when you're on tour everyone thinks it's marvelous and you get to see all these strange and wonderful places. Now touring is indeed marvelous but actually you don't really get to see much of the places you visit or hang out with the local peeps in a normal fashion. this is a great shame. You do get a weird sort of tour vibe guide to places. This may or may not represent the place as a whole. In some ways Beat Stevie is a big magnifying glass at the way the world looks when seen through the beer goggles of us on the road.
Last week in Poland I learnt about Polish Queuing. Polish queueing is indeed entirely unlike queuing at all. Polish people don't queue. This is because under communist rule there wasn't anything in the shops and if there was you would have to queue a long time for it. So they hate queuing. And if they have to queue for bread only to find there is no bread there well they're really going to hate queuing. So they don't queue. In Poland a queue is simply an invitation for you to come up with the most elaborate excuse going for pushing to the front. It has universal appeal and you are just as likely to be barged out of the way by an incontinent old woman in a wheel chair as anyone. As an Englishman i believe it is my right to queue and maintain my position without recourse to elbows or jostling. If attempting to get anywhere in Poland you must sling your Englishness aside and be prepared to mosh.