So a lot of fun things happened in Berlin... history will remember very little of it but that did not make them still dead fun at the time and if you are born in the future and you never get to laugh and sigh and delight in reliving the glorious amusements and hilarious moments from my life... then I apologise... things are probably much easier for you than in my day anyhow. OK.. basically i had a lot of fun and not much sleep. I took a 5am train after a nights partying and chugged through the bundesrepublic all day satruday until i crossed briefly into holland in the afternoon and arrived in ghent around 8pm and met lotty and felix and annekke too in a bar. they did not have much exciting news... but that is not really a sign of being happy. They seemed good and it is always good to catch up with old friends however brief... each meeting is like a stich in your combined relationship and the more stiches the more close you become ... even if you meet only for an hour or so. well I was only with them for a bit... i took a late train to brussells and met my amazing friend stephan... he is such a sensitive pecussionist... he listens to the music in everything.. he is really wonderful... he made me a delicious dinner and then we went out busking with him on washboard around midnight outisde a shop selling lacework. After 3 or 4 songs this old arab dude in a black tuxedo and a silver playboy bunny medalion started dancing way too close to us and then giving us dozens of tourist brochures for bruxxles zoo and safari park and shopping malls... he had so many to give us. This other tall guy steped up and started playing my guitar and then left with his tail between his long legs when we politely asked him to leave.. the tail part was optional but appreciated. There was no one left in the streets except these wackos so we packed up... Stephen told me he knew a nice bar we could play. We came through a few streets in the drizzle and came to a cafe and who should be at the door but wacko number three.. i did not mention him earlier but he was listening to us busking and dancing way too close too just 20 minutes before... a dude with a big beard and rolling head and a big belly and red eyes.. infact probably a drunk homeless dude. So we went right in ... i am not sure our gogo dancing buddy from 20 minutes before even recognised us when we stepped right past him.
Inside a guy had just finised playing button accordian and a fiddle player just finished his song too... I think they were playing together. People clapped and we asked if we could play... we asked the barman. He was the dude behind the bar with very thick rimmed and thick glassed glasses and he said yes out of the corner of his mouth and poured us a beer to share ... most fruity. we played three songs... it was mostly me going weewaaaweewaaweewaaaa like a police siren and stephen playing solid rhythem... well,, i tried to play jazz but it sounded mostly like that perhaps. We got a free beer to share, as i mentioned before, but i had already drunk one earlier (not the one i mentioned before, a different one i had not mentioned before) and I was not interested. My friend Andreas from italy walked in through the door... quite by chance... i knew he was in brussels but had not planned to meet him. He was with a danish guy who played guitar and played a really long symphonic almost cool pop song with lots of different parts and few repetitions. It was really impressive. Then the barman played a bit ... all ghospel songs with his squeely little voice and really neat simple guitar playing and stephan playing spoons with him. it was great but i was yawning like a postman at 8pm. After that the funny barman started playing one of his own songs about a bar in oostend (a crappy violent seaside town in north flemish belgium) and it sounded really funny when suddenly across the room a spanish dude with a face like a yellow tomato started fighting the violin player... it was really silly... i did not understand anything but they almost broke the violin and everyone was trying to calm him down... one arab dude was telling him to breath through his nose (the spanish yellow tomato man) and the barman was pleading with him and a nice girl who told us she loved her music walked about saying OOOOh i hate the violence in french and shaking her head and stroking spanish tomato man and begging him to stop and he was proud and drunk. The violin playing man looked very upset and cuddled himself a bit and cried. It was so sad in a silly way but also exciting because it was a happening bar and maybe a bit of stupid violence is a fair price to ask from a lot of other really lovely dead open people at that bar! I really liked our evening on the town. i went back to stephens house and slept 'nagu kott'! ('like a bag' in estonian means sleep very well!) i woke up in the morning... had a little oatporrage then rushed off the the station... the eurostar was cancelled and they put me on the next train in 3 hours... i decided i would go and have a look round brussells. There was a local market with some really cool purple jackets and matching trousers and shoes and i decided to go and try them on... i was not sure if i would buy it but they did not have quite the right size anyhow but the nice guy directed me to the main shop about 20 minutes walk away near another big market called the abbattoir. I walked there and stopped at a cafe on the way.. they had some african version of MTV on and a black woman in bermudas and a t-shirt was singing about some guy who had left her to live in another town in africa or something and she was crying by a bamboo tree in her bikini. The bar was mostly full of men drinking their midday beer but there was one handsome african woman drinking tea and two other female travelers came in later. The boss served me the last coffee because there was no more sugar.. his wife had been working until 6am so she had no time to buy sugar that morning. i sat opposite an arab young man who smiled and soon we were chatting.. he was in brussells looking for work and just won 350 euros in the gambling machine the day before with just one euro coin he had found in the street. i told him i lived in estonia and he told me he had an estonian friend called something like Hilver... i dont know what he said but it did not sound at all estonian... but i believe him. he was dead nice... i left in a really good mood and found the clothes shop where i tried on about a dozen suits before i decided to buy a deep chocolate a purple stripy geometic suit with waistcoat and trousers and also sympathetically matching purple shoes. However after all the trying on... most of the clothes were too big ... and most of the guys who came to the shop wanting to dress in these really bling suits were too big too... so it took me a long long time to choose... at the end i settled on teh purple chocolate fizzy suit and some purple shoes but was in such a hurry that i took two left footed shoes and only found out when i got home to london and tried to put them on. I joked that they would be great for running around right corners because they were both left food shoes. I got the the station sat opposite a girl with long dark hair and a little dimple on her chin. She was reading national geographic and i took out the book on china that raffie lent me and which is really interesting but as soon as she put the national geographic down i asked if i could read it and i found out all about some tragic changes in an ethiopian tribe and then about wolves in north america and then a bit about shanghai (that did not make me want to return actually) and then something about somthing else. i chatted to the girl about what i read... i was really moved by the african story but she was more into the wolves. She told me she was from wales and working in amsterdam... it was not an amazing conversation but jolly enough. A little child stared at me as we got up to leave he really looked and looked without blinking... maybe it was the fur hat and my beard. anyhow, tom was waiting for me and i went to the jazz bash.. richie came but there was no vegan food like the flier said there wood be so he was upset about that... lots of good friends came infact... and it was a big sucess lots of dancing and i did some really stupid moves and some quite inspired breakddancing with tom but also a lot of bad playing... i really need a soprano sax. still it was a ball... i felt totally exhausted after all of that and came home to mums place even thought i was not meant to stay there. i think i got to write to sadie one day to thank her or make a reply video perhaps. so i feel energized now and very happy
but also tired enough to cuddle up in my jacket on the sofa and dedicate my energies to resting so tomorrow i will be a fit as a fiddle for our gig at 100 club.
lots of love
your overwhelming and joyful earth sputnik
jimbino
xxxxxx
