In part one of her European tour diary, Teeth And Tongue’s JESS CORNELIUS has a mini-meltdown in London, finds refuge in a World War II bomb shelter in Nantes and gets lost in translation in Spain.

Tuesday, June 1: London

It’s embarrassing not being able to lift your own suitcase up the stairs. Or on and off the train. Or over a roadside curb. It’s even more embarrassing when the stairs are in London’s underground at peak-hour, you haven’t slept for 48 hours, and you’re supposed to be on tour. Right now I look like a dip-shit Australian tourist who’s packed too many pairs of shoes and is planning to backpack around Europe with 40 kilos of luggage. Plus it’s raining (this is London, after all) my arms and feet and back hurt, and I have no idea where I really am. I start weeping, of course. I always do. I did the same thing in JFK airport six years ago. There’s something about the combination of aloneness, exhaustion, heavy guitar cases and public transport that never fails to break me.

Being paranoid about my old 505 drum machine breaking down in Europe, I’ve packed two identical machines, both programmed with the same patterns. I’ve also packed two matching footswitches for it, two sets of power supplies, two power boards, an extension lead, adaptors for the UK and Europe, a bunch of rather heavy guitar pedals – you get the picture. Add flight cases, a laptop, guitar and a few clothes, and a light traveller I am not. I’ve got the kind of set-up that needs airport-to-hotel transfers for every leg, and let’s face it: I can’t afford the hotel, let alone the transfer.

Up until this point I’d been doing rather well. I’d spent the whole flight from Melbourne watching back-to-back movies not starring Jennifer Aniston and, thanks to an old school friend, had spent the dreaded 13-hour stopover in a marble swimming pool in the middle of Dubai. (Yeah, I didn’t realise anyone actually lived there either.) London, however, is not a balmy 40 degrees; it’s grey and drizzly and I need help just to cross the road. I give up trying and eventually my good host Lucy finds me sitting dejectedly in an old-man pub, eating peanuts and doing the crossword. We take my gear to Hackney and then meet up with Danny Rogers for dinner, who takes us to see Beach House play at a gay club called Heaven. There are glittery 3D diamonds spinning behind Victoria’s head, and the strains of ‘10 Mile Stereo’ washing over the audience. I’m full of Japanese food, and most importantly, I’m not carrying anything heavy. Life is good again.

Friday, June 4: Nantes and Paris

I’ve made the decision to catch trains as much as possible. There are no luggage weight limits, and no obscure airports plonked in obscure paddocks. There is the imagined romance of a “dining car”. There is the promise of quaint French countryside rolling gently past the window. In reality the train goes so fast you don’t see a damn thing.

By now I’ve scaled back my luggage to gig equipment, merch and one change of clothes, and can now cross a terminal unaided. It’s a revelation. Being terrified of the French, I spend the six-hour train journey to Nantes absorbed in my phrasebook, and nearly miss my stop, clambering out all flustered and getting my wobbly suitcase wheels stuck in the doors of the train. The sun is stupidly hot. I didn’t think France got hot, but there you go. It does.

A nice French boy meets me at the station and takes me to the venue, Blockhaus DY-10. It’s an old concrete bomb shelter from WWII, and I don’t think much has changed since then, save a lick of paint. It has concrete rooms with low ceilings, and iron ladders leading to other concrete rooms, all full of designer looking types chain-smoking and scribbling on pieces of paper. I soundcheck on the makeshift stage with a very accommodating sound engineer, but my French is limited to “je suis desole”, a phrase I begin to utter with the verve of a catholic schoolgirl. Luckily for the engineer and me, “reverb” in English is pretty much “reverb” in French, so we leave it at that and go out the back to eat.

The headlining band, These Are Powers, are from Brooklyn. Apparently, the bass player used to be in a band called Liars. Anyway they’re really nice guys and together we eat the salads and cheese that the promoter’s girlfriend has made for us. Finally the sun goes down at about 10.30pm. I play my set and stumble through some between-song banter: “Je suis desole, je ne parle…”
“…pas Francais!” yell the audience. I guess they’re used to it.

These Are Powers play a set of intense electro-rap, with their Grace Jones-esque singer Anna growling and spitting in huge gold glasses and glittering top. The crowd are into it, but some of them look a bit confused because they thought they were getting a rock band. They line up for CDs and photos, and practice their English on me.

