That's right, it's a lyric. I'm using lyrics for my blog titles now. I used to do that on an old blog when I was like 16. It's still cool. And the song is on right now in the van, in fairness. Dara's beside me wearing my Lidl hat (which at this stage, is just the Lidl hat. Slutty hat.); we have 6 hours on the road tonight to Beauvais (North of Paris, a Ryanair city) to collect Anna tomorrow. So we're splitting the drive and blaring the Black Keys on the soundsystem. Rock and roll.
Okay, so where was I...ah yes, Lyon.
We arrived on Tuesday afternoon. I woke up shortly after and was quite confused, as I was in a different city but there didn't seem to be anyone in the van. I resolved to take a walk when Finbar appeared from behind his curtain - turned out they were just asleep also. We sleep a lot. Don't you dare judge us. They had managed to find a nice parking spot next to the park; that is to say next to running water and toilets. The longer we do this the more our goals change - at first we used to look for campsites, now they don't even come up on our radar. Even if we can stay for free by performing we'd much rather spend that time busking, and campsites are generally much further away from the city than...well....parking in the city...
I went out to check out the scenery and quickly discovered that the park doubled as a free zoo. It was a strange discovery to make - half asleep walking through a park only to realise you're standing next to a giraffe. Hello giraffe. I went back and told the guys of my findings and we spent the evening zooing it up. My voice was still missing in the realms of the stupid drunk David so I figured I'd spend the next day doing all the touristy stuff.
But nope. Seems Lyon is dead at the moment. Everyone's away on holiday. This appears quite normal to the French people, but to me it just seems ridiculous. How can a city go on holiday? I mean it's not a small city or anything. It's one of the biggest cities in France - the biggest we've been in so far. But I mean, everywhere was closed. Every art exhibition, every cool cafe. Everything.
So I'm going to skip to Friday. That's not to say we didn't do anything on Wednesday or Thursday. There was the Twilight movie night in the van. Only one left to see now. Don't tell me the end. Dumbledore lives. Finbar and I did some busking and it went okay - not as well as other cities, but easily better than I need....relativities a funny one - once you're on 30 an hour it's hard to go back to 15-20, even though that's easily enough to get by when you have absolutely no expenses. But yeah. Friday. Oh, Lyon has loads of really pretty and strange things though, here are some photos. And of us on a rowing boat.
Dara and I decided it was time we went back to our roots of a few months ago, and brought all our gear into town for an amped-up-with-drum busk. We set up on the main street and were just about to start when the police came along and moved us. It was pretty annoying, as we were definitely going to do well -I'd seen other less-good amped acts making a killing the day before. They said we could play in the nearby square, so even though the square was completely empty, we said we'd treat it as a practice session anyway. It was fun, we did fairly well and got 2 beers brought to us from a bar. Again with the relativity - it can be hard to remember it's meant to just be fun, especially when you're trying to take music quite seriously, as I've decided to lately...
We brought the gear back to the van and thought we'd have another movie night. I went for a walk and saw that there were tonnes of people drinking by the river. I rallied the troops and within the hour we were leaving the van again with bottles of rum in hand. I brought my guitar - we figured by singing a few songs we might be able to make some friends. Yes it's calculated. Yes we've done it before. Yes Paris girls, that's what we did in La Rochelle too. Stop with all the judging. Whatever.
After picking a spot I started doing a few pop songs and it didn't take long before we had a little group. We're a good team - I play the songs while Finbar and Dara look for openings/Dara asks people for a lighter. It's a funny skill to learn, but definitely a very useful one when travelling. What happened next was a little strange - some people we weren't even talking to near us got up to leave, and for some reason we started talking to them. It's hard to describe, but within like 30 seconds we all knew we'd end up friends. One of the girls said we'd be welcome to stay at their Geneva apartment so long as I play them music. They were all Swiss, and all really cool. I dunno if we've ever moulded so quickly and so well with another group before. I mean within 5 minutes we were having such a good night. We went to a nightclub, which was our first since leaving Galway. We didn't really know we'd missed them - given that we never even go to them in Ireland anyway. But it was amazing. 8 euro in but you got a 7.50 cocktail in there and it got pretty drunk pretty fast. Drunk and sweaty. We thought it was last orders at one point so we got two beers and a shot each.
