Leipzig, Germany

Amanda and her boyfriend Mark picked me up at the hotel this morning at 9:30 with a gift of a large cuppa coffee and we made our way to the underground transport. Mark's mum, Cindy, graciously offered to prepare a breakfast for us in their apartment here in Berlin and that's the direction we headed. She'd really been busy whipping up some beautiful cinnamon scones, omelets, bacon and on the table was a bowl full of the most exquisite German strawberries. It turns out that today was the official beginning of strawberry season and I can't begin to describe the flavour of these deep red beauties. As opposed to America where everything is force grown, picked green and ripen in a plastic container, these berries are allowed to ripen fully on the vine before arriving at the market. Their rich crimson colour goes all the way through the fruit and in all my years of eating strawberries I've never had any that tasted this good. After exchanging goodbyes, Amanda and Mark brought me back to the hotel where I packed and prepared for the short flight to Leipzig and tonight's show.

It was a longer drive from the airport to the venue than the actual flight itself. Leipzig was part of the eastern block and still shows signs of it. It's hard to describe, but all of the former eastern block countries and cities have the same drab, gray and repressed look about them after all this time. The venue was sort of an aircraft hanger looking thing, think gigantic quonset hut. They managed to get over 7,000 fans in and they were very kind to us. We left right after the gig for the airport and the streets of Leipzig were desolate at 10 o'clock as we drove, nothing open, no people, no traffic. Weird.

Tonight was the 11th show in a row and the crew and band are really ready for a day off tomorrow in Milan.

So long,

Richard