The talented ladies of Della Mae (would that be Della Maes or Dellas Mae?) will be providing a travelogue of their European tour here at Bluegrass Today. This second installment comes from fiddler Kimber Ludiker.
Today is the second day this week that we will have eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner in three different countries. A few days ago it was Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Today it is Germany, Holland, and Belgium.
To say this has been a whirlwind tour would be a complete understatement! Besides the aforementioned countries, we have also been to England, France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. Tomorrow we head to Finland (and have a layover in Latvia- bonus country!!). 12 countries and 6 currencies. On average, we have been in at least two countries per day. Told you it was a more than a whirlwind!
So far my favorite experience was going to Norway. I am the first member of my family to return to our homeland since my relatives moved to the United States 3 generations ago. This spurred a lot of excitement in my family, and I learned a lot about my fiddle heritage. It turns out that I’m at least a 5th generation fiddle player!
You’ll be excited to know that there are plenty of young bluegrass fans in Europe! There was a big pickin’ party after our show in Oslo, Norway. Even though we had a 6:00 a.m. lobby call for a flight to Denmark, then a show in Sweden, I still played tunes and got to know some incredible people until 4:00 a.m.! I even learned some Finnish for our show in Helsinki tomorrow.
Today we made a diversion to Amsterdam where we saw Anne Franke’s house and walked around the city. What a beautiful city! The architecture, bicycles, canals were quite the sight to see.
We’re driving now to Antwerp, Belgium to return our big beautiful Mercedes Sprinter van. Having so much space and a king sized loft bed over the luggage compartment was fantastic, and definitely worth the challenge of driving ourselves all over Europe! We had SO much room that we were able to add a merch guy to our crew on this tour – a young man from Switzerland named Matthias. It will be hard to say goodbye to him in a few days in Finland. We are urging him to come to the States for Grey Fox, RockyGrass, and our California run.
Bluegrassing across Europe, really TIRED, and loving every second,
Kimber
