On Tour with Sihir and Brak in Europe

At the end of June, I flew to Europe to spend time with my partner, Ana, and to go on tour with her band, Sihir, and another band from Berlin called Brak. From Berlin we travelled through two cities and one village in the Czech Republic, Budapest, two cities in Croatia, two cities in Austria, three cities in Switzerland, and Lyon. Below are mostly photos and some brief reminiscences of a journey across Eastern Europe.

Prague photos on phone.

Sihir and I travelled via bus from Berlin to Prague where we met BRAK who had started the tour with the van a couple days earlier. As the bus lurched forwards, a pair of drowsy Americans took up all the legroom afforded to them and us at the poker table we shared and I wondered, as we passed through Dresden, if the Germans that feel so strongly that Gaza is getting what it deserves now feel in retrospect the same way about the carpet bombing that happened in Dresden. They played with a nice young couple with a band called Grunt that we ran into again a few days later at a fest out in the Czech countryside.

After the show in Prague, we stopped off in Kutna Hora to see the Sedlec Ossuary, which I hadn’t seen since I travelled there with an ex back in 2010.

Part of the deal with me coming on tour was that I was going to be a primary driver of the van. However, in Europe, the cars are primarily manuals. Now I’ve driven a manual car from Austin to Oakland under the instruction of Erynn Patrick Lamont , but that was in 2016. My friend Kerry Maguire gave me another quick lesson in manual driving the week before I left in her green Kia Soul. After the ossuary, I felt confident in my ability to drive the van and offered to take a shift, only to be humiliated by a constant stuttering and choking of the engine as I fumbled with the clutch. Ana then drove us through the countryside into Olomouc to play a show with Worm Man to a very young and sweet crowd.

Ana and I woke up around 6 to practice driving. We drove to Budapest and swam in some of the city’s many thermal baths. Carolina was the only person brave enough to climb upon the rooftops of the industrial zone where they played.

Ana and I woke up early again and practiced driving some more, making herself the third highly self-sufficient woman to teach me to drive manual. I drove into the city to get some groceries for everyone to make breakfast and then drove us all to Zagreb. On the way, we stopped in Lake Balaton for a swim.

In Zagreb, I walked around feeling proud I figured out how to drive this heavy van full of musical gear and eight people and wandered through abandoned and destroyed buildings attached to the venue.

Then we drove to Pula through winding tunnels blasted through the Dinaric Alps of Croatia. Arriving at the coast, we rushed into the salty and clear water where we swam and floated around for a while, taking breaks to eat stone fruit and hummus sandwiches.

We loaded into the squat they were playing, greeted by a beautiful memorial in solidarity with Rojava and took a walk to the Colosseum nearby. The Colosseum, built by Augustus right around the time of Jesus’ supposed birth and enlarged around 79 AD by Vespasian so the city could enjoy watching men on the lowest rung of the social ladder fight to the death, was preparing to host a film festival and I thought about what movies I would choose to watch inside.

While Sihir and Brak soundchecked, I was shown our sleeping quarters and the bathroom nearby. The sight of the toilet told my body how much I needed to take a shit, but there was no toilet paper in the bathroom. The building was massive — about the shape and size of a massive dormitory building for a large university in a major metropolitan city of the US. I considered the skeleton of a building, the gravity that plumbing and pipes rely on and decided where there is one bathroom, there must be more directly above it. I walked up to the second floor to check and found a locked bathroom. I tried the third floor and the fourth. I could go back down and ask someone, but I figured “what’s one more floor? Surely one of the bathrooms must be unlocked.” I tried the fifth floor, the sixth, the seventh, eighth. I wandered to the other end of the hall and found more bathrooms, also locked. I wandered around the atrium checking each of the four bathrooms per floor. It was becoming an emergency as I rushed up higher and higher to the tenth floor, finding nothing but locked bathrooms, relying on the forgetfulness of humans to lock something as unimportant as a bathroom door. I found the top floor, where I came face to face with steel bars blocking my way into the next hallway. The bars laughed at me for imprisoning myself up here between this blockaded egress where, behind the bars, was probably a golden toilet with a bidet and endless strong yet soft toilet paper and behind me were endless flights of stairs back down to my origin. I was beginning to genuinely consider the risk of squatting and taking a shit in the stairwell. I was sure this would be a no-wiper.

As I turned around to contemplate my descent I saw, tucked away into the corner, a pile of desiccated human shit, perhaps more ancient remains from the Roman occupation? The humiliating mark of someone with a weaker soul, or maybe just sphincter muscles than mine, provoked my sense of pride and I wandered down the endless stairs I had somehow climbed to do the simplest thing — ask someone for toilet paper. As I descended with more calm than I ascended, I saw a beautiful sunset out the window with the ghostly impression of a crane that told me that no matter which ancient and beautiful European town I was in, no matter how small, the specter of development would always be there to threaten whatever romantic aspects still exist in the continent, like collective squatting or the right to public space and to housing.

I was given toilet paper and went to the bathroom. I was wrong about not needing to wipe. The gig here was full of literal teenagers, from 13 to 18 probably and was one of the cutest shows I’ve seen and it reminded me of my own joys of finding a community, a space, and a subculture that provided me with the sense of belonging that continues to shape who I am even today.

We headed to Vienna and stopped at a small waterfall not unlike Hamilton Pool to the Austin-informed readers. It was a nice opportunity to throw a couple flips into the water. Carolina wanted to throw a flip as well and asked for advice and I encouraged caution and I still feel like I squashed someone’s dreams. She still did a dive off the cliff, something I lack the bravery to do.

The show in Vienna was in an abandoned university building, another reminder of the way that Europeans are able to use space that bears absolutely no resemblance to the American capacity to pay a small rent or squat a building without making profit just to engage in a culture that feels meaningful to them. However, the specter of neoliberalism looms large. I took another walk during soundcheck and found the Spittelau Incinerator where much of Vienna gets its heating and cooling from the incineration of its waste.

Sihir played a fun set but the landlord came afterwards and shut down the show as Brak began their first song. However, I got to see legendary Texas punk photographer and new friend Pat Blashill for the second time in the span of a year.

We drove 5 hours through the Czech countryside again, along gentle hills of green and yellow grasses, to arrive at Punx Treffen, a punk fest at some maniac’s rural property.

The next morning I woke up and chatted with those who were either similarly early to rise or, more likely, still awake with the assistance of some speed. I ate some delicious goulash and jumped on the trampoline.

At a gas station along the eight hour drive to Basel the next morning, a father watched a handful of us slip under the turnstile into the bathroom, refusing to pay the single euro demanded of us. When I was leaving, he was arguing with his wife and daughter in Hindi and, choosing to ignore them, slipped himself under the turnstile thus saving himself a euro. I gave him a thumbs up.

We woke up in Basel the next morning and I took a walk with Ana to the lake that runs through the middle of the city.