Greetings from Berlin again,

It's the morning after our first concert here in Germany and we're all still buzzing from the night before. We have an awesome bus and it's such a great band vibe all around as we see our fans have not only not forgotten us but are more enthusiastic than ever.

Last night at the Columbia here in Berlin it was like performing for a home town audience. They knew every word, especially "Boat on the River." It was our first time to perform it with the full band rather than as an unplugged song. Todd created a hypnotic rhythm pattern on his full kit and Lawrence's keyboards kept to the essence of the song while expanding the song's horizons ever so subtly so that it fit in nicely among our other bigger electric numbers.

We had been focusing intently on speaking the language as we addressed the crowd but in the middle of JY's introduction of "Snowblind" as Lawrence turned his back and sat down at his keyboard, I heard a very distinct female voice shout, "Hey, you've got a really nice ass!" That broke the ice and we knew that we were understood regardless of our choice of languages. The German fans do love their Rock Music and we gave them a double dose all night long. "I Am The Walrus" went over wonderfully and "I Don't Need No Doctor" raised the temperature to a level of wanting to remove items of clothing, which Lawrence did as we said good night, stripping off his T-shirt and tossing it to the crowd. Our manager said that after that number, there was a line at our merch stand and we sold twice as many CDs as we expected.

Berlin, you made us love you. We can't wait to return.

Now, in a few minutes Jason will be knocking to collect our bags. Yep, Jason's back! It's like he was never gone. He slipped right back into "Jaypo" mode (short for Jason Powell) and we were all happy to see him in our midst again. We are blessed with our STYX family members, which means band and crew. Our gang made us feel right at home again, even though we know it was a job getting all the rental gear and our personal gear talking to each other and behaving for our nearly two hour set. As far as we were concerned it was status quo and felt just like our A-rig back in the USA. Cheers to our crew!

So, now we're off to Hamburg to do it again tonight, then head to Sweden on an overnight drive. See you there!

TS