COLOGNE

Four hours later, after just two hours sleep, we were hauling our luggage into a taxi and making our way to catch the train to Cologne. This was not before Alan had settled a hotel extras bill of £300 after downloading 2 massive e-mails expecting them to be important to the LP. When he discovered that they were, in fact, a fan's remix of 'Black Celebration', the rest of us decided to keep well out of his way for a while.

In Cologne, a variety of interviews took place along with photo shoots, radio and TV including Viva 2. Alan met up with some more local fans and was also interviewed for GDM Akitv by Shunt regular Marco Petracca.

BELGIUM

With a design conference that rendered every hotel fully booked, we couldn't stay the night in Cologne and instead took the so-called 'fast train' to Brussels in order to avoid flying. This turned out to be a slight anomaly because the train actually shunted along at about 2 miles an hour before encountering an hour's delay due to an accident. Upon our eventual arrival, we were collected by Label manager Ineke Daans and Mute International representative, Lucy Boughton, who would be accompanying us for the remainder of the week..