Late at night (3am) I pulled up into a small alleyway in Bergamo, outside of Milan. I’d dropped off the road crew at the hotel and made the hour trek out to pick up Maria. She’d been staying with her cousin waiting for the show. I knew that I could see her for an extra couple of hours if I jumped in the van with the crew, and I wasn’t going to pass up a few moments because I was tired (and I was tired as hell). The drive from Barcelona to Milan took an eternity and seemed to get longer as we drove. But we made it. And I saw her. And I was awake again!
Her cousin, in typical Italian fashion, kept feeding me until I somewhat rudely had to say no more! How he was so nice at that hour is incomprehensible—I’m nearly inhuman after/before a certain hour. With food in my stomach and bags in the car, we made our way back to the hotel.
Just to have her in my arms for a night was enough to fill my soul again with hope and love. That sounds extremely cheesy but life on the road can wear you down.
They say there are 3 elements to creating anything, and you can only have 2 of them in normal life–time, quality, money. Without time, I figured I’d be dropping the cash on a hotel room in order to have some quality time with Maria. Well worth the night’s sleep with the one I love. As a band we are still trying our best to reach the heights of music, and often sacrifice quality of life in places without money for cabs and time for experience.
The next day was filled with a bit of a hectic schedule back and forth from the venue with one van, causing some issues. Maria and I got to spend an hour back at the hotel and then hit the show. The show itself went well. The rules of the venue had the house lights on while we performed–that hurt, and they wouldn’t let us sell our CD due to some magnetic strip that nobody knew we had to get for our album…hmm. That hurt. But the crowd was big, and loud, and our good friends Thomas, Katja, Lisa, Hendrik, Emily, and Olivia were there to have a good time with us.
I said bye to Marie early in the morning. I hate getting used to saying bye. I stood outside as her cab pulled away and I don’t know when I’ll see her again. Milan is bitter sweet to me. I’ll miss this place but with all of the goodbyes, I have to move on too. Next up is Warsaw.