The Whiskey Daredevils just returned from a road trip in Europe. Frontman Greg Miller fills us in on what happened.
Day 11: Toulouse, France
Chrsitoph and I walk to get the van, which was parked as instructed by James last night around the corner. The neighborhood, with the exception of James’s place, is meticulously groomed nice small houses with fenced in yards. Each house overlooks the foothills that roll into town. It’s a really nice suburb. Who exactly were these thieves that were going to emerge from the shadows at 3 am last night? If I were the people living nearby, I’d be worried about us. We are the sketchy looking ones.
The van is parked in front of one of these houses in an open space in the street. Christoph and I climb into the van to swing it around when an elderly man shoots across the yard to the van with surprising quickness. He must be the owner of the place, and he is really fired up about us parking in front of his house. Christoph is being lambasted in waves of French with the Old Man’s arms wildly waving about. The only word I can pick out of the whole thing is “private”. He must have woken up and stewed all morning long after seeing the LSD Trips van in his parking space. Sure, he wasn’t going to use it at 3 am, but godammit, it’s HIS space. Our German license plate must have been the last straw. “Zees Goddamn Germans think zay can park anywhere they want? In France? No!”
Chrsitoph responds to the onslaught with his own wild hand motioning in a “sorry” gesture, and shows him a piece of paper with James address on it. More torrents of French spew forth from the Old Man. I would guess that James is the fuck up neighbor everyone talks shit about, so seeing that address just pissed off the Old Man even further. I enter the fray with my go-to French saying “No parlay vous Francais man” and “Sorry, we’ll go.”. For some unknown reason, this settles him down, and he even sort of waves at us as we turn around and drive by. We load up the van without mentioning any of this to James.
