Epic dream of Europe.

In southern Italy, I've brought my mother. Dave is with me. We're in a seaside ancient town - I've been here before. All of the islands are familiar. We flee the tourists in the center of town and creep into a dark cafe in a salty smelling side street. Grand tall windows that don't let in any light. We talk about tomorrow.
A girl comes in and I'm trying to speak Italian to her, and she's trying to speak English to me. It all works out. She invites us to her flat for the night. We fall into the den of Italian revellers easily and a performance is requested.

The girl wants me to accompany her on a song/performance piece. She'll be singing and playing the koto, and I'll be playing... this.
She hands me an instrument that is really a sea urchin, day-glo orange - and a plectrum.
To be fair, it's a deconstructed sea urchin, so between the caviar-looking clumps there are stringy bits and we all know that stringy bits vibrate in magic dreams. So I strum the strings for a twinky little sound - picking out one or two notes is nearly impossible because the strings are crisscrossed and close together. It sounds better if I run across the whole thing, like an autoharp.
we are to stand still while we play, an dlook straight ahead. we're wearing these white kimonos.
It goes over well.

Dave and I leave the next morning at first by speed boat. Dazzling sapphire waters and crazy towns built up on coastal hillsides.
We have to meet my mom somwhere near Venice. But we have a car and she's taking a train. There's also no predicting what will happen to her on the way there, so we decide to take our time and stop somewhere in between. Where do you want to go?, I ask him, feeling rich with adventure. Rome? Venice? Firenze?
He doesn't know, so I just start driving.

Next episode on the same trip, Dave has taken a side trip now and Jor is with me. We're in Germany, I'm still driving. Enter femme fatale car chase scene.
At the villain's order, I sit on the roof of the car, facing in. I'm carrying a set of 5 very long knives. like bread knives with all different serrations. She chooses two and the car sidles up to a bike rider. The villianess grabs the rider's leg and stretches it so that his foot is achored to the car. The man kind of floates alongside the car with the bicycle. The villianess then starts to saw the man's ankle, then longways into his shin. She's trying to break the bones apart, but the knives just aren't sharp enough. She seems frustrated to have purchased such flimsy knives. When at last she's severed the leg completely, the man goes flying off. She picks up "her" bit of the leg, shrugs, and tosses it to the side.
As if we were in a taxicab, we politely ask to be let off at the next corner. There's the German version of that long windowed dark cafe. We drop in, There are lots of customers, and just one table for us. I grab the salt and go back outside to cover up the blood on the street. Hopefully the police wont know we're involved. Oh. There are teh police. I sit on the cafe's stoop with the salt shaker wrapped up in a pair of socks. Too afraid to move. The cops question another man, look at me kind of funny, then walk away.
Back in the cafe, all is erased. all is sunny. Jor, you're here! You're finally in Europe! I look around and realize that this bar is one of the places that Dave and I played in while on tour. I feel at home. There are so many wonderful things to show him. We order some wine...