Ah! Austrian Country Side! I grew up right there.

Saw my mom

and mother in-law.

Nieces and nephews wanted to start a snail farm..

Walter Fischbacher branching out on some sort of wood xylophone.

First gig in Perg, at a jazz brunch. Great grand piano! (it's a yamaha s6, for you gear heads)

Flowers! Yeah!

Looked up a friend in Perg - fab recorder player and Rennaissance man Winfried Hackl.

A couple of Prague impressions...

Hari with American expatriot Carmine - don't they look trendy?

Jazz Club Agartha in Prague

Hanging with manager Hana Zajicova and friends in Prague

Jazz Club Teplice

In Teplice our van finally got broken into. Luckily it was empty. As Walter F. put it very pointedly: "The people in Teplice don't know yet, that it doesn't make sense to break into a jazz musician's van..."

With the above contraption we drove from Teplice in Czech Republic to Cologne, eight looooonnnng hours.
Wouldn't you know it - it was hailing and pouring on the autobahn!

Water poured into our van during our drive from Teplice to Cologne.

Our gig at Hof 242 in Cologne.

Chris Tarry hanging with the cook! This guy makes one mean soup!!!

Chris and Hari searching for charts...oh well...

The next day we hit a really bad bit of traffic.

But the people in Recklinghausen were supernice, had a chef just for the band, who cooked up a great deer dish for the guys and salad for me (sorry, vegetarian...)

Anke and Klaus put us up for the night in their fantastic house there. A BIG thank-you!

Next up I played a gig with a different set of musicians at Paul Link's birthday party in Cologne. The guy lives in a church, for crying out loud!!!

Drummer Phil Maturano taking a nap before the gig, guarded by manager Luzia Fecke's faithful dog Teddy...

while bassist Dave King and pianist Christian Torkewitz were playing with their cell phones.

The church!

Hanging with pianist Jarry Singla at the church. Kinda looks like Easter...

On to the final gig at Villa Ignis, reunited with Walter, Chris and Hari.

A gorgeous villa...

the villa dog

Finally Walter broke out his tuning equipment to guarantee for a tuned piano sound.

some equipment impressions...I got some nice biceps from lugging all that stuff around...like my microphone, really heavy.

Dave King and Luzia Fecke engaged in some mystical cooking activity.

Our well deserved final meal at the end of an intense little tour.

Got up a stupid o'clock in the morning to catch a plane in Duesseldorf...

and arrived to a glorious sunset on the Williamsburg bridge.
A final shout-out to all who have worked to make this tour happen, who fed and housed the band and fought with the promoters.
Peace
Elisabeth