Turns out it wasn't last orders at all, so I bought a round of 9 cocktails after. Goodbye money. Easy come, easy go, right? Definitely worth it. After much sweaty dancing and nearly getting kicked out a good five times for just about everything and anything, we went back to the Swiss' apartment, which was pretty cool, a really big loft they had rented for a few days. Dara has some photos, so I'm sure you'll see them. Me though, I was absolutely hammered. After about an hour I got the patented Drunken-David-Homing-Pigeon instinct, and left. Stupid David. I got home eventually, but it took me ages, while the lads slept on comfy beds and got lovely showers the next day. Someday I'll figure out how to overcome that. Someday. We're definitely going to try and meet that group again, either in their Winter cabin in the alps, or they might visit us in Berlin. I hope so, anyway - I can see some amazing fun to be had. Oh, did I mention we're actually moving to Berlin now? If we can get an apartment. Gonna stay there from the end of September 'til we fly home at Christmas. It'll get too cold to live in the camper in October, so it's either that or move seriously South, which we'd rather save for next year. And we love Berlin. So we're pretty excited about that.
The next morning/actually-late-afternoon, while I was battling with the hangover monsters in my bed, Finbar drove us out to Vichy to visit his uncle. It's a nice place. Quiet, and everyone's clearly quite rich. We had a few practical things to do, so we didn't get to busk or even see much of it. We spent last night drinking quiet beers in the local bar with Finbar's uncle, then today we did our chores - clothes, dishes and grocery shopping. Good to get a little break though - I can see the next 10 days being quite busy; looks like there'll be about 7 of us Irish hanging around. Can't wait to see Anto especially. Plus I have to do my duet. I haven't heard back from her about the lyrics actually. Keep up, Cristina. Anyway, that's all for now I think. Bonjourno ;)
Okay, so where was I...ah yes, Lyon.
We arrived on Tuesday afternoon. I woke up shortly after and was quite confused, as I was in a different city but there didn't seem to be anyone in the van. I resolved to take a walk when Finbar appeared from behind his curtain - turned out they were just asleep also. We sleep a lot. Don't you dare judge us. They had managed to find a nice parking spot next to the park; that is to say next to running water and toilets. The longer we do this the more our goals change - at first we used to look for campsites, now they don't even come up on our radar. Even if we can stay for free by performing we'd much rather spend that time busking, and campsites are generally much further away from the city than...well....parking in the city...
I went out to check out the scenery and quickly discovered that the park doubled as a free zoo. It was a strange discovery to make - half asleep walking through a park only to realise you're standing next to a giraffe. Hello giraffe. I went back and told the guys of my findings and we spent the evening zooing it up. My voice was still missing in the realms of the stupid drunk David so I figured I'd spend the next day doing all the touristy stuff.
But nope. Seems Lyon is dead at the moment. Everyone's away on holiday. This appears quite normal to the French people, but to me it just seems ridiculous. How can a city go on holiday? I mean it's not a small city or anything. It's one of the biggest cities in France - the biggest we've been in so far. But I mean, everywhere was closed. Every art exhibition, every cool cafe. Everything.
So I'm going to skip to Friday. That's not to say we didn't do anything on Wednesday or Thursday. There was the Twilight movie night in the van. Only one left to see now. Don't tell me the end. Dumbledore lives. Finbar and I did some busking and it went okay - not as well as other cities, but easily better than I need....relativities a funny one - once you're on 30 an hour it's hard to go back to 15-20, even though that's easily enough to get by when you have absolutely no expenses. But yeah. Friday. Oh, Lyon has loads of really pretty and strange things though, here are some photos. And of us on a rowing boat.
