This is the question I have been getting the most recently on this side of the Atlantic, "Und? Hast du dich in Hamburg schon gut eingelebt?" (So, how have you been settling in in Hamburg) I imagine if the people I see everyday at work are asking me about this, then you all are probably desperate for information^^
As far as Hamburg is concerned, things are working out really well. I have been getting to know the other people in my WG, continuing the recent trend of cooking dinner with Adrian and Caro, except now we always watch an episode of Firefly while we are eating. (My job as cultural ambassador has its perks, like getting to re-watch some of my favorite TV shows^^) Actually, one of the really cool things we have in the WG is that we always watch Tatort* together on Sunday nights. Not just the current members of the WG (which apparently the british refer to as a "flat-share" because that is what every German insists on calling it when they speak English.) but lots of former roommates, and friends of the WG. It's like a little mini homecoming when people who haven't lived there for a few years show up, and it's also a nice way to keep in touch with the people who eventually move out. In this case, it's Henrike and Stefan who are moving out, both of whom I have enjoyed spending time with the past 2 weeks, and I'm sad they are moving out so soon.
We had a nice litte Going Away party for those two on Thursday night. We made Flammkuchen, the Alsatian "pizzas" that I may have cooked for some of you already, but this time with the appropriate wine called Federweiser. It was a bittersweet evening, but somehow we managed to keep from crying, though it often came up in conversation.
While we're on the subject of parties, Friday and Saturday night were both part of the yearly Reeperbahn Festival here in Hamburg. Like Bourbon St. in New Orleans, most of the bars and clubs along the Reeperbahn** have live bands. During the Reeperbahn festival though, more well known bands are booked, and you get entrance to every concert with a festival or day-ticket. I went out both nights, but since there weren't any bands playing I felt particularly inclined to see, I decided not to pay the 25€ per day. On Friday night, I met up with some people I met on couchsurfing.com, a German girl, and her two Australian guests. We went to one of the bars that was hosting free concerts as part of the Reeperbahn Festival and listened to a few interesting acts, including one guy, Dan Costello, from New York. At the same bar I happened to run into Jessamyn and Lucy, two of the other American ETAs here in Hamburg, and we spent the rest of the night with them touring the Reeperbahn. I guess you could call it bar-hopping, but most of the places were so full that we couldn't have gotten to the bar even if we had wanted to...
When they say there's no rest for the weary, they are serious. This was especially the case for me the next day, as I somehow woke up at exactly the same time as Adrian and Caro, and we decided that it was time to make pancakes. Despite my protestations, Adrian decided we had no need of a recipe, and that just throwing eggs, flour, milk, and sugar in a bowl would suffice. It did, but the pancakes were far too flat for my taste. By German standards, however, they were relatively thick, so it looks like we got the best of both worlds. Having fortified ourselves with a hearty breakfast, we were ready then when Henrike asked us to help her with moving out. So, relatively tired upon Henrike's departure, I was considering taking a nap when I realized I had a voicemail from Suzanne (another American ETA). She explained that a fellow ETA, Andrew, was visiting from Bad Segeberg that night and was looking for a place to stay. Ever eager to help, I of course offered to host him, and asked what they were planning on doing (knowing full well what the answer would be...) "Oh, I guess we'll tour the Reeperbahn a bit, see what's going on ... we'll meet at midnight at the S-bahn station." Knowing that this was going to be a long night, I treated myself to that nap, and after navigating the perils of Schienenersatzverkehr** I made it to Central Station in time to meet Andrew and head off to join Suzanne and Katie. As it was the night before, everything was really jam-packed due to the Reeperbahn Festival, but we eventually found our way to a place that wasn't too crowded and had a decent live band. As the night (or rather the morning) dragged on, we soon realized that it was time to end the adventures in true Hamburg style, by going to the St. Pauli/Altonaer Fischmarkt (unfortunately only in German, but be sure to check out the WikiCommons album at the bottom of the page) when it opens around 5:30am. This we did, despite the fact that the temperature had dropped to about 40°F. We didn't stay terribly long, but it was neat to see all the different stands, the fisherman unloading their catches, all getting ready for the flood of people who would soon creep out of bed, or stagger out of bars to experience this weekly ritual.
