There was a two hour flight delay, and they lost my luggage for a few hours,
but I arrived with all my limbs and was happy to hear people speaking Dutch again.
Ineke met us at the airport with her camera out, and we started our tour. She'll be filming us, hoping to catch some dramatic moments, and will make a documentary film at the end of our tour.
Our first stop was an organic-agricultural school in Dronten. We arrived at the dark, snowy campus looking for humans.
We were introduced to the head-master, a curly-headed woman with a charming, direct, no-nonsense attitude who had no idea who we were or why we were there.
Will, a fruit grower, had seen us play in Maastricht last year and invited us to play at the school. Stephen and him agreed on a date and we made it the first stop on our tour. But Will forgot to tell anyone we were coming to perform before heading on a six month trip around the world!
Thankfully, we were welcomed nonetheless and given a place to sleep. The next day some helpful students ran around looking for proper sound equipment, and put up posters, letting all the students know that there
would be a Canadian performance that night.
At 9pm, all the sound equipment was set up, the hall was full of students and we went on stage.
The sound was awful.
I got nervous, Stephen started to get tense, and considered ditching
the show. But after some fiddling, all sound issues were resolved and
we continued to have an amazing show, with a great audience who danced
and drank biertjes. We extended our one hour set to two-and a-half
hours because of all the encores! We played every song we could think
of. Afterwards, we joined some students for an after-party.
A student told me about a protest she participated in against the gmo
corporation Monsanto. There was a corn crop 30 km from the school, and
she threw flower seeds all over the field. The flowers grew taller
than the corn and killed off the gm corn.
I don't know how the students got up to milk cows at 5am, because
Stephen and I slept in till 1pm. It must-ve been the jet-lag...or the
Dutch weed.
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