{"id":2637,"date":"2015-10-26T11:48:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T11:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennywilsonmusic.wordpress.com\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2015-10-26T11:48:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T11:48:59","slug":"my-european-musical-adventure-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/2015\/10\/26\/my-european-musical-adventure-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"My European Musical Adventure Part 2 October 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Frankfurt<\/a>
Frankfurt Station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u00a0arrived in Frankfurt<\/span> at about 10.30 p.m. It was an easy run and the bus station was next to the railway station, like they are in many European cities. It makes sense. Why don\u2019t they do that in British cities? Mind you, the bus stations have a very different atmosphere. There is a slight air of desperation with people waiting for buses, an atmosphere of uncertainty. And things happen that don\u2019t happen elsewhere. Everyone has a story to tell!<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a bit nervous when I arrived at Frankfurt. After my experiences with the hostel in Brussels I was afraid that things may go wrong. Also, the reviews of the hotel I was staying in were not great. There was talk of drug addicts and prostitutes hanging about outside the hotel! Well, at least they weren\u2019t inside and, actually, it turned out to be fine! Yes, it was a slightly dodgy area but it was really close to the station and the town centre and it was clean and had a 24 hour reception which meant I wasn\u2019t standing around for hours outside. I had a really good night\u2019s sleep!<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know what to expect with Frankfurt. When I worked out my itinerary for the trip it was a convenient stop on the way from Brussels to Prague and it\u2019s a place I didn\u2019t really know anything about apart from it was where hot dogs were invented! I certainly wasn\u2019t expecting a major festival to be happening that had taken up most of the town. I eventually found out it was a commemoration of the re-unification of Germany. Things were happening everywhere. I decided that busking was not really going to be feasible. There was noise coming from countless tents and stages. At night there was a major rock concert in the centre of town with thousands of people and a major police presence. Very exciting. Yet again, my busking plans had been thwarted (or was I just bottling out?!).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Festival<\/a>
Festival time in Frankfurt. Stages everywhere!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyway, I decided to try and rent a bike from the stands outside the station. This time I had more luck and I managed to get the pay station to accept my credit card. However, it took a long time for me to work out how to actually unlock the bike. The instructions for everything were in German and when I tried to phone the helpline the operator knew nothing about how to hire the bikes. Great helpline!! In the end I worked it out by downloading the Android phone app that was in English and I realised that hiring the bike was easier than I thought. Fantastic! I went cycling off round the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Got<\/a>
Got the bikes to work! Liberation!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The city is interesting with a futuristic financial area full off postmodernist buildings and hipster delis. It was so nice not having to walk but still be able to get round and see everything! Bliss!! As expected, there are very few old buildings but it has a good atmosphere and it is very nice down by the river. I had an Indian meal from a market stall which wasn\u2019t that great but it filled me up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
View from Frankfurt Station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Frankfurt<\/a>
Frankfurt centre. Many interesting modern buildings.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At night I had a look round for live music venues. There is a street with several jazz clubs and bars down in it and I was heading for these. I had been told about a bar called Club Voltaire that I went to but when I got there it looked a bit dull so I didn\u2019t stay long. I also never got to the jazz clubs. On the way I came across a bike park and decided to do more biking, this time at night. Loved it! What a liberating feeling biking is! Then I went back to the hotel and watched Star Wars Episode 1<\/em> on my computer. It was better than I remember it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Frankfurters<\/a>