The next day I nearly miss my train (again) after getting lost in Nantes. Luckily I’ve been drinking a lot of espresso so I can run for it, but I don’t get a seat and it costs me 80 euros even though I have to stand for the entire two-hour journey. The fat train conductor yells at me in French because I don’t have a pre-bought ticket, and when I explain that I can’t speak French his face goes all pink and he yells even harder.

I rent a cheap hotel in Paris and spend the next two days eating croissants and getting scowled at. It’s fabulous. The music scene might be a little non-existent, unless you play French traditionals or dance-pop, but the living seems easy (for some) and the women are very beautiful. I meet up with Australian ex-pat Tom Cooney, who toured last year with Laura Jean, and he seems to do OK here. He’s almost fluent in French. The bastard.

Tuesday, June 8: Girona and Barcelona

I’ve barely boarded the overnight train to Barcelona before I have to switch languages. The stewardess is saying something in Spanish about my passport but I don’t understand so I just give it to her and go back to sleep. I’ve got one of those eye mask things to shut out the light, and earplugs in my ears. Otherwise I’d get no sleep at all.

The stewardess almost throws me off the train when we get to Girona. She has to; it just looks like a service station and I don’t believe her. I buy a phrasebook as soon as I arrive but it is written in 1953 and contains useful phrases like, “I should like this leather wallet embossed” and “Bring me a warm towel!”, but nothing to help me use a payphone or find an internet cafe.

By now it’s 7am and I have nothing to go on except the phone number of the promoter for tonight’s show, who I’ve never met. I don’t even know his name. I kill a few hours at the train station, so as to be less offensive when I call, and then discover that my newly purchased UK mobile has run out of credit. After another couple of fruitless hours trying to make calls from a payphone, I trundle off into the city with all my gear to find a Vodaphone shop. Eventually a staff member informs me that topping up my empty UK phone from Spain is “lo imposible”. I buy another goddamn phone.

"I’ve barely boarded the overnight train to Barcelona before I have to switch languages. The stewardess is saying something in Spanish about my passport but I don’t understand so I just give it to her and go back to sleep."

At about midday a short, unusual-looking man finds me close to tears in front of what I think is city hall. Everything is paved in faded yellow stone like a Franco Zeffirelli film set, and none of the buildings look newer than 1700. It’s quite beautiful but I’m not really in the mood. Albert takes me up nine flights of winding stone steps to his tiny apartment, and offers me his bedroom, where I promptly pass out. When I wake up I don’t see anyone so I stumble outside onto the terrace, a concreted courtyard overlooking the city. A drooping washing line is strung up between the guttering and the low stone wall. The sun is blazing hot and Albert has dragged his ancient, grubby PC outside and has set it up under a beach umbrella, where he is typing and smoking. The monitor takes up most of the plastic picnic table and the drive sits underneath it. He’s also dragged out a wooden cabinet with a record player set in the top, and he’s spinning ’60s Hawaiian music.

We go down to the venue, Café El Cercle, which is just around the corner. Like most of the other buildings here, it is a rough-hewn stone cave, a terribly romantic and secret looking place, with candles nestled in the stone walls and glass bottles of all shapes and colours glowing behind the bar. We eat toasted bread rubbed with cut tomato, and some crazy preserved meats, and drink beer.

I can’t see a stage but Albert moves a few tables and brings out a two-watt practice amp the size of a Weetbix box. I set up on the floor and we do a bit of a sound-check, with various young men dropping in every five minutes to offer their opinions, in Spanish, on the sound levels. Even at this low volume the PA is distorting everything, including the drum machine, which seems to actually improve the sound. Good to know.

I’ve been warned that the audience will expect a longer show, so I manage to pull out some oldies and stretch it out to an hour. They still yell at me when I start packing up, and some of them sound like they mean it. But I offload a bunch of merch, and drink mojitos with the barman’s cute girlfriend and her teenage friends. Everyone chain smokes.

The next day I catch a train to Barcelona. I visit the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia and Gaudi’s Cascada (waterfall, fountain, gold-plated horses etc.) at the Parc de la Ciutadella , and stay in a beautiful 18th-century apartment belonging to a friend of a friend of a friend. We eat patatas bravas and drink red wine at two euros a bottle. I take photos that I don’t remember taking and then someone puts me quietly to bed.

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PART TWO: Tapas in Spain, a return leg to London and Radlers and currywurst in Berlin.