IRIS MINI-EURO TOUR 2005 - THE REPORT

Everything in this report is written from the perspective of me (Andrew Sega), and is reasonably true, to the best of my drunken, hazy recollections. Most pictures were taken by myself and Reagan, but a few are from other friends of ours and/or people who emailed me shots. We apologize if we've accidentally used any pictures without permission.

SATURDAY (5/14) - LEIPZIG, GERMANY- "On the road again..."

The cast of main characters! (Or, "people on the bus"...)

Reagan Jones - Vocals, aimless wandering, East Texas anecdote provider
Andrew Sega (me) - Keyboards, technical problem-solver, "one who worries about things"
Brian Pearson - Guitars (also known as "the new guy")
Jan Winterfeld - Tour manager (PLUSWELT)
Wiebcke Hoffschild - Jan's assistant
Torben Schmidt - Our label head (Infacted Recordings)
Doreen - Our merchandise girl
Kelly & Sherry - Reagan's friends from Dallas
Dieter - The stuffed teddy bear
Rosie Harris - Our dear friend from England (also from Seize, Visage)
Steve Maddox - Yet another top mate from England

As usual, me and Brian are flying out of Austin, and Reagan's flying out of Dallas. The plan is to meet in Chicago, then fly to London/Heathrow, then to Berlin. This will be our first tour with Brian playing guitar, and while everything seems fine at rehearsals, we're a bit apprehensive :> Amazingly, my sister is also on the same flight that we're taking from Chicago to London -- she's flying over to see her German fiance, who I've never met. (We'll meet up with them in Frankfurt, more on that later). Reagan is also bringing two friends from Dallas, Kelly and Sherry, who will be with us for the first bunch of shows.

Also as usual, nothing goes right when we have to travel to different continents. We arrive in London late, and miss our connecting flight to Berlin. So, we sit in O'Neill's pub and drink a few pints while we wait. At this point I also test out my freshly-hacked Motorola Razr V3 which has been "SIM-converted" to T-Mobile for the duration of the tour -- seems to work! Eventually we get on the plane to Berlin, and arrive. Now things start to go really wrong. Only one piece of luggage shows up. No keyboards, no guitars, no nothing. We are informed that no more baggage will be coming out, and so we trek to the British Airways baggage office to complain. At this point we also hear that the festival runner should be there to take us to Leipzig (about 2 hours drive) but we can't find him. Lovely. The luggage people take our hotel information, and say they will do all they can. We reinforce the urgency of the situation, finally find the runner, and head to Leipzig.

We find that Leipzig is a very pretty town, which has been invaded by about 30,000 people dressed entirely in black for the weekend. You haven't seen anything like WGT. Goths everywhere, hordes of them. We arrive at the hotel (the Mercure), and wait for Jan to show up. Finally he does, and everyone seems ready to crash except for me. So, me and Jan head out into the night to get drunk and experience the madness of WGT. First stop is the Agra Halle, which is basically an aircraft hanger with speakers in it. We get our passes, stop backstage briefly, where I saw hello to the Seize girls, including our dear friend Rosie Harris (Seize/Visage/OVNI), who will be following us through Hamburg. After that, we check out Visage, which played to literally like 8,000 people. Nuts. Steve Strange makes them all sing happy birthday to Rosie (or, attempts to -- since most people didn't understand what on earth he was saying).

After this, mad drinking commences until about 6 AM, and it was embarassing craziness, and I'm not going to describe it.

Arrival in Leipzig, finally!	Visage on the ludicrously large Agra Halle stage

SUNDAY (5/15) - LEIPZIG, GERMANY

Ouch. My head hurts. I start pondering how exactly we will do a show in 6 hours with only my laptop. I walk into Brian's room, and lo and behold, there's the gear! Thank you VERY much British Airways for sending it all express to us, even on a holiday weekend. Unfortunately the girls' luggage is still not here, so Reagan keeps calling the baggage claim people, who think the luggage might be in Frankfurt, or maybe still in London. Amazingly, as he's on the phone, *poof* the rest of the luggage shows up. Disaster has been averted. At this point, we pretty much have to leave for the venue.

