Liebeslieder singen!

We’re now in Germany, having spent a big chunk of our time in Greece recording a record-breaking number of love songs. The Greek public took to the idea with a level of enthusiasm we could only have dreamed of and despite the August heat they came in their hundreds to sing for us. We then caught a boat to Italy and travelled up through the Alps (putting a beacon on the Lunghin pass at 2645metres on the way!) and now into Germany. This weekend we’re back in Neustadt an da Weinstrasse where we came in May to record some love songs at the Hambach! Demokratie festival. Its really nice to be back here both because its a really beautiful, peaceful part of the world but also because its offered us a chance to reflect on the journey, having now made a complete circuit across the continent. We’re staying in the same place we were in May, in the driveway of a lovely lady called Birgit who likes our ‘friendly dotted van’ and who brings us cakes she’s baked. Since we were last here we’ve stayed overnight in a vast range of weird and wonderful places. On the side of busy highways in Belgium, on the banks of mosquito invested swamps in Lapland, in farmyards, in an orchard, in huge monolithic campsites with waterparks, gyms and tennis courts and in someone’s back garden. We’ve slept (or tried to anyway) on a beach in Greece surrounded all night be fishermen towing their boats in and out of the water, we’ve slept in a village square in Portugal, a vineyard in Hungary, on the banks of a lake in Macedonia. Carparks in city centres, churchyards, boatyards, in the middle of a busy music festival, directly under a relentlessly chirpy nightingale’s perch in France, in the Alps at 2000 metres, on a ferry, in a truck stop completely surrounded by huge articulated lorries. Its been many nights on the road, some more restful than others, and being back in this part of Germany feels already a little like coming home. We only have 5 weeks left of the journey so the end is close but we still have journeys to Finland to visit the brilliant Anti-festival, The Netherlands and Romania! A final audacious, flourish of crazy long distance drives for this audacious crazy project before we come home to Bristol on the 20th October. Hopefully we’ll meet you somewhere soon x