Helmond translates to “hell mouth,” and it is here that we are to play our forth show, which is shaky from the get-go as a couple of days before there is some problem with ticket pre-sales, and opening acts. Whatever, it doesn’t seem to big of a deal when we get there. The excited receptionist at the hotel warns that Helmond is a sketchy town full of gypsy thieves and 24/7 party people. After walking around town I can conclude that the only danger would be coming from a slightly mobile geriatric population. The club plato poppod!um is a boxy venue with what looks like good PA sound stuff to me (big boards, etc) and nasty dude graffiti in the dressing room. I think the place normally hosts the usual unknown pre-pubescent metal acts that germinate in towns with not much to do. Saga is playing here in a few weeks. In other words, perhaps not our scene…that’s all. But club personel are all super nice folks. To date it’s not exactly our most well populated show, but the sound on stage was great and I think we played really well. The crowd was super and I have to give a shout out to the 3 dudes that drove from Germany. Good times. I was just on Flickr and happened to come across pictures that Linda’s friend Marleen took of the show. She designed our rad t-shirts. On the way back we stopped and I picked up Hamkas, my favorite Dutch snack (ham flavored puffy things). Scott ate some smelly sausage log.

We sleep at the Novotel and head to Nijmegen today for our only day off. Two days in one hotel is looking like luxury at this point. Nijmegen, which is the oldest city in the Netherlands (2000 years old!), is lively and pretty spread out. This is also the hometown of Eddie and Alex Van Halen. We hit the downtown area, which is very pedestrian and shopping friendly, and get lunch (bacon pancakes for me, mmmmm….) then split up. I wander around taking photos. There are markets, the river Waal, a Casino, kids playing in water fountains that shoot up via jets in some of the cobblestoned areas (kids love that.) The Magnapop show is advertised in the record stores and this is a pretty decent sized city so I get a good feeling about the show. We are playing with Roosbeef, who we played with once last year.

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