Haus Auensee is a wonderful, historic hall located in the woods, pretty far away from everything else going on at the festival. The day is pretty much electro/synth-pop bands. We are scheduled to play at around 8 PM, right after I, Synthesist, and then Psyche and Melotron follow us. We head to the backstage and start to mentally prepare. It's a bit strange that it's still daylight outside, which is filtering in through these huge curtains which adorn the walls of the venue. We are informed that there will only be 15 minute (!) changeovers between bands, and that we get no sound check. Lovely. Show time arrives. About 8 people help me carry our stuff onto the stage, and start plugging equipment in randomly, picking the wrong ports, and generally messing things up. I try to slow them down so that I can double check things. Two of the cables are plugged in wrong, which almost makes me think my audio output has failed. Ugh. So, we go on and play a 40 minute set. The whole time, there is this huge film camera on a crane that is whipping around the stage, filming everything for a festival DVD release. It almost hits Reagan in the head twice. As we're playing, I'm watching the hall fill up... about halfway through our set there is probably 1500-2000 people watching. We finish up, and get a good response from the crowd. Lots of friends in the crowd, we run into the guys from Conetik, the Seize crew, Marco (Angels and Agony), Stefan Netschio (Beborn Beton), Julia Beyer (Technoir), our dear friends from Austin -- Alex Virlios (CTRL) and his girlfriend Andi, and more. Got some pretty good responses from people who had watched the set.. not bad for our first show, and having no sound check.

Afterwards we stick around to chat and watching Psyche and bit of Melotron. We then pile in the van with Wiebcke and head back to the Agra 4.2 (the side-club of the huge Agra Halle) to watch Seize, Client, and I AM X (the side project of the guy from the Sneaker Pimps). All in all a fantastic triple bill, we are very entertained. More shots and drinking commence, and things start to get a bit blurry. I AM X didn't go on until around 2:30 AM, so we are in this for the long haul. Evidently at one point I am backstage with Steve from Seize singing Morrissey songs at the top of our lungs. Around 6 AM I vaguely remember a daytime van dash through the streets of Leipzig, and somehow I end up at the wrong hotel. As a stroke of luck, I run into some of the people who promoted our Moscow show, and one of them is kind enough to toss me a few Euro and throw my sorry ass into a cab. This is a gesture I will appreciate for a long time. Time for bed!

Haus Auensee (our venue)	Brian and myself have a pint (with Wiebcke and the guys from Conetik in the background)

A shot from the stage right before the show	Kelly, Rosie, Sherry

Jan Winterfeld with Marco from Angels and Agony (who also seems to be glowing radioactively)	The very cool Chris Ianuzzi from I, Synthesist

MONDAY (5/16) - LEIPZIG, GERMANY

Final day of the festival. The "ouch" has definitely increased. I feel like I'm going to die. Very, very sick. How do people survive this craziness? Jan has to drive to Hamburg to pick up the tour van, so he's out for the entire day. Me and Rosie decide to head to the Moritzbastei (a cool old venue / restaurant that's within walking distance) for lunch, and wander a bit around sunny Leipzig. I try to eat a plate of spaghetti and it's just not happening. We head back to the hotel, and run into Reagan and co. We make a plan to try to head back to see Conetik around 7. We manage to get down there, and catch their set, which is very good -- even though they had some technical problems at the start. Unfortunately the PA isn't very loud, which kinda mystifies me. Perhaps the sound person has earplugs in, or something. I run into Torben again, who's hanging out with Vasi from NamNamBulu, I say hello.

After this, everyone except me, Brian, and Rosie go back to the hotel. I plant my seriously hurting behind on a chair and proceed to not do much of anything for about 5 hours. Alex and Andi eventually swing by, and we chat with them and some other friends who we randomly run into. At this point I somehow think it's a good idea to drink a Red Bull after not having eaten anything for 24 hours. We head upstairs to the "dance party" where there are about 1000 people jamming out to old school darkwave and punk tunes. There is a table full of about 50 drunk-ass germans jumping up and down (_on_ the table!) to Billy Idol songs. Craziness. A very difficult night as I become convinced that I have liver failure and will keel over any moment. But it's really the Red Bull wreaking havoc on me. Sleep arrives around 6 AM, again.

TUESDAY (5/17) - BERLIN, GERMANY

Music on the bus: I AM X "Kiss + Swallow", New Order "Who's Joe?"