As you might imagine, the next day was rather uneventful for Andrew and me, but we did make an amazing discovery, a restaurant near my apartment called "Qrito". It's what would happen if California Tortilla and Chipotlé had a son, and sent him off to Hamburg to make his fortune. As the only Americans in the restaurant, we were of course the only ones who endeavoured to eat our gargantuan burritos with our hands, which I am happy to say we were quite succesful at, despite the stares of silverware-wielding German customers. So now none of you have an excuse not to visit me here in Hamburg; even here you can get your Chipotlé fix whenever you need it^^
There's plenty more to say, but I want to get this post out there before I start getting nasty-grams from y'all exhorting me to update my blog! So I'll leave you now with a quote from the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, "More to come, more to come! I said 'brief', not infinitesimal'!!"
* Tatort has always been one of my favorite German shows (although it's something more like "Masterpiece Theatre" or "Mystery!", than a TV-show really) and with well over 700 episodes it's something you can pretty much always watch. I actually wrote one of my final papers in German about Tatort, which I would be happy to share with anyone willing to take on the challenge of reading it^^
** I hesitate to post links to other people's descriptions of St. Pauli and the Reeperbahn, because they invariably make it out to be much worse than it really is. If you have questions, concerns, etc. please comment on this post, and maybe we can start up a good discussion about it.
*** 25c. word for "Trains aren't running, you have to take the bus"
Monday, September 28, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
New Album, "Hamburg By Boat"
For those of you without Facebook accounts, here is a link to my album of pictures taken from the #62 Ferry.
Hamburg by Boat
Hamburg by Boat
Teufelskreis
I don't update this blog as often as I would like to. When I don't update in a while, I feel like I need to write about everything that has happened since the last time I post. It takes me a really long time to write about everything, usually resulting in new stuff having happened before I finish writing about older stuff. This only ends in two ways: incredibly long posts that try to make up for lost time, or me not posting about things as they come, because I haven't yet written about older stuff. These all lead back to me not posting the way I would like to. A vicious circle, or Teufelskreis in German, hence the title of this post.
Because of this, dear readers, I am going to apologize now, and only now, for the periods in which there will be relatively few posts, as I know they will come. There will be gaps in this record of my life here, gaps that will be filled with both exciting and mundane things, but gaps that I will make no attempt to fill. I do this not to hide things from you, but merely to free myself from the responsibility I feel to constantly and completely report on my life here and the guilt, which comes from not doing so and, in turn, fuels my inability to report even incompletely. This may not make much sense to anyone but me, but that sort of comes with the territory with blogs, doesn't it?
So, time for me to say auf Wiedersehen, and for you all to look forward to new, guilt-free blog posts coming down the pike!
Because of this, dear readers, I am going to apologize now, and only now, for the periods in which there will be relatively few posts, as I know they will come. There will be gaps in this record of my life here, gaps that will be filled with both exciting and mundane things, but gaps that I will make no attempt to fill. I do this not to hide things from you, but merely to free myself from the responsibility I feel to constantly and completely report on my life here and the guilt, which comes from not doing so and, in turn, fuels my inability to report even incompletely. This may not make much sense to anyone but me, but that sort of comes with the territory with blogs, doesn't it?
So, time for me to say auf Wiedersehen, and for you all to look forward to new, guilt-free blog posts coming down the pike!
