19 October, day three - Kumanovo, Macedonia
Oh boy...so here we come to the black sheep of the tour, or at least of the four days which I have spent next to the band. There are so many things that went wrong on this day that in the end there was nothing else to do other then make as much jokes about it as possible and somehow cloud and scare away the unbelievable amount of crap. Scheisse junge, but for now we will take it one step at a time...
The day started in a perfect fashion, getting up early to Bjorn's lovely wake up message, realizing that my hair looks insane due to falling asleep while it was wet from the shower (not so perfect), having a lovely breakfast in the courtyard of "CK13" and packing up everything on time. After we said our goodbyes to our great hosts of the day/night, the road was well under our tires. The path led us through a part of my hometown, so I tried to be entertaining and offered some random facts about Belgrade as we drove by. Our drive through Serbia seemed quite fast and easy, despite it actually demanding quite a lot of time to reach Kumanovo, simply put just smooth sailing.
But then troubles flew in on the wings of a wasp! ("OH MY GOD!") Jokes aside, the following event could be considered a funny introduction to the real issues of the day. So, while nomming some food on yet another parking lot of a gas station, a small swarm of wasps started creeping up on our ajvar. Once the numbers started reaching critical mass and several people began running away, we entered the van...yet one of Gaia's little flying fiends followed us inside. Thus que some screaming and more laughing tears from yours truly thanks to Hannes and the upper quote hailing from him. The wasp felt overtly not amused and flew away, thus the bold travelers continued their journey.
And then came the border. At first, we were just held there and pinned down in the van, since the border control was busy raping the brains and nerves of the vehicle owner in front of us, so it seemed that some troubles will be looming ahead. The wait took extremely long, yet your dear writer was struck by a more internal problematic, that being the vast sea of pee rising inside of my body and reaching alarming levels quite fast. While my struggle took epic proportions, the others sat there and waited patiently, except for Lucas who went to check the green card or whatever the name of that thing is. A lightning bolt struck the van in the moment when he returned and told us the price of the damned piece of paper, the number bearing three digits of euros! Once the money was vomited out of the pockets, the border patrol took notice of us. Of course, the morons didn't speak a word of English and decided not to use their manners, if they have them at all, and insult us on their native language, not knowing yet that a person from Serbia is travelling with the Germans. Macedonian and Serbian are quite similar, so one of the "junkies" understood what they were saying. They didn't bug us that much, so we were granted passage quickly, only to get to another border crossing. This time I had to jump out and use my verbal skills and clear the way, luckily I was successful.
Soon enough we were in Kumanovo, receiving a text message that the organizer will be late to meet up with us. I was preoccupied with just finding a place to relieve my body of the ever increasing liquids, so I didn't pay much notice to the text. Once I calmed down, three of us decided to hunt for some food, though we were faced with a hard task of finding something vegetarian in the nearby area. Close to the parking lot there was a pizza place, with corpses on them, so it took all my talking skills to explain that we want some food without meat on it. Shortly after, the giant 5 euro pizza was ours!
Que some more waiting for the organizer to show up and once he finally arrived, we got to the venue, which was basically around the corner from where we were parked. In a nutshell, the place is awful. If you remember my description of the "Bigz" venue in Belgrade, found here, something similar could be applied here...just, minus the cool horror factor and plus the place looking like a crack house. Completely dirty and crumbling interior, a sexy "backstage" filled with garbage and lack of lights to provide some surprise rape. Yes, total fail. The backstage held a treasury with some food provided by our host, noodles with noodles, and at that specific moment I wished that god exists so that I can thank him for blessing my gut with the previously devoured pizza. After that lovely welcome, our dealings with the host were cut, since he crawled to the other room and decided to take a nap on the floor... The entire experience left all of us baffled and it managed to invoke a certain rage inside of me, much like the one shown in the above linked review concerning the host. It seemed that the dude simply forgot that he booked a show (genius) or that he just didn't care. In any case, we decided to fill our time with watching a funny dubbed episode of "Star Trek" and just ponder about what to do if no one shows up. At a certain point around 10 PM only a guy and a girl were present and it seemed that they would be the audience for the night. Luckily some more people showed up later, so the gig started a few minutes after 11 PM to still a low number of people, slightly more than in Backa Topola.
The sound of the venue was awful and unbelievable amounts of crunchiness and chaotic crackles managed to stick to the sound of "Downfall of Gaia". Despite the sabotage, they succeeded in pulling out a good show, yet not as powerful as they could otherwise and this gig made me really appreciate the fact that the band's recordings have such a superb sound quality. There isn't much that could be said about this gig, since I already saw a better performance by them and the overall bad day left a stronger mark in my brain. As I said, despite playing in a horrible environment, their set was good and powerful, although the venue itself took away a large part of the enjoyment. The slower song parts were amazing in the standard fashion of the band, but once aggressive sections took the stage the point and impact would be weaker since you are left with just a huge wall of sound crashing over your head, not having that emotion wrenching merit. If I haven't seen them before, I would definitely be mind blown though. That being said, the crowd was happy and satisfied, actually being the first audience which I didn't have to inspire for an encore ovation.
Once the show was over and we packed the equipment, the group was taken to the organizers home for rest, though the curse of the day extended to night as well for me, resulting in not so abundant sleep time.
