Exciting things happened this week, explaining my blogging absence. Thing is, I went on my first ever tour. Twas a rock band music tour on the road
kind of affair (which totally brought out my inner groupie girl), only with two
singer songwriters so less of the rock and more of the music. However. There
were backstage wristbands involved, beardy tattooey roadies
carrying around stuff to and fro, plus free beers/avocadoes/crisps in the dressing
room. (I even discovered a vegetable crudité platter one night, with houmous for
dipping, and nearly wet myself. Unfortunately it was for sharing with
another band, the ever expanding-in-notoriety Rats on Rafts, so I couldn't eat the lot even though I'd had no dinner. But then I suppose having no dinner is very rock 'n' roll too.) There were fellow groupies who
mouthed along to all the songs (nil points for me on that one) and vied for a
place on the backstage sofa (I won all the points there). All in all it was
quite an adventure.
Yesterday I spent €9.95, a fortune in Berlin money, just so I could stand in an endless queue then eat reheated chicken and pork ragu, scooped onto supermarket flour tortillas, from a plastic plate. With a plastic fork and a plastic knife. Accompanied by a VERY roughly chopped pico de gallo. Yes, you could eat as much as you wanted, if what you wanted was the chicken filling. They ran out of the rest pretty quickly, especially the potato dish which I didn't get a chance to try at all. Who knows it may have been a meal-saver!
Sure, Das Gift is a pub, not a restaurant and people come here for the beers, the alt berliner kneipe atmosphere and, I suspect, to ogle the landlord who's a member of the band Mogwai. But when you charge a tenner for food in Berlin, you need to offer more than this I'm afraid...
Suffice to say I was happy to be there in the company of good friends, who made up for the lack in decent food. Next time I'll be eating in Das Gift, it will be the Walker's salt and vinegar crisps.
Das Gift, Donaustraße 119, 12043 Berlin (Neukölln), open daily from 7pm, dasgift.tumblr.com
Today I went to see friend Matthijs in a recording studio in Berlin. Twas exciting. I mean, see a band recording an album? Very rock and roll. But really, I went to see a bunch of bearded men wearing hats and smoking fags huddled together in a small room full of dials and buttons and leads and guitars. It couldn't be more manly if it'd been a showroom full of Ferraris... Still, I got to listen to some just-recorded music, got blogged about (see Woods on Fire website) and felt very rock chick. I left wanting to bake them something nutritious, or bring some flowers to make this space that they'll be living in for two weeks solid a little nicer. Boys... bless them.