The last off day. Before leaving, we run into Chris Ianuzzi from I, Synthesist, who has had a change in travel plans, and decides to meet us up in Berlin. Time to jump in the van and head off. We arrive at the hotel (ironically, a Holiday Inn!) and drop off our stuff. We're in East Berlin, which is a bit on the "ugly" side. We find an internet cafe and check our emails. I wander around looking for a T-Mobile shop to recharge my prepaid SIM card, but don't have any luck. Chris wanders around trying to find socks, and he's more successful. After some more aimless wandering, we end up at a place called "Hank's Cafe" to get some burgers. Reagan protests because it's a bit American-ized, but hunger wins out, and it's burger time. After getting out of there, we head back to the hotel. Reagan and the girls seem pretty beat, but the rest of us are up for some wandering, so me, Brian, Rosie, and Chris head out to try to explore the nightlife a bit. A friend of Brian's has recommended a certain district near the Alexanderplatz, so we head out. We take the S-Bahn south (train), spend a while looking for the U-Bahn (metro) entrance, finally find it, head for a bunch of stops, find the street in question, head north about 10 blocks, and finally find a bar that looks pretty good. We hang there for a number of hours listening to weird 80's remixes and drinking vodka tonics and caiprinhas. We get super-lucky when the bill comes and about half the drinks aren't on it. Then we wander around to find a cab (whose driver had the best German mullet I've ever seen, and he was a nice guy to boot), and we discover that we practically walked in a big circle, and had almost made it BACK to the hotel. Nice. Time for bed.

Sightseeing in Berlin	The NH hotel in Berlin

The hot, hot Mercedes van	A shot from the balcony from our room at the Holiday Inn, Berlin (notice that we tend to hotel hop?)

WEDNESDAY (5/18) - BERLIN, GERMANY

It's show day, and this will begin a string of five back-to-back gigs. Reagan and the girls head out early to take a walking tour of Berlin, which evidently was pretty cool. The rest of us head out with Jan to go to the train station to pick up Doreen (our merchandise person). The train station seems to solve all of our immediate problems at once - food, a T-Mobile shop for me, and ATM's. Doreen arrives without incident, and so we head back to the hotel and pick up the gear. We drive to Magnet (the venue), and from the outside it looks really cool. Inside, however, is a different story. The stage is TINY. So small in fact, that the backstage and DJ areas look absolutely monstrous by comparison. I am a bit surprised, because a lot of very big indie bands have played here recently (The Bravery, Arcade Fire, Stars, etc), and I'm surprised that they could even fit on this stage. Nevertheless, we set up and soundcheck, and it seems to go ok. The opening band gets all bitchy about us leaving our keyboard stands on stage, which kinda irritates me. We head back to the hotel for a bit of rest. On the way back to the venue, we see Chris wandering around on the sidewalk - Reagan opens the door and yells at him to get in. We get to the venue, and showtime is approaching. I'm starving, so some of us hit a Thai restaurant next door and get some food to go. Turnout for the show is a bit on the low side, most likely due to the Treffen being just a few days beforehand, but the crowd is very enthusiastic. Reagan is extremely chatty. We roll through a 13-song set, and then head into the crowd to meet people. After a bit of that, we check out the DJ set, and say hello to our old friends Steffen and Thomas from De/Vision. Also spotted in the crowd are Steve and Gio from And One. Steffen turns out to be a surprisingly awesome DJ, and so we hang out for a long time drinking and partying. Around 4 AM or so, it's time to leave, and we get ready to head out. At this point we start to realize that the van isn't really as big as it looks from the outside, and it's going to be a problem to try to fit people + luggage + gear in the morning. Rosie was originally supposed to leave at 9 AM the next morning, but she wants to stay one more day, so I rebook her flight and everyone crashes out.

Magnet club (outside). It does indeed say "Iris" in tiny print on the white part below.	Jan and Steffen Keth (De/Vision) spinning tracks at the afterparty and looking identically fashionable

THURSDAY (5/19) - FRANKFURT, GERMANY

Music on the bus: Coldplay "Speed of Sound", I AM X "Missile", New Order "Who's Joe" (again)

