Fruit Bats European Tour Diary Pt.12 Porto
By: Eric D. Johnson
Porto has that great feel of all “second cities” - Manchester, Glasgow, Chicago... Real deal, and more indicative of the country you’re in. Nice bustle here. We played at an old movie theatre that looked like it had been built and designed in around 1966 and then kept in pristine condition ever since. Theater shows are kind of weird though for a full rock band. We played on the big high well lit stage to a full house, but couldn’t see anybody. We could hear them, though, and they were a friendly and receptive audience of ghosts. I went to sleep in the hotel above the venue right after our set, with Vetiver playing sweet songs underneath my head. The next day I woke up and explored the city a little bit. Walking around the buzzing streets of Porto, I came upon a traffic snarl up a narrow street that stretched for blocks on end. I decided to walk up to the end of traffic to see what was up. Through some strange miracle, a gigantic semi truck had gotten down the tiny medieval street and was in the process of either backing in (or out) of an even tinier alleyway by executing an absolutely impossible looking thousand point turn. Traffic was blocked for about a mile or so. Cars were stopped, bus stops were clogged with people as the bus line was closed by the truck. We all stood and gawked until the trucker (whom I was feeling kinda sorry for) smashed into a store sign with his huge roof, eliciting gasps and cries from the gathering crowd. Police began to arrive. I wandered off - I couldn’t bear to watch the fate of the sad man who was just trying to do his job - and who’d shut down a whole downtown in the process. Back to Spain now, to green green Galicia and then on to Basque country.
Artists in this article: Fruit Bats