Peter Gabriel Europe Tour Summer2004

Peter Gabriel's
Europe Tour
Spring / Summer 2004

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Page Eight
Frankfurt Show

May 9, Frankfurt

This is one of those days when the band isn't really in any city for long, especially the one with the show.
We had a nice hotel last night in Berlin. Most noteworthy feature of the hotel - that's easy, it was the toilet! I'd stayed in this chain of hotels before, and they have what I consider a very odd idea for the toilet room (it's in a room by itself.) Facing the toilet, so you can see it as you... well, as you sit on the toilet... is a pair of angled mirrors. They enable you to look at yourself! But, even stranger than this, the forty five degree angles of the two mirrors reverse the image you see. I thought long and hard how I might demostrate that with photos, but could not think of a way, so I can only describe the situation with words; you don't think about the angle at first, but if you move your head to the side, you see it's opposite side move. Then, perhaps you lift up your right arm. You see the left one go up. Here's what I tried to do - looking in the mirrors, slowly move my fingers toward my ears. Not easy - what you see makes you adjust the height, but it's backward. Well, I think I've gone into this deep enough. I will admit that I enjoyed my time there (not many toilets I like visiting, even when I don't need to) but the enduring puzzle is why in the world they designed it that way.

Moving on in the day, I was met by an old friend, artist Laurentz Thurn, who splits his time between Manhattan and Germany. He showed me copies of some of his new work and we had a good coffee at Cafe Einstein (passing a marathon on the way).

Soon enough it was time to head to the airport, fly to Frankfurt and get to soundcheck. The giant Festhalle seems, as usual, bigger than most of the rest of the arenas we play. Maybe it's the huge ceiling.

Though it seemed I had taken every conceivable photo of the show, I again found lots of interesting things to shoot before and during it.





I was given a copy of a German magazine with an interview of me. One of the photos caught my attention - I've played with famous artists, and for presidents and heads of state, but the real honor came when someone did a SouthPark version of me. And somehow, that's made it to the article.









And after the show, still no visit to the city of Frankfurt for us. We flew out to Italy, where we'll spend a nice day off, and I will take photos of nothing but flowers!