The Journey Itself Is Home

I spent an hour on the phone last night with an operator at Swisscom, trying to sort out my internet problems. Finally she admitted that the culprit was not my computer, so she said she would refund me everything I had bought from them.

This was not the only unpleasantness I had at this particular hotel, the name of which is Relais de Margeaux. The staff seemed extremely moody, I was told some of the chamber maids actually made a face when they couldn’t clean the rooms early in the morning, and the reception was often extremely unhelpful. Worst of all was the lady in charge of the hotel brasserie, she had a markedly arrogant manner that bordered on being rude. Unlike Swisscom, none of them ever apologized.

The Relais de Margeaux is situated about two kilometers from the village, which is not much, but it seemed very isolated nonetheless. I can well imagine it being the perfect setting for the sequel of Shining, if they ever decide to make one.

We left the Relais this morning and drove to Bilbao in Spain. As soon as I had checked in the hotel, I went straight to the railway station to buy a ticket to the place in Spain where my daughter is flying after a few days, so I can pick her up. I was getting quite worried, I had been trying to buy the ticket on the internet, but had no luck. Renfe’s website is not the most user friendly one in the world, and even when you ask for the the English version of it, you keep getting pop-up windows in Spanish. Finally, when I had figured out how to get to the place where you actually buy the ticket and not just book it, my credit card didn’t get through, even though I have no problem with it and have used it countless times when puchasing various things on the web. My hat goes off to anyone who manages to buy a ticket on Renfe’s website.

Tonight I went with a few of my mates to have a paella. One of them, the eminent voice teacher Ron Anderson, told me that by coincidence it was the same place he had gone with the Red Hot Chillipeppers last year, when he was touring with them.

The meal was magnificent. A paella is among my favorite dishes and this one was amazing. I ate so much that I half-regretted not having an ostrich feather in my room.

After the meal we walked past a huge sculpture of a dog which is decorated with countless flowers of different colors. I didn’t have my camera with me so I can’t post a picture of it right now, but I will later. The dog reminded me of the dog my family had years back when my sister put nail varnish on his claws and dressed him up in doll clothes. Fortunately she did that very seldom!

I see they are already building the stage for the concert at the Guggenheim museum. It sure looks good!

As I stated below, we have been in many, many hotels since April. Why is it that the more you have to pay for an internet access in your room, the worse it seems to be? Currently I’m paying 17 euros for a 24 hour connection, and it is the slowest one in a long time.

In Copenhagen we were on the Radisson SAS and the internet there was free. It was both fast and smooth. The one I’m having now is so slow and unstable that it is downright irritating to be online.

Of all the companies that provide internet access to hotels, Swisscom seems the worst. On their homepage it says that “as an innovative multi-service company Swisscom has leveraged its profound telecoms expertise to offer high-speed Internet-based services to guests and clients of the hospitality industry across Europe and North America.”

What a joke!

We have just arrived in Bordeaux in France. Our coach left at 2.30 last night and we have been driving for fifteen hours! We didn’t leave straight away after our gig in Amsterdam for we were invited to sail on the city’s waterfront, which was an amazing experience. So now it is almost evening again.

The concert went well. I believe there were some ten thousand people in the audience. And they screamed a lot!

It was nice to have our own concert for a change, i.e. not playing in a festival, even though doing the latter is usually fun and always an interesting experience.

We did buy the Yamaha CP300 and I like it so much that I want to buy an identical one for myself to use at home. I don’t know exactly how many voices it has, but they seem countless.

Some of Björk’s songs sounded different last night, i.e. different to how we have been doing them. For instance, the Yamaha has a tango accordion, which is just the sound I wanted for I Miss You. And a harp does sound more mysterious and “pagan” in Pagan Poetry than a harpsichord.

We will stay in France until Wednesday. We have a break now for a few days; boy, do I need to rest a bit. The next concert is in Bilbao on Friday (FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!).

It is happening more and more frequently that I have to remind myself where I am. I believe this is the seventeenth or eighteenth hotel since April and I am starting to feel a bit disoriented. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I have no idea where I am.

Björk told me yesterday that she has felt like this ever since she first started touring, when she was a teenager.

I was interviewed on the Icelandic National Radio last Thursday. I couldn’t resist lying that I had found a hair of Snoop Dogg in my bed on the coach… For those of you who speak Icelandic, here is the link to the show.

At the end of the interview an old recording is played which I made of Liszt’s first piano concerto with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. You get to hear the 3rd and 4th movements. I was fifteen at the time.

And here is a photo I took from the stage in Gdynia:

This is a Polish ice cream. Interesting shape… I had one in Gdansk!

I came back to the hotel recently… we may have found a workable keyboard. It is a Yamaha CP300. I don’t know whether we will buy it or not - it depends on what Björk says. I will know tomorrow.

In spite of technical difficulties the last few days have been pleasant. The day after the concert in Poland a few of us went to Gdansk and spent the entire afternoon just strolling through the city. It is the old Poland… absolutely fantastic. The houses are so beautiful! See a picture I took there below.

It was also fun to visit Copenhagen. I had a great day with Damian, wandering aimlessly around in the center area of the city. And I had a good time in Roskilde, in spite of learning just hours before the concert that the harpsichord had died.

Performing in Roskilde was difficult though - for me, that is. There was no opportunity to have a soundcheck with the instrument I played on, and I really had no idea what the people in the audience were hearing.

In spite of that I must say that I admired the audience for standing in all the rain and listening to us. Really, if any of you are reading this: Thank you!

Bjork.com, with the Volta Blog, died and went to Heaven. Then it reincarnated. And now it’s back!

This was not the only technical problems we have been having. The electronic harpsichord which I have been playing on in most of the Björk songs also died. And unlike the website, there is no hope for a reincarnation. Hopefully it went to Heaven and not to Hell.

Astrologers say that when Mercury is retrograde, things like that happen more frequently. For those who don’t know, a retrograde planet is a planet that moves backwards as seen from the Earth. All the planets go retgrograde from time to time.

I have just arrived in Amsterdam and I don’t really have the time to blog, because in a few minutes I will be going out with my dear collegue, Jez Webb, to check out keyboards.

Will write more tonight.

Yours in great haste!

Gandalf.

Yesterday I had lunch with Damian and two brass girls, Erla and Bergrún, in the center of the village where we are at present located. It was wonderful to see some of the village… I’m so excited to be in Poland, a country I have never visited before.

Damian helped me to set up a MySpace page in the hotel lobby after our lunch and it was so much fun I nearly forgot we had a concert in the evening. I see that Mark Bell/LFO has already sent in a comment on the page: “How was it for you?”

As everyone knows this is a common question after sex, but Mark always asks me this after a show. And the answer I gave him last night was this: “GREAT!” It was a terrific audience and I think we performed quite OK. At least I enjoyed myself to the utmost. I remember thinking at one point that I’m going to miss doing this when the tour is over.

Today we will take it easy, but tonight we go back on the road. This time we will travel to Copenhagen and I’m thrilled to go there. I haven’t been in there since I was three.

I have only one memory of Copenhagen. It was in December and I was walking with my father somewhere in the city center. I saw a man dressed in a white cat costume and my father said teasingly: “This is the Christmas Cat.” In Icelandic folklore the Christmas Cat is a demon who eats unfortunate children who don’t get any clothes for christmas present.

Needless to say I was terrified…