Frankfurters everywhere cooked over wood barbecues!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next morning I went to the bus station to get the bus to Prague, the next city on my list.The stop I wanted was down a side street. The buses are actually clean and comfortable but the bus station was a complete mess. Rubbish was everywhere. The bins were either overflowing or broken. This is not what I expected in a German city! There was also nowhere for passengers to sit and wait. I was beginning to feel like a second class citizen. It was good experience though and the other passengers were really friendly, and of course it is really cheap! You may think it\u2019s odd me saying it\u2019s a \u201cgood\u201d experience but at least part of what I was doing was to see things from a different perspective, and it made me aware of how other\u00a0people live and survive. It made me a part of things just by being there. There really were shades of the Jack Kerouac zeitgeist in what I was doing. I was on the outside looking in and I saw much that I haven\u2019t seen before.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trip from Frankfurt to Prague is really good. The scenery is wonderful and there are hundreds of miles of pristine forest. The only stop we made was at Nuremberg which is pretty grim. Glad I wasn\u2019t staying although lots of passengers got off there. You can\u2019t just base opinions on what a place looks like. It\u2019s the people that count and Nuremberg\u2019s history is pretty disturbing what with the carpet bombing and Sovietisation. It makes Coventry look picturesque! I was glad to get back into the beautiful countryside though.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"On<\/a>
On the bus to Prague<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Prague is a beautiful city. I think it was the nicest place I\u2019ve been to on the whole trip. Again, it wasn\u2019t good for busking because of punitive by-laws. You need a licence and can only play for an hour at a time. Some of the buskers on Charles Bridge were brilliant, among the best I\u2019ve ever seen. There were two accordionists playing Bach fugues, perfectly! I decided not to go rogue, and didn\u2019t busk!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Prague<\/a>
Prague at night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unfortunately, there were no street bikes to hire so I was back on foot. I went all over and was particularly impressed\u00a0 by the Franz Kafka Museum. It didn\u2019t have many exhibits but it presented itself as a kind of art installation and it gave a real insight into the work of Kafka, especially his novel, The Castle<\/em>. It\u2019s inspired me to revisit his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Franz<\/a>
Franz Kafka Museum, Prague<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Kafka's<\/a>
Kafka’s illustrations of The Castle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That night I took my accordion to an open mic at The Red Room <\/em>bar. This was very good and I made lots of new friends including a couple from San Francisco who were doing a European tour. They did a brilliant version of Voodoo Chile<\/em> by Jimi Hendrix using acoustic guitar and voice. Check them out: The Jeff Jolly Band.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a>
Red Room Open Mic, Prague. Jeff and Desiree playing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Statue<\/a>
Hilarious statue outside the Kafka Museum, Prague<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next morning I was up early to get a bus to Berlin. This left at seven in the morning but I made it. It stopped at Dresden which is also a grim East German city that suffered terribly in the War. It made me realise how profoundly affected Europe was by the War, something I hadn\u2019t really realised as a child growing up in Leicester which was relatively unaffected by bombing, although I did know about Coventry which was another beautiful city reduced to rubble! I went there as a child to visit the new Cathedral on a school trip.It was very memorable, especially the statue of Lady Godiva! What a terrible thing war is!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Kurferstendamm<\/a>
Kurferstendamm Berlin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Alexanderplatz,<\/a>
Alexanderplatz, Berlin. Full of strange, dislocated people.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Berlin was my last stop and I only stayed there for a day before I went back overnight on the bus to Brussels. I went to a strange bar that night that had an open mic. It had a stream flowing down the bar! The barman didn\u2019t think I was drinking enough beer. He was quite eccentric! It was mainly songwriters and the standard was really high. The atmosphere wasn\u2019t as good as some of the places I\u2019ve been to and I left early to make sure I got the metro back to the hotel before it shut down for the night.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Arcanao<\/a>
Arcanao Bar Open Mic, Berlin. Some really great singer\/songwriters!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had most of the day in Brussels before I got the train back to London so I decided to go to the Musical Instrument Museum and the\u00a0Magritte Museum. Both were really interesting, especially the Magritte. I\u00a0never realised a seminal surrealist could be so conventional and bourgeois! Still, I like his work!<\/p>\n

\"Magritte<\/a>
Magritte Museum, Brussels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Outside,<\/a>
Outside, the riot squad are getting restless, they need somewhere to go..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Got back to London at 7 p.m. Adventure over, but there’ll be another one\u00a0soon!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0arrived in Frankfurt at about 10.30 p.m. It was an easy run and the bus station was next to the railway station, like they are in many European cities. It makes sense. Why don\u2019t they do that in British cities? Mind you, the bus stations have a very different atmosphere. There is a slight air […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,35,66],"tags":[119,137,163,269,334],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-music","category-travel","tag-berlin","tag-busking","tag-coventry","tag-kenny-wilson","tag-open-mic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}