Brian's Bohemian Blues Diary - The jazz gang has headed back to Toronto and I made my way to Hamburg to rendezvous with harmonica ace Butch Coulter and head out on a tour of the Czech Republic. We spent a day in Hamburg and I had a chance to hang out in a cafe on their equivalent of Queen St West, except it was across from a boarded-up historic building that is full of squatters trying to get the city to turn it into a drop-in centre. The city already provided a place a few doors down where junkies could get a clean needle (or methadone). Didn't get to hear any music but walked by the the place where Beatles played before they made it and dropped into a music store in the Reeperbaum, though we had to make our way through street after street of strip bars and sleaze joints.
Next morning, Butch and I got on a train to the Czech Republic. Butch had bragged about the punctuality of German trains but as it turns out this one was delayed due to an accident on the previous train, so we were a half-hour late for our connection but they held the train and we were on our way through the former East Germany into Czech Republic.