Birdman In Berlin & Kamikaze Queens

Just came back from 4 days in Berlin where I was fortunate enough to see Radio Birdman on their 2006 European Tour on Thursday night. Had a fabulous evening at the Kalkscheune watching the boys rip it up. The lineup of Rob Younger on vocals, Pip Hoyle on keyboards and the twin guitar attack of Deniz Tek and Chris Masuak remains unchanged. You Am I's Russell Hopkinson is now on drums while Jim Dickson, a former member of the New Christs and Deniz Tek Group, is on bass.

I counted a total of 21 songs for the gig and I only recognized 5 of them as coming from the new Zeno Beach album. All of my favourite songs were played and my 2 friends from Berlin who had never even heard them before have become instant fans.

After the show Rob Younger came out and mixed with the crowd that was still drinking in the courtyard outside the venue. An Englishman who was following the tour through all its gigs who had spoken to me earlier came over and asked if I would like to meet him. I jumped at the chance of course. Rob is a top man (maybe in the language department as well) and was great to talk with. He was very softly spoken and was at the very least quite interested in learning of how myself and friends from Ballarat and Melbourne were such serious fans and followers. If you get a chance to catch then in passing then, “Book ‘Em Danno!”


Wild At Heart nightclub in Kreuzberg was taking part in the 2006 Popkomm Showcase on Saturday night with bands Phantom Rockers, Heartbreak Engines and the Kamikaze Queens.

The Kamikaze Queens playing essentially Punk / Rockabilly / Garage consist of Trinity Tarantula & Mad Kate on Voluptuous Vocals, Luscious Lloyd plucking Big Bad Bass, Tex Morton (ex Mad Sin, Nitro 17) on Twang Bomb Guitar and the sauve Nico Lipps playing Demolition Drums. Their own definition of their style is Punk Cabaret from Honky Tonk Hell!

I got a chance to talk with Trinity for half an hour which was great. She is lovely person with a good sense of humour and a very sharp mind indeed. She has lived in Berlin for 8 years although she is a San Francisco native.

She was kind enough to introduce me to Tex and Nico which was also really neat. They did a howling set that just left the place shaking to the rafters. I have rarely enjoyed a better Psycho Punkabilly band anywhere. If ever you are in Berlin look them up, style your ducktail and get on out there. These guys really rock.

Just Stay On Your Side Of The Line..OK!

We left there to travel to the citadel at Bitche up near the German border.

The citadel was truly amazing.It was the site of one of the greatest sieges of the 1870-1871 war. On 19 July 1870, France declared war to Prussia. The Prussian troops entered the French territory and attacked the citadel of Bitche on 8 August 1870. The defenders of the citadel, led by Commandant Teyssier, repulsed the Prussians, who laid siege to the fortress. Both the citadel and the city of Bitche were repeatedly bombarded. On several instances, Prussian emissaries required the surrender of the French troops. Teyssier unshakeably answered he would leave the citadel only on the orders of the French government. The siege lasted until March 1871 when Napoleon surrendered his sword to the prussian forces. By the time that occured 280,000 French troops and 140,000 German troops lay dead. On entering the citadel you get a pair of head phones which leads you through a dozen different areas within the fortress. An ongoing movie documents the entire battle as you go from room to room. Fascinating stuff.

On the flank of the citadel were Jardin pour La Paix / Garden for Peace. The aim of the "Gardens without Borders" project is to revive the shared garden history and garden culture in the crossborder "Saar-Lor-Lux" region.



To date, the following gardens have been opened to the public:
Merzig (D): Sensual Garden
Perl-Borg (D): Roman Gardens at Villa Borg
Perl (D): Baroque Garden Terraces in von Nell Park
Perl-Nennig (D): Renaissance Garden (Schloss Berg)
Mettlach-Tünsdorf (D): Farmhouse Garden
Weiskirchen (D): Perennial Garden in the spa park
Wadern-Dagstuhl (D): Manor House Garden
Merzig (D): Rose Path along the embankment of the River Saar
Konz (D): Farmhouse Garden at the Roscheider Hof
Schengen (L): Baroque Garden and Herb Garden (monastery)
Bitche (F): Garden of Peace
Pange (F): Garden of Awakening

We left there and headed west to Lembach were we stayed over night in one of the old fachwerk hotels of the area. The next morning we went a few kilometers out of town to the Four à Chaux to take a look at the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line was a powerful line of defense which stretched from Switzerland to the Ardennes in the North, and from the Alps to the Mediterranean in the South. It was a vast, dynamic, state-of-the-art, ultra-modern defensive system. Most of its components were underground, where interconnecting tunnels stretched for kilometers, and where, beneath the earth, thousands of men slept, trained, watched, and waited for a war that never came. The massive 70 tonne gun turrets could be raised or lowered by either electric motors or by a one person crank handle. These turrets would lift out of the mountain tops like gigantic steel mushrooms, deliver their bombardment and drop back into the ground when under threat from enemy bombardment. Each cannon was on a chain driven automatic loading system which could fire 100 shells per minute.

The line was built between 1929-1939 over some 700km's as a defence barrier between France and Germany. In the end, the Maginot Line was considered by many to be a failure. It was powerful and supposedly impregnable, yet it failed to save France from a humiliating defeat by the German army in 1940 when its supply lines were cut off from behind. Remarkably despite the incredible fortifications and elaborate tunnels the Germans only took 12 months to take it over after the second world war began. Men spent 3 month tours of duty down in the tunnels and trained at the French naval submarine school to make sure they would with stand the conditions imposed by the claustrophobic living environs. They slept 3 men to a bunk in rotating 8 hour shifts. It really was a remarkable insight into one of mans most unique constructions. Well worth the look. Daunting in its magnitude and saddening in its loss of life. The tour took 2.5 hours and the temperature was a steady 13 deg through out. A chilly life but safe from the bombs and bullets outside.

