The Decline Tour Diary: Part Five

For the first time in three weeks, I have a decent coffee in my hand. We've been to seven countries, and it's only now, in Italy, have we found good coffee, which is surprising. In fairness to the other six countries, we did get a lot of vending machine coffee due to long drives.

My last update wrapped up as we were making our way into Switzerland, and you may be happy to know the country has more to offer than efficient, pocket-sized knives and oddly shaped chocolate. It's expensive, though. I'm talking six francs for a small juice. But once again the hospitality we experienced whilst there meant we only had to pay for every third or fourth meal. We also made some awesome new friends, including the guys in French-based band Sport and acoustic folk singer Greg DoH.

The first night we were there, Pat and I played an acoustic show at Base Bar in Lausanne. If you've read my previous tour diaries, you'll know that I always emphasise how awesomely Europe treats bands. Even though it was just Pat and myself onstage for 40 minutes, all six of us got pizza, as many drinks as we wanted, snacks, a place to sleep and breakfast. The Lausanne promoter, Flow, even invited us over for a fondue lunch. If you play in a band, go to Europe.

Fondue anyone?

We were getting ready for bed that night and Pat popped his head out of the bathroom and asked if it was all right to flush the toilet. We laughed with confusion and then he explained he'd heard it was against the law. No way – someone had just been messing with him, right? We Googled it, and not only is it an offence to flush after 10pm, but it's illegal to mow your lawn on Sundays or recite poetry whilst skiing down a mountain.

On the way to our show in Geneva the next day we stopped at the iconic Jet d'Eau Fountain. After a few photos, Nathan climbed over the spiked fence that stops visitors getting too close and lobbed a banana into it. 500 litres of water is shot out of the fountain every second at a speed of 200km per hour… when the Banana made contact, it exploded. Hopefully they'll let us re-enter their country next tour after we made a mockery of a national landmark.

We had to write down our setlist at the venue that night on an official Government form that the venue would submit. Apparently it was for royalties, but one of the other bands told us that we probably wouldn't ever see any money.

Nathan tearing it up in Geneva.

We hadn't heard any of the support bands before, so when One Hour Before Breakfast began setting up we expected some kind of Panic! At The Disco-Mayday Parade hybrid. Instead we were sent into shock with some post-hardcore/metal. What a confusing name for a metal band. They used to be called Last Minute Sex – a band that formed from Mr Condom.

Apparently they party so hard that they get home one hour before breakfast. The smell floating around the backstage room, and copious amount of alcohol spilt on the floor post-show confirmed such claims.

The apartment building we stayed at that night had a bomb-shelter in its basement, as did the one we had stayed at the previous night. It was slightly eerie walking around them late at night.

Packing the van the next day, to head back to Lausanne, I came across Harry's “stage shorts” sitting atop an amp. Dear lord, if you can find a worse smell, I don't want to know about it. He washed them that night. And by wash I mean cover them in hand soap in the venue's bathroom and rinse them in the sink. It's lucky he sits at the back of the stage, the last thing we need is another reason for people to head out the door.

Dan with Nico from Sport and promoter Flow.

The next day - for the first time in a long time - we woke up to a clear sky and warm temperature. We were pleasantly surprised when our GPS directed us through the heart of the Swiss Alps to get to Italy. More surprised was Harry when we found ourselves surrounded by snow after only 30 minutes from warm, sunny Lausanne and he was wearing thongs and shorts.

We made a quick pit stop to have a snowball fight and get some photos before returning to the van with numb hands. My brother, Ben, went crazy. Rolling around in the snow, eating it and sliding everywhere. It was like watching a toddler who had consumer a liter of concentrated cordial go berserk in a jungle gym. But he had seen snow before - Pat and Kye were the only “snow virgins”. “Snow big deal,” Kye said.

Cranking some Teenage Bottlerocket and blocking the van's heating vents with our hands, we continued along the narrow, snow-covered mountain roads. Harry said he felt like James Bond. Our high was brought to an abrupt halt when we reached the Italian border.

We had to pull over, unpack our luggage and accompany an officer into a room where he searched our belongings one by one. “Are you sure you don't have any drugs?” is a question I recall him asking us numerous times.

I filmed him tearing Pat's luggage apart – without his knowledge – and when I asked if I could take a picture for the tour diary, he replied, “You cannot film or take photos here because it is a military zone.” I probably should have deleted the footage, but oh well.

Pat knew a surprising amount of Italian and had somewhat of a conversation in Italian with the officer. The rest of us showed off our knowledge of the language (by saying “pizza” a bunch of times), and the officer pointed at Pat's gut and said “birra” – the Italian word for beer.

Snow selfies!

30 minutes later – after declining down a mountain that made my ears pop worse than the flights over here - we were on the outskirts of Italy, and there wasn't an inkling of snow in sight.

We made another quick stop to grab some food, and the small town we stopped in looked like something you'd expect to see on a late-night foreign film on SBS. There were kids playing soccer in the street (we helped them get a ball out of a tree), narrow streets with huge walls blocking out sunlight, and it was surrounded by endless vibrant hillsides.

Needless to say, driving a nine-seater van through some of the small alleyways almost voided our deposit on the hire. Harry managed to slowly creep his way out of town as locals starred in silent awe.

With so much gear piled into the car, whoever's driving, which is usually Harry, doesn't have much vision when it comes to changing lanes, parking or dealing with narrow roads. And so, “blame insurance” was invented. The driver will ask if what they're about to do is okay. If someone says it's “all good” and shit goes down, the driver is relieved of fault.

A border check and over-extended lunch break meant there was no chance we would make it to Rome. Instead we called it a night in Pisa, which I'm pretty sure stands for Prostitutes In Severe Abundance. There were almost as many ladies of the night as there were pizza joints, and that's a lot.

The leaning tower of Prostitutes In Severe Abundance...

You can probably guess the first thing we did the following day. We parked a 10-minute walk from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the whole way there were badgered by people trying to sell us fake Ray-Bans and Rolexes. The whole experience seemed tacky. As we walked through the huge stonewalls surrounding the tower, there was market stalls selling all kinds of cheap trinkets and souvenirs. We saw a poorly engineered tower, handed out some high-fives and left.

On the way into Rome, the puns continued. “It's a good thing I took out my SIM card, because I don't have Global Roaming,” Pat said. I think Harry is going to implement some kind of pun swear jar scenario.

For the third meal in a row, we ate pizza, and then passed out. I never thought I'd say this, but I may get sick of pizza. At least we have decent coffee for the next few days. We have a show in Rome tonight, and then we're on the home stretch with three shows left!

Written by Daniel Cribb.