Oh boy...so here we come to the black sheep of the tour, or at least of the four days which I have spent next to the band. There are so many things that went wrong on this day that in the end there was nothing else to do other then make as much jokes about it as possible and somehow cloud and scare away the unbelievable amount of crap. Scheisse junge, but for now we will take it one step at a time...
The day started in a perfect fashion, getting up early to Bjorn's lovely wake up message, realizing that my hair looks insane due to falling asleep while it was wet from the shower (not so perfect), having a lovely breakfast in the courtyard of "CK13" and packing up everything on time. After we said our goodbyes to our great hosts of the day/night, the road was well under our tires. The path led us through a part of my hometown, so I tried to be entertaining and offered some random facts about Belgrade as we drove by. Our drive through Serbia seemed quite fast and easy, despite it actually demanding quite a lot of time to reach Kumanovo, simply put just smooth sailing.
But then troubles flew in on the wings of a wasp! ("OH MY GOD!") Jokes aside, the following event could be considered a funny introduction to the real issues of the day. So, while nomming some food on yet another parking lot of a gas station, a small swarm of wasps started creeping up on our ajvar. Once the numbers started reaching critical mass and several people began running away, we entered the van...yet one of Gaia's little flying fiends followed us inside. Thus que some screaming and more laughing tears from yours truly thanks to Hannes and the upper quote hailing from him. The wasp felt overtly not amused and flew away, thus the bold travelers continued their journey.
And then came the border. At first, we were just held there and pinned down in the van, since the border control was busy raping the brains and nerves of the vehicle owner in front of us, so it seemed that some troubles will be looming ahead. The wait took extremely long, yet your dear writer was struck by a more internal problematic, that being the vast sea of pee rising inside of my body and reaching alarming levels quite fast. While my struggle took epic proportions, the others sat there and waited patiently, except for Lucas who went to check the green card or whatever the name of that thing is. A lightning bolt struck the van in the moment when he returned and told us the price of the damned piece of paper, the number bearing three digits of euros! Once the money was vomited out of the pockets, the border patrol took notice of us. Of course, the morons didn't speak a word of English and decided not to use their manners, if they have them at all, and insult us on their native language, not knowing yet that a person from Serbia is travelling with the Germans. Macedonian and Serbian are quite similar, so one of the "junkies" understood what they were saying. They didn't bug us that much, so we were granted passage quickly, only to get to another border crossing. This time I had to jump out and use my verbal skills and clear the way, luckily I was successful.
Soon enough we were in Kumanovo, receiving a text message that the organizer will be late to meet up with us. I was preoccupied with just finding a place to relieve my body of the ever increasing liquids, so I didn't pay much notice to the text. Once I calmed down, three of us decided to hunt for some food, though we were faced with a hard task of finding something vegetarian in the nearby area. Close to the parking lot there was a pizza place, with corpses on them, so it took all my talking skills to explain that we want some food without meat on it. Shortly after, the giant 5 euro pizza was ours!
Que some more waiting for the organizer to show up and once he finally arrived, we got to the venue, which was basically around the corner from where we were parked. In a nutshell, the place is awful. If you remember my description of the "Bigz" venue in Belgrade, found here, something similar could be applied here...just, minus the cool horror factor and plus the place looking like a crack house. Completely dirty and crumbling interior, a sexy "backstage" filled with garbage and lack of lights to provide some surprise rape. Yes, total fail. The backstage held a treasury with some food provided by our host, noodles with noodles, and at that specific moment I wished that god exists so that I can thank him for blessing my gut with the previously devoured pizza. After that lovely welcome, our dealings with the host were cut, since he crawled to the other room and decided to take a nap on the floor... The entire experience left all of us baffled and it managed to invoke a certain rage inside of me, much like the one shown in the above linked review concerning the host. It seemed that the dude simply forgot that he booked a show (genius) or that he just didn't care. In any case, we decided to fill our time with watching a funny dubbed episode of "Star Trek" and just ponder about what to do if no one shows up. At a certain point around 10 PM only a guy and a girl were present and it seemed that they would be the audience for the night. Luckily some more people showed up later, so the gig started a few minutes after 11 PM to still a low number of people, slightly more than in Backa Topola.
The sound of the venue was awful and unbelievable amounts of crunchiness and chaotic crackles managed to stick to the sound of "Downfall of Gaia". Despite the sabotage, they succeeded in pulling out a good show, yet not as powerful as they could otherwise and this gig made me really appreciate the fact that the band's recordings have such a superb sound quality. There isn't much that could be said about this gig, since I already saw a better performance by them and the overall bad day left a stronger mark in my brain. As I said, despite playing in a horrible environment, their set was good and powerful, although the venue itself took away a large part of the enjoyment. The slower song parts were amazing in the standard fashion of the band, but once aggressive sections took the stage the point and impact would be weaker since you are left with just a huge wall of sound crashing over your head, not having that emotion wrenching merit. If I haven't seen them before, I would definitely be mind blown though. That being said, the crowd was happy and satisfied, actually being the first audience which I didn't have to inspire for an encore ovation.
Once the show was over and we packed the equipment, the group was taken to the organizers home for rest, though the curse of the day extended to night as well for me, resulting in not so abundant sleep time.
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