Monday, September 21, 2009
New City, New Title^^
Hi all, sorry for the long silence, but things have been really busy around here recently. As you read in the last post, I found a place to live in Hamburg, and through some pretty interesting coincidences! A few weeks ago I had several appointments in Hamburg, looking at various apartments. The night before a particularly busy day, I got an email from one particularly interesting group of roommates, informing me I had been selected as one of the top 10 on their list, and should come over the next evening to introduce myself. I hadn't even remembered writing this particular group, but I added them to my calendar. I was a bit skeptical as I looked over at the bright orange house right on the train-tracks, but as I walked in and was greeted by all the roommates, offered a spot on the comfy couch, and was handed a beer, my doubts started to melt away. To make a long story short, despite having a nice night with this group, I wasn't offered the room that was becoming available. I was saddened by this, as I had enjoyed the company of these folks a lot, but continued my search, as I had been doing after every disappointing appointment (diss-appointment??).
After our orientation conference in Altenberg (near Cologne)I returned to Bad Oldesloe growing increasingly desperate for a place to live, not because things were bad in Oldesloe, but because I didn't want to get into a comfortable routine at school, only to have this interrupted by moving once I finally found a place. Anywho, on the very same night I got back from Altenberg, I got a call from Maria, the main renter of the apartment. She explained to me that she and her husband were moving to New York for 6 months, and the girl who was going to sub-let their apartment had just canceled on them, just three days before they were going to leave! They asked me if I would be interested in the big, fully furnished room with the group that I had wanted to live with anyway. I jumped at the chance, and moved in last week, fully half a month earlier than I would have been able to had I been chosen to take the smaller, non-furnished room! Pictures are on Facebook, here (viewable even w/o a Facebook account)
The first night in the new place was a great start, got my stuff all unpacked and set the room up a bit. Went shopping with two of my new roommates, Adrian and Caro, getting the blitzkrieg tour of the neighborhood while we were at it. Afterwards we cooked dinner (spaghetti bolognese!) and, thanks to the internet, watched the new film "District 9." I decided to make it an early night, knowing that 6am would be coming along very soon, and having never done the HH-OD** commute during business hours before. The commute really isn't bad at all, I never have to wait more than 4 minutes for the S-bahn at Dammtor, and when I get to the Central Station, it's just up and over 1-2 tracks. The travel goes by even faster when you happen to have a good book along, in my case Tom Clancy's Without Remorse which I highly recommend, even to people who don't usually like Clancy and his penchant for lengthy and highly-detailed descriptions.
** HH=Hamburg, OD=Bad Oldesloe (KH=Bad Kreuznach) These are the abbreviations used on German license plates, but have become common in daily speech as well. I will probably use them from time to time here on the blog or in emails, so consider yourselves warned!
After our orientation conference in Altenberg (near Cologne)I returned to Bad Oldesloe growing increasingly desperate for a place to live, not because things were bad in Oldesloe, but because I didn't want to get into a comfortable routine at school, only to have this interrupted by moving once I finally found a place. Anywho, on the very same night I got back from Altenberg, I got a call from Maria, the main renter of the apartment. She explained to me that she and her husband were moving to New York for 6 months, and the girl who was going to sub-let their apartment had just canceled on them, just three days before they were going to leave! They asked me if I would be interested in the big, fully furnished room with the group that I had wanted to live with anyway. I jumped at the chance, and moved in last week, fully half a month earlier than I would have been able to had I been chosen to take the smaller, non-furnished room! Pictures are on Facebook, here (viewable even w/o a Facebook account)
The first night in the new place was a great start, got my stuff all unpacked and set the room up a bit. Went shopping with two of my new roommates, Adrian and Caro, getting the blitzkrieg tour of the neighborhood while we were at it. Afterwards we cooked dinner (spaghetti bolognese!) and, thanks to the internet, watched the new film "District 9." I decided to make it an early night, knowing that 6am would be coming along very soon, and having never done the HH-OD** commute during business hours before. The commute really isn't bad at all, I never have to wait more than 4 minutes for the S-bahn at Dammtor, and when I get to the Central Station, it's just up and over 1-2 tracks. The travel goes by even faster when you happen to have a good book along, in my case Tom Clancy's Without Remorse which I highly recommend, even to people who don't usually like Clancy and his penchant for lengthy and highly-detailed descriptions.
