Home > On Tour > Jungle Adventures > The Europe Tour 2000-2001 > Valencia, Spain
	Valencia, Spain Brussels, Belgium <<<   Barcelona, Spain >>>   Three more words: I LOVE SPAIN Well, at least I did at first. Warm, sunny, CHEAP!! We checked into the hotel, and found that although the room was small and had only a cot for one of the beds (my bed), that it had a nice large opening window overlooking the shopping square. This was nice until those incessant kids rides began to send me into memories of "Small World." After a few hours' nap, I got up and decided to go sample the Hollywood Cafe behind the hotel. A big restaurant promising American food. And that it did! I and the two people i went with ran into a group of about 6 others already eating there, so we joined them. This place had some GREAT food in huge proportions, and for VERY cheap. Considering that in Norway, a McDonalds meal with one extra side cost $14, here in Spain I got a half rack of ribs, an appetizer fit for a football team, and two beers for $11. Mama Mia! Fully satisfied, I headed back to the hotel. Later Monday night, I was chilling out with some friends in the hotel bar. They decided we would join some others who were at a bar a few blocks away. Now this is the cool thing about Spain. Even though you can't find a damn thing open between 1pm and 4:30pm (siesta...nap time), most good bars are open until 3am on weekdays. It was midnight when we left the hotel. I wasn't sure my legs were up to the walk, but I managed to make it. Now, since we had taken directions from a Feld person to find the place, we of course could not find it, because the directions were on the par of, "Just go up this street, take your second right, then your next left...I think it,s a left, maybe a right...anyway, you'll see it. I don't remember what it's called, but it's right there (famous last words in Feld directions)." Anyway, our little group found a fun little bar and hung out there for a few hours chatting. Tuesday I had the unfortunate fun of having to go into rigging and truck unloading. The normal asdsistant rigger was out with an injury, so I took his place. Now that we were in Spain, it was HOT out there unloading those trucks. I also was expecting pretty bad local labor being in a small Spanish city with promoter-paid local labor. However, all to the contrary, these guys were pretty good. They didn't speak English, but we got by pretty good. It didn't help though that the building was very, very small backstage and that the floor in the loading area was crumbling, making moving crates over it very difficult. Even though, we did pretty good, and continued with load-in justa few hours later. We got as far as we could under the situations before going home. The next morning, I woke up kinda late and made it downstairs just in time for our lobby call. Or did I? I was one minute late and everyone had left. I figured I would wait for a few more to come down, but no one did. I finally decided I had to leave and went to cab, then realizing that I had no idea what the name of the building was, I had to go back and ask my roommate. He said he and the other sound guy were going in in five minutes, so I waited in the lobby. Well, they came down and decided to go get something to eat. So I got the name of the building from them and got in a cab to go. By this time I was 45 minutes late. Fortunately, the skater who has been my main help all year had learned well. He had not only gotten all the rest of my moving lights hung, but had started up my lighting console and had started teching the lights as well! What a relief that was!! Thankfully, we got everything else done in plenty of time, and we opened to a TINY house of people. Thursday I slept kind of late, then got some lunch before heading into work for some more shows. I think there were two, but there may have been just one. Afterwards, we had a HUGE barbecue outside behind the building. We had all donated a few dollars towards it, and in Spain, 90 peopl donating a few dollars each buys a LOT of food. They kept cooking and cooking, but I don't think they ever ran out! I finally could do no more at about midnight and went home. My roommate came home right behind me and asked me if I wanted to go to a club. It was now about 12:30am, and I wasn't sure. I declined, but soon decided I would. I put on some pumped music (not any of that house/bass/techno crap some people call music by the way), and got really ready to go. Whereas he was really ready to go earlier and I was kind of down on it, now I was pumped up and ready to go, and he was half asleep. Anyway, I got him up and we headed in town to a club that supposedly a bunch of people from the show were going to. They were supposed to be coming from another club at 2am, so we waited outside this club from about 1:50. We never saw the rest of the group, so we went in anyway to check it out. And there everyone was, already inside partying away. This club was tons of fun. Within seconds of walking in the door, I was accosted by Renee's sister Rachel, asking me if I could be her boyfriend for the night to ward off this guy who kept grabbing her ass. So I had a girl for at least a few hours! hehe. We had a blast here until it closed at 6am. Spain is cool. We got back to the hotel just in time for breakfast to start. After a nice breakfast, Rachel and I sat up and talked for a while before heading to bed at 8:30am. I got up within a few hours to go down to the computer store to replace the keyboard on my laptop after having spilled a bowl of water on it. They didn't have the parts needed to fix it, so I bought an external to get me by for a while. I got back and wrote a 2 1/2 page email to my family since I hadn't written them in so long. I got to the last word, and my computer crashed! Of all luck!!! The next few days were shows and a load-out. Luckily this load-out was much shorter than any of us had planned, and with only two shows before, we made it home fairly early, in time to have a drink at the bar. The next morning, I agreed to ride a train with Renee and Rachel so they wouldn't have to ride alone. They were leaving at 6:00am so I had to be up early. We got to the train station, not realizing that trains in Spain work a bit differently from trains in, say, Holland. They are more structured here. Whereas in Holland you bought a ticket and just got on, here your ticket is assigned seating. Well, I didn't know that until later, but when I went to buy my ticket (Renee and Rachel had reserved theirs earlier in the week), they were sold out of second class tickets, so I had to buy first class. So I wouldn't even get to sit with the ones I was riding with! That sucked. So I sat in my first class seat, and watched the beautiful scenery go by. The tracks at some points were RIGHT on the coastline. I don't mean a few hundred feet away. I mean 10 feet away. My only real perk on first class was to get breakfast, and not to have to sit in a smoke-filled car as the girls did. And after a 3 hour ride, we arrived in beautiful Barcelona, Spain.