Dara and I decided it was time we went back to our roots of a few months ago, and brought all our gear into town for an amped-up-with-drum busk. We set up on the main street and were just about to start when the police came along and moved us. It was pretty annoying, as we were definitely going to do well -I'd seen other less-good amped acts making a killing the day before. They said we could play in the nearby square, so even though the square was completely empty, we said we'd treat it as a practice session anyway. It was fun, we did fairly well and got 2 beers brought to us from a bar. Again with the relativity - it can be hard to remember it's meant to just be fun, especially when you're trying to take music quite seriously, as I've decided to lately...
We brought the gear back to the van and thought we'd have another movie night. I went for a walk and saw that there were tonnes of people drinking by the river. I rallied the troops and within the hour we were leaving the van again with bottles of rum in hand. I brought my guitar - we figured by singing a few songs we might be able to make some friends. Yes it's calculated. Yes we've done it before. Yes Paris girls, that's what we did in La Rochelle too. Stop with all the judging. Whatever.
After picking a spot I started doing a few pop songs and it didn't take long before we had a little group. We're a good team - I play the songs while Finbar and Dara look for openings/Dara asks people for a lighter. It's a funny skill to learn, but definitely a very useful one when travelling. What happened next was a little strange - some people we weren't even talking to near us got up to leave, and for some reason we started talking to them. It's hard to describe, but within like 30 seconds we all knew we'd end up friends. One of the girls said we'd be welcome to stay at their Geneva apartment so long as I play them music. They were all Swiss, and all really cool. I dunno if we've ever moulded so quickly and so well with another group before. I mean within 5 minutes we were having such a good night. We went to a nightclub, which was our first since leaving Galway. We didn't really know we'd missed them - given that we never even go to them in Ireland anyway. But it was amazing. 8 euro in but you got a 7.50 cocktail in there and it got pretty drunk pretty fast. Drunk and sweaty. We thought it was last orders at one point so we got two beers and a shot each.
Turns out it wasn't last orders at all, so I bought a round of 9 cocktails after. Goodbye money. Easy come, easy go, right? Definitely worth it. After much sweaty dancing and nearly getting kicked out a good five times for just about everything and anything, we went back to the Swiss' apartment, which was pretty cool, a really big loft they had rented for a few days. Dara has some photos, so I'm sure you'll see them. Me though, I was absolutely hammered. After about an hour I got the patented Drunken-David-Homing-Pigeon instinct, and left. Stupid David. I got home eventually, but it took me ages, while the lads slept on comfy beds and got lovely showers the next day. Someday I'll figure out how to overcome that. Someday. We're definitely going to try and meet that group again, either in their Winter cabin in the alps, or they might visit us in Berlin. I hope so, anyway - I can see some amazing fun to be had. Oh, did I mention we're actually moving to Berlin now? If we can get an apartment. Gonna stay there from the end of September 'til we fly home at Christmas. It'll get too cold to live in the camper in October, so it's either that or move seriously South, which we'd rather save for next year. And we love Berlin. So we're pretty excited about that.
The next morning/actually-late-afternoon, while I was battling with the hangover monsters in my bed, Finbar drove us out to Vichy to visit his uncle. It's a nice place. Quiet, and everyone's clearly quite rich. We had a few practical things to do, so we didn't get to busk or even see much of it. We spent last night drinking quiet beers in the local bar with Finbar's uncle, then today we did our chores - clothes, dishes and grocery shopping. Good to get a little break though - I can see the next 10 days being quite busy; looks like there'll be about 7 of us Irish hanging around. Can't wait to see Anto especially. Plus I have to do my duet. I haven't heard back from her about the lyrics actually. Keep up, Cristina. Anyway, that's all for now I think. Bonjourno ;)
That's great man, I'll send an email around to everyone I know to see if anyone is looking to sublet an apartment. See you next month!
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