That's pronounced Zur-rich, like Richie Rich. We had a long car day that started out with a pleasant enough beginning. I was hoping to hear a rooster's crow, but instead got the yap of a small dog around 7:30 AM. Breakfast in the hotel courtyard. I love the Napoli style shot of coffee but I miss my big mug of joe. We dragged our bags over the cobblestones of Alesandria to the van, which we had to park on the street with all the equipment in it, thankfully it wasn't stolen in the night. During load up, I couldn't find my passport (in my gig bag) or my wallet (in the pocket of the pants that I am wearing). OK, everything was fine, and we hit the road, the same stretch past Milan, then veer to the north and onward to Switzerland. Lorenzo was bummed when we went past the last AutoGrill . A few of my friends who have travelled Italy told me how good the food was at the AutoGrill- and they were right. it's no truckstop grease pit. One AutoGrill we saw is over the freeway, with parking lots on either side. OK, enough about the AutoGrill.

As you approach the Swiss frontier, there starts to be some nice rolling hills. There was a backup at border customs due to the G8 meeting, but it was only queued up a couple Kilometers. Then the road starts to wind through long tunnels near beautiful lakes with little Playmobile towns and Brio trains station, with waterfalls on the rocks every where you look and little tiny houses perched way up in the hills. "Heidi" is no myth!. Most impressive was Lago Lucerne which seemed to be more of an inland ocean, but generously dotted with sailboats. Too bad we couldn't get out of the van and actually touch anything.

Until we got to Zurich... the first thing we did is pulled into a random parking garage so that we could find internet to then find the club. Lorenzo's mobile internet access ended at the Italian border. We came out of the underground garage in an area that looked a lot like Union Square in S.F., with big department stores and Benetton type stores. And an Apple store with free internet, so a map to the club was produced and we drove over, we were only 1.5 km away.

La Catrina is the smallest club we have ever played in, the room is about 20' x 40', with a fairly small stage. We set up and run through a few songs, them find the Rothouse Hotel (means red house, not rat house, though this area of town is more Amsterdam than Tenderloin.)

Our rooms remind me of an Amsterdam pension as well, plain with lots of single beds. Very clean, no problem. Except that the club was supposed to reserve a parking space for us, but didn't, so we have to park the van on the street, and leave our equipment in the club for safe keeping. It's really noisy outside our window as we overlook the main drag. Constant street sounds from buses, cars, people shouting, ambulances.

We met up with our contact with the club Micaela, a Spanish woman who moved to Zurich as a grad student 10 years ago, and never left. She takes us out to an nice Italian restaurant called Celia down the Silhalenstrasse from our hotel. I have the gnocci, excellent.

Back to the hotel, briefly, then to the club. As I said, the club is very small; there is a nice outdoor area but they have to keep the doors closed because the neighborhood is residential. It's completely packed with about 40 people, who are very eager for the show to begin. We start off with our standard set openers-- Teleport, Cutlass Supreme, Tsunami Supreme, Night Sticks, Peaches en Regalia. After that, the set is almost completely different from last night. I mentioned the Coldplay song, but there was some booing so we didn't get to it. I can see that that song is going to be very polarizing, you either love it or hate it.

It was incredibly hot in the room, I was sweating so much, I was a fountain. But the crowd was good and danced a lot, so we kept the tempos fast. We played for about an hour and 1/2, finishing up with our choreographed version of "Surf Party" and then Slacktone's "Bells of St. Kahuna" as an encore.. After the show, Jeff holds court outside with table full of new friends, he suddenly speaks fluent German. I hang with Lorenzo by the merch table selling a bunch of CDs and a few Ts.

Back at the Rothouse– It is really noisy outside our window, as our room overlook the main drag. The wall of random noise continues from buses, cars, people shouting and Euro ambulances with that two note doppler shifting siren. We have to close the window to sleep, but the heat is stifling, so Jeff opened it around 3AM, the cat-calls of the tranny prostitutes have died down al little. 8AM now, it is raining outside, finally cooling things off a little. Breakfast, then hopefully the van will still be wherever it was parked, and our gear will still be in the club, and then we leave for the 3 hour ride to Stuttgart.