Time to head to Frankfurt. The morning sun reveals the full extent of the van problem. It takes about an hour of careful rearranging to be able to fit everything in the van and have enough seats for everyone. Big props to Brian and Jan who solve the packing puzzle. We take off on the autobahn, hoping that the suitcase don't fall on our heads (especially those of us in the back). At some rest stop along the way, Jan picks up a teddy bear and christens him Dieter (!). Dieter will become one well-traveled groupie. Traffic absolutely sucks, and it takes about 7 hours to get to Frankfurt. Jan calls the club, and they push back doors an hour to accomodate us, and give us some chance at having a decent sound check. Nachleben (the club) is very cool, it's kind of an outdoor sidewalk cafe, and then you go inside, and there's some stairs down to the underground "club" section, which has a stage and lights and another bar. It's also in a nice pedestrian district of downtown Frankfurt, where theres some sort of Spanish festival going on in the square. Dinner at McDonalds -- never underestimate the healing power of Chicken McNuggets. Luckily, the hotel is within walking distance, so I head back there to quickly freshen up, and head back to the club. Once I get back, I run into another old friend, Dr. Frank Spinath from Seabound, the most well-educated man in the scene. He introduces me to Mario from Edge of Dawn, as well as Olaf Wollschlager (producer of Melotron, ISC, and others). Also the ticket person turns out to be Markus, Torben's friend, who was kind enough to shepherd us around during the first few days of last year's tour with De/Vision. After a while, my sister arrives with her German fiance (who I haven't met yet), and it's sort of like a mini-family reunion. She has never seen us play live before, so everything works out quite nicely! The opening band (Allergy) is quite good. The show goes pretty well, the crowd is nice and very receptive. Our new acoustic version of Endless sounds especially good. Near the end, the clock hits midnight, and Reagan convinces everyone to sing me Happy Birthday :> Afterward, more hanging out with friends, and we stay until about 1:30, when we head back to the hotel -- everyone's pretty tired.

Frankfurt is filled with strange vegetation	Arrival at the venue. Stop waving and start loading out!

Rosie and Brian hang out with Frank Spinath (Seabound)	Is that gear on the ground? Stop looking at your camera and put it in the club!

Doreen and DIeter

FRIDAY (5/20) - UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS

Off again, this time to Utrecht, Holland. Today is my birthday. We say goodbye to Rosie, since she has to catch her flight back to England. The drive to Utrecht is pretty easy, and we arrive in the town without incident. The hotel is very quaint, but features an extremely treacherous circular staircase down to most of the rooms. Not wonderful for Reagan, who's still not 100% healed from his recent leg surgery. We start off to the venue and quickly discover that we have no idea where the venue is. Jan drives around the city in circles for over an hour. We call the promoters for directions, but they aren't of much use. Finally we discover the critical turn that we were missing, and locate the club. The venue (Ekko) is very nice, another split restaurant/bar/club concept, but the club section is just awesome. Great sound, great lighting, good layout, very nice indeed. Even more amazing is that all of the staff arevolunteers. We meet up with Tim (DJ Spud) and Yolanda, who promoted the last Iris show in the Netherlands (Rotterdam), they are just fantastic people. They give me a birthday basket of fine Benelux beers... thank you again! Also there is our good friend Steve Maddox from England, who is here for the Utrecht and Hamburg shows. Steve is a very nice guy, and the most die-hard Mesh fan on the planet (perhaps with Iris a close second). Also arriving are Alex and Andi, who took the train from Alex's hometown to come to the show. Unfortunately, Alex has just found out that his grandfather has passed away (on his birthday, no less), so he's quite depressed. I talk to him for a bit and try to cheer him up.

Soundcheck goes brilliantly. We are told that we have to be finished by 11 PM due to local sound ordinance laws -- similar to the situation when we played in Zurich. No opening band, so we hang out backstage for a bit chatting, and then it's showtime. Crowd looks pretty good. We get on stage, and start the first song (Whatever). About 30 seconds in, this big loud-ass PZZZTBANG! noise comes out of the speakers, and I hear a bunch of people yell out in surprise. I immediately kill the track and start checking the cables on my side. Sound techs start running around looking for the problem. We restart the song, and it seems fine for about a minute, and then PZZZT again! Ugh. We didn't touch anything since sound check. I'm looking at my watch and starting to worry that a) we might not get this fixed, and b) we might have to cut songs since it's almost 10 PM already. After a bit, the sound techs tell me to run my M-Audio output in mono, out of the R output. I give it a try, and it works. I hate running playbacks in mono, they tend to sound really flat, but we have to do it. Reagan does a fine job of entertaning the crowd while we get this sorted out. The rest of the show goes just perfectly, and we finish just after 11. After the show we chat with people, and drink some. A lot of people are tired from the traveling, so they decide to go back to the hotel, leaving just me, Alex, and Andi. We party for a while, and then my phone rings around 2 AM. Its Brian, calling from Jan's phone. Evidently the hotel doesn't have a person at the desk, and you need a room key to get in the front door. Shit -- none of us at the club have our room keys. My phone decides to run out of batteries right in the middle of our conversation. Ugh. We decide to leave and find a cab. Evidently, the cabs are all in the City Centre, so we have to wander around for a while trying to find a cab stand. On the way we briefly stop at a pizzeria / kebab shop to get something to eat (we're starving). Utrecht is full of two things - a) people on bikes, and b) cats. Cats in the pizza shop, cats wandering around the street, etc. We scarf the pizza, and then finally get a cab. We arrive back at the hotel to find Brian sitting on the bench outside (such a good guy!). He lets us in, and also tells us that Reagan's going to let Alex and Andi crash in his room, since they have a 7 AM train to catch. I say goodbye to them, and it's sleep time.