Tippling The White Fantastic

My holiday with my friend Graham from Katoomba in the Blue Mountains was a lot of fun and we certainly knocked up some miles both on foot and by car, train and boat. For the first 2 days we looked around the local area of Darmstadt, Bad Konig and Michelstadt. It took quite some perserverence given the heavy rain and the end of both days saw me stuffing my shoes with news paper to try and dry them.

On the Wednesday we went to Heidelberg for the ubiquitous tour of the castle and the viewing of its 220,000 litre wine barrel as well as taking the funicular rail to the top of the mountain to the Konigstuhl (Kings Seat) and then trudging back down the mountain to the city.

We left on Thursday for a main driving tour and drove north to Bingen where Graham and I jumped on one of the Rhine River cruises to Koblenz for a 2.5 hour cruise past some 50 odd castles, set amongst picturesque vineyards whilst Bettina took the car on ahead to meet us at the other end. The weather had really picked up by then so it was a magic little journey. At Koblenz where the Rhine and the Moselle Rivers meet (the Deutsch Ecke)we spent some time looking around at the magnificent statues and the fabulous old buildings of the town centre before heading off down the Moselle for the next 3 days.

We managed to score overnight appartments on most nights with balconies over looking the Moselle from where we could sip a couple of bottles of great wine and snack on cheese before heading out for dinner and more sampling of the local grape juice. On 2 evenings (after Graham and Bettina had retired for the evening) I got to meet the wine makers at 2 of the places we stayed and over long discussions on wine and viticulture styles I managed to get beautifully inebriated.



The white wines offered along the Moselle are truly magnificent with the area known as Urziger Wurzgarten getting my vote for best wine of the trip. Their Rivaner and dry Moselle were exceptional. Vineyards in this region depending on who you talk to are incredibly steep with gradients between 68-72 degrees. The grapes are harvested by a series of cable drawn pulley cars that run up the slopes between the rows of vines. Tough, hard, unrelenting work for anyone but the end result speaks for itself. Dr.Loosen 2003 Urziger Wurgarten Auslese, a very fine wine from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region is also to be found here. The meals served everywhere enroute were fantastic I have certainly put on a bit of weight of the last 16 days.

We eventually ended up in Trier for a look around before drifting across into Luxemburg for a short visit and then heading to Thionville in France for an evening. After that it was off to Colmar in the Alsace via Saint-Die (notable for its church and museum) for 2 nights and regional wine tasting at the cellar doors in Eguisheim and surrounds. After stopping off in Bitche and viewing the citadel and the "Gardens of Peace" we headed over to Lembach (entry place to view the Maginot Line)to stay the night. The following day was Wissembourg for lunch before heading up the Deutches Weinstrasse ( German wine route) through the Rhine Pfalz area. A few more tastings and purchases before rolling on home to Darmstadt.

The next couple of days were taken up with trips to vineyards closer to home around Wiesbaden at Hessische Staatsweingüter Kloster Eberbach where "The Name of the Rose" with Sean Connery, originally a book by Umberto Ecco was produced in the the holy vaults beneath the monastery.
Kloster Eberbach [klos-tur ay-bur-bark] is a 12th Century Cistercian abbey and now the HQ of the German Wine Academy. These days some of the modern dry Rheingau Rieslings are as distinguished in their own way as the great sweet wines of the region. Dry Rieslings from the Rheinpfalz further south where we had just toured had always been a different matter – richer, riper and with a healthier balance of fruit intensity and acidity. Maybe the Rheingau was just too cool a microclimate to do the same thing. Could it be a change of generation, with younger, better-educated winemakers taking over from their parents in the same way as has happened elsewhere in winemaking Europe?

All of my vineyard purchases were white wines which is what Germany and the French Alsace are reknown for, I did however score some great reds from the French supermarkets which are always favourably priced. The French supermarkets provided a wonderful array or terrines, pates, cold meats, pastries and cheeses to help keep the furnace stoked for a large part of the trip :) Mmmmmmm just love the way the French do food!!!!!

All told 1200km in the car plus the boat trip, several train trips and a great deal of walking through villages,museums, churches, up mountains, through castles and fortifications and around vineyards. Totally exhausting but really fascinating and rewarding both in an intellectual and an olfactory sense. Gave my single a brain cell a real work out :)

Grilling In The Rain

The house party this year was an incredibly wet affair with deluging rain on the day prior, the day of the party and the following 2 days. Biblical type downpours that had me searching through the cellar to find enough timber for the contruction of the next ark. This year I bought Bettina a 6x3m pavillion as a birthday gift and this turned out to be a true god send.



It was large enough for everyone to huddle under without being to cramped and successfully avoid the worst of the wind and rain. It was a good turn out in general and as for every year the food, wine and beer was delicious. The wine cellar took a real battering but we got the food mix right this year and had very little left over by comparison to the other years where it has taken weeks to munch through the remaining dishes. On the Sunday after I stood in the back garden under an umbrella and defiantly cooked my recovery bar-b-que lunch for 8 staunch hangers on.



It was pretty bizarre but it still worked even though I was forced to change my t-shirt and jeans after lunch when they continued to squelch. Yeah the price of partying on regardless. The wine cellar took a real battering over that weekend but survived the onslaught and with due care and some diligent replacement purchases on my trip through the wine growing regions of central Europe it looks remarkably better once again :)