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Archive Sunday #9

Added 2023-07-30 16:00:05 +0000 UTC

The boys continue their European tour and move on to the Le Guess Who fest in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Utrecht is probably my favorite European city. It has all of the charm of Amsterdam (canals, colorful rows of homes, pedestrian/biker friendly) but without the insane amount of tourists. It's a quiet little college town with tons of art and things to do. I would live there in a heartbeat.

We played the Le Guess Who festival which is similar to SXSW where up and coming artists play cool little venues around town. I think one of our sets was in a church or something. Or maybe we just watched someone else play in a church.

The label put us up in a nice hotel with robes so naturally I wore mine down to the hotel breakfast and was promptly kicked out. I guess you can't wear a robe at breakfast in the Netherlands. On my way back upstairs to get my clothes on I got locked in an outside stairwell and a cleaner had to let me in. She probably thought I was insane.

Bonus video in next post of the boys playing Maud Gone.

WT: Utrecht & the Netherlands in general are a pretty good intro to Europe. Boy of the South that I am, I always get a certain level of culture shock being anywhere where the language and electrical sockets are different, but the Netherlands have all the advantages of Europe over America: cozy, beautiful, pedestrian-friendly cities with a general air of a progressive culture. Watch out for mosquitoes, though. We came back here in the summer and I ended up with a dozen bites which, bizarrely, didn't go away for years - they'd just fade out for a bit and then pop back up after a few weeks. I don't think science really knows the deal with insect bites and skin reactions. But that's a different story.

SD: We had some extra time in Utrecht due to the Paris show getting cancelled, so we all took off to explore the city. Plus the last minute change of plans scored us an upgraded hotel because our original didn't have vacancy for the extra days. I remember renting bikes from the hotel and almost getting creamed by a motorcycle in the bike lane on our way to a modern art museum. The museum had a whole room dedicated to Miffy the dutch bunny cartoon, and a full wooden ship in the basement built over a thousand years ago.

Over the long weekend we played two shows. One was at a coffee shop for the delight of their brunch rush, and the other was at a small venue called Ekko inside of town. But we also had the opportunity to catch a few other shows including Majical Cloudz (at the church Andrew thinks we played at), Ought, and Bully performing around the city as part of the festival.

From there we took a train to Amsterdam for our flight back. I remember splitting one of the local dutch brownies with Andrew before we checked in. I guess we were hoping it would make the flight back more bearable, but in the end just made me sick.