Ok, the van starts to get a bit boring	Poster @ Ekko

Me and Alex Virlios, toasting to my birthday... "Hau Weg die Scheisse!"	The van also doubles as a beer cooler!

SATURDAY (5/21) - HAMBURG, GERMANY

Music on the bus: Junkie XL "Reload" (feat Dave Gahan), New Order "Who's Joe" (turn the damn song off!)

Time to head to Hamburg, to play at the Depeche Mode party. Steve Maddox is going with us, but he's taking his rental car, since one-way rental fees are insane in Europe. Progress is very fast this time, no traffic. Jan continues to blast I AM X in the van. We get to Hamburg in record time and head straight for the venue (the Markthalle). We have played here before with De/Vision, and it's as huge as I remember it. Excellent lighting and stage. The hall is very boomy without people in it, so sound check is a bit tough, since we can't judge effects levels easily. I'm informed that the promoters are a bit worried that people will arrive late due to the finals of the Eurovision song contest happening tonight. This shit is HUGE in Europe. Kind of similar to American Idol, but where each country submits a band, and they all battle it out in this huge Miss Universe-style pageant. Nutty. We head across the street to an internet cafe to check email, while Jan does some business work. We head back to the hotel to rest for a while -- we're not playing until well after midnight, so we get quite a bit of rest. I decide to watch a bit of Eurovision myself, it's very funny. Lots of boy bands, lots of weird Euro-dance tracks, the occasional hair band.

We get back to the Markthalle, and I realize what exactly a "Depeche Mode party" is. It's about 1500+ people, dancing to NON-STOP Depeche Mode songs. The DJ's literally play nothing else. For about 10 hours. They also usually have a band or two, and usually the crowd isn't terribly interested. Reportedly some pretty big bands play these parties, and many are heckled and/or booed after the first few songs. I'm warned about this, and I sense that Torben thinks we're a bit crazy for trying to do a full 60 minute set. The opening band (SONO) is very good, even though they play only 3 songs. Showtime. We go out and the crowd is surprisingly receptive. At one point Reagan decides to ask the crowd if they agree that Dave Gahan kinda sucks live. I look at Brian, prepared to very quickly pack up my keyboards and run for it. However, most people don't really speak English, so the potentially offensive statement passes right over their heads :> We get through an amazing 11 (!) songs before a group of people in the back start yelling "De-peche Mode! De-peche Mode!". Reagan assures the crowd that they're coming right up, and we play one more. We leave the stage, andsome people are actually wanting an encore! We decide against it, and get back to partying. More friends backstage, as we see Julia Beyer and Stefan Netschio again, and the beer starts flowing. I almost break my wrist trying to slam the caps off of the bottles of Astra, until someone miraculously finds a bottle opener. We don't end up getting out of there until about 5 AM.

Soundcheck in Hamburg at the Markthalle	I had forgotten how big this stage was!

Hamburg wins the Excellent Catering Award (tm) of the trip	Brian, Jan, me, Torben, Reagan backstage

Hamburg audience	These people take Depeche Mode very seriously.

Julia Beyer (Technoir) and Stefan Netschio (Beborn Beton)	Steve Maddox also starts to have an unearthly glow!

