FRIDAY
And so it begins, I arrived at the airport at a 1am.
Denis arrived shortly after and we discussed Boards of Canada.
The others soon appeared and after tagging our luggage we were good to go. Theo did some filming and we made our way to the check in. There was much confusion concerning our instruments and after much hassle we managed to get our guitars in hand luggage. They checked our passports and military exit permits and we all received our boarding passes; all except Theo. No one noticed his cries but after a good ten minutes he received his barding pass… only to realise we all had two whereas he had one. It was pretty funny watching Theo panic.
We all felt pretty haggard since not 4 hours ago we had a hectic line up practice. When we went through the baggage-check Theo realised he had forgotten his exit permit at the check-in desk. In mass hysteria he ran back only to find it in his wallet.
The plane ride, to me was one of the best I have ever had. There was no TV and the plane was only half full which meant there was tonnes of spaces to spread out. We mostly slept on the plane.
In Frankfurt airport we split with Blynd to go wander about and agreed to meet after an hour or two at the gate. The shops were not brilliant and mostly touristy and German. We discovered that a bottle of Vittel water that cost 0.95 Euros in the Cypriot airport was conveniently priced at 3.00 Euros in Frankfurt airport. We sat at this café thing for a good hour and Denis and Theo wandered off upstairs to find floor space, where they set up the laptop, took out the guitar and practiced to the drums. I myself was too tired to do anything so sat with Mario gazing into space and talking about stuff. I then stuck a sticker on the table grabbed our stuff and we made our way to the gate. Through the baggage check Theo and Denis were whisked by security to another check place where their instruments were swabbed.
The plane to Linz was tiny and our equipment had to be seat-belted to empty chairs. I sat with Mario with Theo and Denis behind us. The stewardess was extremely chirpy and literally made our day. Mario dribbled beer and then sucked it up before it hit his tee. There was snow outside the plane window and I was now hyper.
We ordered beer and I began this blog. We took pictures and videos. We landed and were whisked to our rooms in a minibus thing with ‘Posthof’ scrawled across the side of it.
As soon as we arrived we went into town. We made our way to the nearest bus stop with no idea if it was the correct stop. We asked a boy there (pretty much the only person we met on the entire trip who spoke English) which way to the town centre. He pointed the way and recommended the bus. Us being unsure and unwilling to risk a bus ride to the middle of nowhere, decided on walking. The boy laughed; a crazy, mirthless laugh whilst shaking his head furiously. He admitted that walking would be a hard and difficult feat and that we would be fools to try it. We simply dismissed him claiming that people always say places are so far away to walk when they are in fact not and they are too lazy; like in Nicosia.
We were wrong, sort of. The city was not that far but then again it wasn’t that close. It probably took us a half hour to an hour to reach our destination; the sun hot against our cheeks. On the journey we stumbled upon a mini bakery shop tucked in between two strict looking buildings. We were hungry and the smell of the warm dough hit us like a fist. The woman inside spoke no English whatsoever, but was in fact the happiest person in the world, which pretty much completely made up for her not being able to understand us. Her eyes wide she was buzzing and chirpy, Denis claiming she resembled an elf. Using our fingers we pointed at what we wanted and told her how many. Theo’s German is horrific despite his studying the language for 4 years (?) and was completely hopeless during the whole trip in establishing any sort of communication between people.
We also discovered another little nifty shop, which had hundreds of wooden and folk instruments. The woman looked like Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter and demonstrated a couple of the instruments for us; one being an accordion type piano which Denis was completely besotted with. She asked if we were a band. We said yes and invited her to the gig. She didn’t show up.
The next few hours were spent wandering about aimlessly in search of a piercing shop, all to no avail. It was late afternoon when we caught the bus back to the Posthof, paying 0.80 Euros only to find out that they don’t check for tickets, so we stopped paying for bus rides altogether.
After a good 3 hours sleep I was awoken to Mario stroking the side of my face… creep, I know. Down the hall in the ‘chill out’ area there was a party going down. A band called ‘3 Feet Smaller’ were playing that evening in the posthof and their minions and groupies had flocked this room eating and drinking heartily. We asked to join them alongside Blynd, in hope of gaining a free beverage. They told us no, go away. Swearing in Greek we continuously bugged them and when the going got tough Mario offered up all our merch in hope of getting a pint. That evening we went into town and ate, and then walked all the way back again, stickering all the way home, Theo sulking because he did not get his pretzel and beer like he imagined he would. We made it back in time for one beer in the restaurant (Theo had a wheat beer and a soup) and then we watched 3 Feet Smaller. It was like Sum 41, except in German and similar to watching a TV show, with the vocalist talking as much as he was singing. They even had a ‘hip hop remix’ reminiscent of Sum 41’s Fat Lip, just cheesier. During the show we met an awesome chick from the support band ‘Random Fall’ and we traded 4 of our tees for 4 of theirs. We also spread the word about our gig to the kids at this show.
