Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons - Old Lions Still Tour - Day 8

So what I failed to mention in the previous blog was what we had to plan for in order to take our merchandise into Switzerland. As it's not a member of European Union there is no free trade so technically we have to pay Swiss tax on whatever merch we take into Switzerland and then claim back the tax for whatever we didn't sell on the way back out. This can be difficult when travelling in a tour bus and driving through the night as not all borders are manned 24 hours. At this point we still had 8 shows left of this tour so that equates to A LOT of merch!

Paying the tax isn't a massive deal as we know it's possible to get the refund back but it's the time that it takes to make sure everything is counted up accurately etc. As we were travelling with almost 20 boxes of merch we decided to only take 4 boxes of minimal quantities into Switzerland for the single show and dump the rest of the stock in a cheap hotel just outside of the border. Good idea but this still takes a lot of planning for our tour manager John and Mike the driver to figure out the best route in and out without going too far out of the way. They are both legends and worked something out that made sense so all we had to do was prepare some merch boxes for Switzerland. Our merch seller Dai prepared all this after the last show in France so our tour manager just had to prepare a document with the quantities and selling prices to show the border control people. This is important as we've heard horror stories of bands having to count everything up as they arrive at the border with the customs staff. This can take hours and hours and waste valuable travel time.

We checked into the hotel at around 9am and then about 5 us started carrying boxes of merch back and fore from our bus, through the lobby to our room. I bet the staff were so confused or maybe it was a common thing that bands do? Luckily our room was on the ground floor! Didn't take long, onwards to the Swiss border!

Luckily we didn't have to count anything up and managed to sort it out within 15 mins, pay the bill and get the document stamped! Success! Stress over!

A few of the guys were hungry we stopped at the first service station we saw. I didnt buy anything but a few of the guys bought some food. My brother Tyla bought a Burger King meal for what cost the equivalent of £17.50!! Back home in the UK the same meal in a service station would cost about £7. Welcome to Switzerland!

Today was a travel day / day off and luckily we had access to the venue that we were due to play the following night. The venue was called Kiff in the city of Aarau. The venue was in an industrial area but luckily there was a petrol station and Lidl nearby. Luckily Lidl prices were still relatively comparable to back home so that came in handy for supplies on a day off. I bought a bag of spinach, some bananas and some blueberries for smoothies.

Apart from chill out there wasn't much else to do but one of the guys discovered there was a mini golf place around the corner so a bunch of us went there when it opened at 5pm. It cost 5 Swiss Francs per person for an 18 hole course so I'd say that was excellent value.

I haven't played mini golf for years so I didn't expect to be good but it was a good laugh and passed the time. Our tour manager John ended up winning by 10 strokes. I came 4th out of 6. Here is the scoresheet below for anyone interested.

The night ended with an overpriced but very decent pizza delivery and Todd managed to get the Manchester United game streaming on his laptop so that filled the entertainment gap for the evening. They won the match 1-0 which was nice for a change as they have been performing terribly as of late. I had a fairly early night as I wanted to appreciate being able to sleep while we weren't driving for once!

To be continued...