Status report: this keyboard is mqking ,e diwy

So! We're in Belgium. Braving this unreasonably foreign keyboard, I'll try to jot down the happenings of the first day.

The trip from Stockholm began simply with a train journey to Jönköping, during which I learnt two useful pieces of information:
1. It takes a good long while.
2. Patton Oswalt has indeed got his shit together. Funny man.

Our luxurious tour bus (a van) was supplied by an odd indian man who, I've been told, looks like a Bollywood Supafly. This exciting day was finished off nicely by sleeping on the floor - in my case under the kitchen table - at a friend's house, making use for the first time of my brand new sleeping bag and inflatable matress.
We got up the next day, real early, to get started on the long drive to Lommel, Belgium.

The trip was mostly uneventful, in fact I didn't even notice when we crossed the border from one country to the next (Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Belgium.)
It was with regret that we firmly established one German stereotype as being accurate: Germans want you dead.
We just wanted fries, and we knew some broken German, but those old, angry ladies off the autobahn didn't take kindly to strangers. Wierd.

Our first impression of Belgium and the band The Violet was to be a very representative one.
We got in touch with them as we approached Lommel and were told to come to a party. Sure, what the hell, we might as well make it a full 24-hour day.
Max got so hammered he tried to get out of a moving car and still denies any memory of that particular evening.
The place we stayed at gave me another insightful tip about Belgium in general: all of Belgium smells like weed, all the time.
It was cold, too.