortunately we found the old Russian man who was owner and operator of these rooms. As we sat waiting for Ben and Anthony to come down, I programmed today’s destination into the TomTom. We were heading to Halle, outside of Leipzig, and though I found a town called Halle in the TomTom, I couldn’t find the street name for the club – Seebener Strasse. Oh well, I thought, maybe it doesn’t have all the street names, we’ll just head to the city center. We started driving. TomTom said we’d be there in less than three hours, which was a little strange, because I had been told it was a four or five hour drive. Two hours later we found ourselves winding along small country roads. “Are you sure we’re headed for the right Halle?” I asked Ben. Ben studied the map. “No,” he said, “we are not.”

Shit. We had been looking forward to checking into a nice hotel and taking a bath, but now we were behind schedule. I couldn’t really blame Ben, the navigator, because I was the one who had entered the wrong town into the TomTom. We pulled into a gas station to buy a snack. I bought a pack of Gummi Bears and walked outside, when I saw Ben, just now coming from the van. He was trying to tell me something very important, but he had his left pinky finger in his mouth. I soon discovered why. He had jammed said finger in the rear sliding door of the van, or rather, Anthony had slammed that door shut on that finger, taking Ben’s fingernail clear off. Emergency! We bought a little bottle of vodka to clean Ben’s finger, and broke open the first aid kit. Ben ate some Advil and our bad day continued. Of course, it was much worse for Ben than it was for me. I was late to an appointment, while he was in tremendous pain. Like a trooper, Ben managed to re-program the TomTom and get us heading toward Leipzig, toward Halle on the river Saale, where we were supposed to be.

Tonight’s promoter, Roger Barz, had met us a year ago at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. “I want to bring you to Halle,” he had told me. Sure, I said, call our agent. I never thought it would actually happen. But lo and behold, here we were in Halle, a former East German town, once home to chemical factories and worker uprisings. Friends in Hamburg told me that Halle was about the worst place in Germany, a dangerous city with high unemployment. They said I shouldn’t walk around at night. Don’t worry, I said, I’m sure it won’t compare to East New York. Roger got the word out, and 100 people showed up at Objekt 5, a cool little club that looked like something out of Young Frankenstein. We had a great night, and went back to a lovely three-star hotel, where we ran long baths, and Ben googled “lost fingernail” on his computer.

……….on the train……………Danish cigs……..candy on the van window…..hotel Hamburg

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