The following was written by The Smoking Jackets:

Today, Wednesday, is the first day that I really wish I had brought a better camera. Veseli nad Moravou looks completely different in the daylight, distinctly eastern European. Despite of the adventurous “we don’t need a guide” attitude of the previous night, we still need a truck to move our equipment, so Joel calls his booking agent, whom we met at the gig last night and whose name might be – but probably isn’t – Jure, and asks for a new driver. Jure finds a driver with a real van but says that he won’t be able to pick us up until the late afternoon, so we again spend the first part of the day wandering around town doing errands and killing time, hence the desire for a camera.

The driver shows at about 4pm. He doesn’t speak too much English, and his name is incomprehensible to us. He’s friendly, but this guy is a professional. He loads the worst of our equipment into the big VW van himself, and then we hit the road with hardly a word for what will be about a three hour drive, Joel riding with the new driver and Tiago again riding with me.

The need for a camera skyrockets when we realize that the way to the next town on the tour is not primarily by highway, but by country back road. This is hilly farmland interspersed with patches of forests in places. We can’t really figure out what’s growing in most places, but there are entire fields that are completely covered in yellow flowers, kilometer-wide squares of solid color.

This is also the best/most insane driving that I’ve been able to do so far in this country. Appropriately, our driver’s professionalism extends to his driving. He handles his van like a sports car. On the highway, the Polo almost can’t keep up. I’m literally flooring it in the highest gear and downshifting to accelerate past other cars (am I doing that right?) just to keep the van in my distant sights, though I still don’t think I manage to break 175km/h.

But it really gets exciting when we hit the farmland that I mentioned. Here the Polo can actually keep up with the van, but the driver is still leading me through hairpin turns at a solid 100km/h on roads that would be one lane in the U.S. but on which there is nonetheless an occasional approaching car (course obstacle) that we pass without touching the breaks. Speeding through the eerily deserted winding streets of the occasional tiny hillside town at dusk vaguely reminds me of C’était un Rendez-vous, even though I’m in the wrong country and I’m driving a Polo and I just learned to drive stick 48 hours ago.

We get to the gig. The town is called Trebic. Our hotel is in the Jewish quarter, in the dead center of the one of the wildest ally complexes I’ve ever seen. The gig is just a few blocks away, in what looks like an old theater with a huge stage.

We unload fast and hit the stage without even changing. The show is a little rougher than the night before, but it has its moments, and the energy is there so we don’t even take a break between what should have been two sets and end up playing for over two hours without stopping.

Two gigs down. Hopefully we’re warmed up for the three night stint in Prague that starts tomorrow.

Note: not my actual car