Fanny Pack Means Something Completely Different In England

I apologize for the lack of posts lately but honestly you should blame our (formerly) best friends Brian Nedd and Jeff Merkel who showed up last week. These duds have joined up on our trip and completely changed the dynamic of the group. For example, now I'm told it's inappropriate to walk around our apartment naked or it's gross when I use my belly button as a salsa dish. Get over it and have some Tostitos with me.

Don't let their smiles fool you. They're monsters

After spending a couple days in Amsterdam we headed off to London for our next adventure. We didn't see Big Ben or the Tower Bridge or the queen and her corgis. No we didn't even step foot in that London, we actually went to a small town called St Albans about 50 miles north of the city. London is beautiful and has a lot of things going for her (similar to my cousin Laura) but what London proper DIDNT have was a Koo Koo Kangaroo show. (UPDATE: Not until October 1st that is! Shameless plug. Check it out.)

Plus they need our money. Neil can't even afford a whole shirt

Koo Koo Kangaroo is a dance band made up of two of our friends Bryan and Neil from Minneapolis that sings about dinosaurs, colors, friendship bracelets, and how to be a ninja. Normally we could see them once a month in Mpls for free so naturally we should probably spend hundreds of dollars to see them in England. But we rationalized dropping all that cash by deciding that we wouldn't pay for a place to sleep that night. The plan was to arrive in England at 2pm and stay awake until the next day when we flew out at 2pm. Ambitious but we are young and I'm a perfect specimen of health that has no problem alternating alcohol, coffee, and doner for 24 hours. More on that later.

I think we hit official groupie status.

One of my favorite culture miscues happened in St Albans. For lunch we went to a restaurant called The Horn, a hip musical venue that exclusively hosted cover bands like The Fu Fighters. Bryan and Neil ordered some food while the rest of us took a few extra minutes to figure out how hungry we were. After 5 minutes of deliberation Nedd and I went up to the bar to order some food and here's how that went down.
Me: Hey we're ready to order some food. We'll do two fish and chips and the nachos.
Bartender: Sorry kitchen closes at 3 pm.
Me: Seriously? We just ordered two minutes ago.
Bartender: No, I'm bloody joking.
5 SECONDS OF EXCRUCIATING SILENCE
Me: ......Wait...sooooo ARE you joking?
Then he shot me a look that I'll just nicely just call "Absolute Contempt" and walked away. We did not get our fish. Luckily the rest of our trip from there was just kickass. We went to Ye Old Fighting Cocks, which was sadly not a phallic boxing venue but is the oldest pub in England according to Guinness. This place has been around since the 8th century. That's a lot of pints.

I bet Andrew shops here

Koo Koo opened up for Frank Turner, a folk rocker you'll often hear on 89.3 and puts on an awesome show. However since we were "with the band" we spent most of his set doing human pyramids in the lobby and taking shots of whiskey backstage. Now tragically that whiskey would be our downfall because it overpowered all the caffeine in our system and started to bring us back down to Earth around midnight,14 hours before our flight out. We discussed mainlining espresso and heading to London or just buying a train ticket to the end of the line and sleep the whole ride. But lo and behold we met Nic and Dave. These two boys were letting Koo Koo crash on an air mattress at their house, and after 6 hours of drinking with them they let us sleep on their floor as well. Life savers. Oh and they took us to a late night fried chicken shop. Late. Night. Fried. CHICKEN. I'm pretty sure I ate the bones.

I guess you could say we slept with the band

After four hours of sleep, we peeled ourselves off the floor of our new friends' flat, somehow made it to the airport, and then stumbled around like zombies until our plane to Poland took off.  

I basically went full Weekend at Bernie's

Solid 24 hours in St Albans of all places. 

CM