SUNDAY (5/22) - SZCZECIN, POLAND

We get into the van, say goodbye to Steve Maddox, and head out for Poland. We drive for a while, pass Berlin, and hit the Polish border. Once we arrive, we discover a problem - in the rush to leave, Wiebcke forgot her passport, and we can't bring her across. A delay of about 30 minutes ensues while she tries to get her documents faxed to her. Meanwhile, Brian tries to use the bathroom, but accidentally goes the wrong direction (the Polish side) and is accosted by a border guard who doesn't speak any English. Uh oh. Luckily, Jan comes out at just the right time, and waves off the guards. We pass through and shortly thereafter stop and meet the promoter (Pat) at a McDonalds, who will be guiding us to the hotel and venue. Szczecin is a pretty nice little city, it has a lot of old-world charm, mixed with some modern niceties. The venue (Grand Cru Club) is awesome. It's like a big formal restaurant, that just happens to have a circular dance club area and stage in the middle. Almost like performing in the dining room of a castle. We start setting up and getting ready to soundcheck. The opening band (Minerve from Germany) arrives, and they seem very nice. We manage to sound check, and it sounds pretty good after Jan has a pass at EQ'ing the mains. At this point, the promoter says he needs to talk to us about the "set list". Uh oh. We don't like people telling us what to play, especially if they want to hear a bunch of old material. Luckily, he's mostly wondering why we aren't playing "Wait Move On". I tell him that we didn't rehearse it, and I'm not even sure if I have the backing track. Unfortunately, he goes on to tell us that it's evidently our most popular song here, and they've been using it in radio ads, and playing it in the Media Markt, and etc etc. He says if we don't play it, "people will kill us". Shit. I start to ponder the situation.

We suddenly have to go off to the autograph signing session at the Media Markt, which is basically a big electronics store (like Best Buy or Fry's in the US). Once we got there, it was pretty awesome. There were like 50+ people waiting in line for autographs, and they were blasting Iris over the store sound system. They had also printed up these huge posters advertising the show, and we started signing them for fans. Pat is also a manager at the store, and he mentions that "Awakening" has been selling very well here. We met a bunch of fans, sign more autographs, and then head back to the hotel. Arriving at the hotel, we're waiting in the lobby when suddenly the elevator door opens, and *poof* it's Andy Kruger from Melotron (!). I say hello, and he tells me that he only lives an hour away, and that there wasn't very much on TV, so he decided to come out. Heh.

I decide to try to go to the club to see if the "Wait Move On" backing track is posted somewhere on our website (I keep a back door there with all the backing tracks as mp3's in case of emergencies). I log on and check, and, well.. it's not. Shit. What i do have on my laptop is a) the album version, and b) an instrumental of one of the very first versions of the song. I also have the sequencer file for the actual album version, but I can't load it because it requires all sorts of old VST's and DLL's. Ugh. So, I come up with the idea to try to load up Vegas and splice/EQ/fake some sort of instrumental version from the pieces that I do have. Iit takes me about 2 hours, but i manage to get something together, just as the rest of the crew arrives from the hotel. It's not perfect, and has some audible backing vocals in spots, but it might work. The backstage at this club is INSANE, it's like an opulent mansion or something. I ask for Red Bull, and a waiter arrives with 5 cans on a silver platter. Literally. There are cheese plates, there is wine, there are fine cognacs in glass cases on the wall. Crazy. We are all extremely tired at this point, but it's show time. It goes very, very well. The crowd is decently sized (maybe 200?), but they are VERY enthusiastic. They jump up and down and yell and spin around non-stop for the entire set. We get two encores, and could have easily done a third, if we weren't pretty much out of songs. The version of "Wait Move On" works just fine, mostly because they are all screaming so loud over it that I can barely hear Reagan.

Afterwards we are summoned to dinner (!) with the club owners. Pat says "It's very important, you must meet Big Boss". Heh. We head to a room in the back, and there is a huge linen-covered table where we sit down and waiters come out and bring us some excellent Polish food. We do a friendly vodka shot with the rest of the table, and relax a bit to eat. Afterwards we go sign some posters for the "Big Boss", who is indeed big, and the boss. Very nice man. The Polish fans are extremely appreciative of us, and we get some of the warmest after-show reactions ever. Around 1 AM we are all about to pass out, so Jan gets the van, and we load it for the last time, and head back to the hotel.

VIDEO - MEDIA MARKT SIGNING (10 MB, MPG)

Front page of the local entertainment newspaper!	Szczecin, Poland

Soundcheck at the Grand Cru club	Best. Backstage. Ever.

Signing posters at the Media Markt	The aftershow dinner

The stage is nowhere near as big as this shot makes it seem.	Reagan bids our new Polish friends goodbye!

MONDAY (5/23) - BACK TO THE USA

Back to America. We get up, hop in the van, and drive back to Germany. We reach Tegel airport pretty quickly. We say goodbye to Jan and Wiebcke, and gather all of our equipment. Amazingly we don't get charged overages, even with our huge flight cases. There's a brief delay as I'm paged back to the desk to witness a security search of my main luggage, but it passes without incident. Then it's time for the 24+ hour odyssey home. We don't arrive back in Texas until almost midnight. Me and Brian split a cab back home, I literally drop the luggage on the floor, and pass out in bed. Ah, the rock star life!