INCREDIBLY busy time at the moment. It all started two weeks ago with our 23rd Glastonwick Beer, Music, Poetry and More Beer Festival near Lancing in West Sussex; beautiful weather and another resounding triumph.

Then, after dashing up to Rochester to take part in the Medway River Lit Festival, I was off to Brussels on Eurostar to visit my old bandmates in Contingent, who I’ve played bass with on and off since 1979, and then trained it down to the Political Song Festival at Lake Attersee in Austria via a gig in Munich.
 
What an utterly brilliant weekend, very similar to Glastonwick in many ways. Beautiful location, 3-400 people, many who come back every year, relaxed atmosphere with (very) progressive political slant. Everything was ace but the brilliant female songwriter Geschichten im Ernst, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkQ_SxvyJ8A, Italian folk-thrashers Lemon Kellys, satirical singer Wendepunkt and the rousing choral ensemble Morgenrot from Berlin were my favourites. And I understood everything that wasn’t in Viennese dialect, managed about 40 per cent of that and got two encores and a standing ovation for my set.
 
And then I was off to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana for the first time.

I’ve always wanted to go and what a welcome it gave me! A cracking gig at Prulcek courtesy of a suggestion from legendary punk taxi driver Marin, who gave me one of his punk history taxi tours. Punk started in Yugoslavia in 1977, one of the first scenes in mainland Europe.

A new electric violin following a recommendation from Laibach guitarist Vitja. And a feature on national Slovenian television courtesy of producer Gregor, a fan for 40 years and an absolutely lovely man – we got on like a house on fire, drank lakes of beer and talked for hours and are now firm friends.
 
Slovenia, you are green and beautiful, your people are supremely welcoming and hospitable and you gave us Laibach, the cleverest, most original and thought-providing musical/artistic/philosophical collective on the planet.
 
But, perhaps fittingly since Only Fools & Horses is apparently your favourite TV programme, your public transport network is run by Del Boy and Rodney. Fine, as long as your visitors are aware.
 
On Sunday the train which had taken me to Ljubljana pulled out of the station with the door wide open and me about to lower my luggage to the platform, meaning I had to travel to the next station and then come back.  

There I witnessed a passenger walking across the tracks with his suitcase instead of using the underpass, stepping over the sign saying it was deadly and forbidden — while talking to the station supervisor who was supposed to have stopped him. And yesterday I heard about the ferry to Austria.

You didn’t know there was a ferry from Slovenia to Austria, did you? Read on…
 
I travelled to Maribor, Slovenia’s second city, to be picked up by gig organiser Tadej and driven to Sladki Vrh, a tiny hamlet some 15 miles away, next to the river Drava which marks the border between Slovenia and Austria and was the scene of my second gig.

We travelled through stunningly beautiful countryside, chatting away.

Suddenly he said “Here is boat to Austria. With chain!”
 
Ah, a chain ferry. Brilliant. I love those. Last one I was on was in Poole. “Can we go in a car?”

“I think not any more,” he said. “Used to be. But some cars fell in river.”

I’ll leave it there.
 
Barry Phillips has published a beautifully written book, In Search of Tito’s Punks, about the history of punk in Yugoslavia. It’s available from https://www.intellectbooks.com/in-search-of-titos-punks and I can’t recommend it enough!

For further info please visit https://www.facebook.com/attilathestockbroker and/or https://attilathestockbroker.bandcamp.com/merch