** HH=Hamburg, OD=Bad Oldesloe (KH=Bad Kreuznach) These are the abbreviations used on German license plates, but have become common in daily speech as well. I will probably use them from time to time here on the blog or in emails, so consider yourselves warned!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Ej, Kreiznach, du Schadt an de Noh, hosch misch als Gäßje groß gezoo...
Unlike most of the entry titles in German, Google won't even begin to help you translate this one! It's a quote from a Fashing/Karneval song in the Bad Kreuznach dialect. Roughly translated it means, "Hey Kreuznach, you city on the Nahe (River) you raised me as a 'Gäßje'". The term Gäßje is used only in Kreuznach to describe people born and raised in the city, and is also the name of the dialect spoken in the medieval "downtown" area. It comes from the word "Gaße" meaning small street or alleyway, of which there are many here in Kreuznach.
It's interesting being back here after so long. OK, 2 years isn't really that long I guess, but it feels like much longer. Yannik told me that nothing changes in Kreuznach,, which is one of the many reasons he doesn't like it there, but when you don't see the place for 2 years, it does have a new and different vibe. For one thing, most of the people I know are no longer here. It used to be impossible for me to walk from my house to the bridge without seeing someone I knew, but in the past few days I've walked from one end of the city to the other and not seen anyone I even recognized, much less ever had contact with. Even though the people are no longer here, the memories remain. Everywhere I go in this town has some memory attached to it, just a mental image, an emotion, a sound-byte, a litle scene that gets played out in the back of my head as soon as I lay eyes on a familar building, park, or street corner. Just as I haunted Kreuznach when I lived here, spending countless hours wandering her streets and walkways, either avoiding my host family, or just pondering the mysteries of life, memories of Kreuznach have haunted me over the years. I spent sleepless nights at William and Mary wondering why things turned out the way they did with my host family, what I could have done to improve the situation, how much was really my fault. I wish I could tell you that I have found the answers to any of these questions, but that would be a lie. The questions never go away, they are always there in the back of your mind, just waiting for an idle moement to spring up in which they once again can plague your mind. The trick then is not to answer them, but to come to terms with the fact that what's done is done, and time spent worrying about it is time ill spent. Reflection is one thing, without looking back on the past we cannot learn from it, but harping on it, worrying about it is just a refusal to come to terms with the fact that it cannot be changed.
Anyway, I think I have waxed poetic (or perhaps philosophic) long enough here, and besides, my bag of "Erdnußflips" is empty! I think I can honestly say Erdnußflips are one of the reasons I love Germany so much. The ultimate snack food, they are essentially peanut flavored cheese curls!! (I know you are thinking "Ewwww, gross me out" right now, Mom, but you have to admit the idea is pretty awesome!) Anyway, with that I am going to sign off for now!
It's interesting being back here after so long. OK, 2 years isn't really that long I guess, but it feels like much longer. Yannik told me that nothing changes in Kreuznach,, which is one of the many reasons he doesn't like it there, but when you don't see the place for 2 years, it does have a new and different vibe. For one thing, most of the people I know are no longer here. It used to be impossible for me to walk from my house to the bridge without seeing someone I knew, but in the past few days I've walked from one end of the city to the other and not seen anyone I even recognized, much less ever had contact with. Even though the people are no longer here, the memories remain. Everywhere I go in this town has some memory attached to it, just a mental image, an emotion, a sound-byte, a litle scene that gets played out in the back of my head as soon as I lay eyes on a familar building, park, or street corner. Just as I haunted Kreuznach when I lived here, spending countless hours wandering her streets and walkways, either avoiding my host family, or just pondering the mysteries of life, memories of Kreuznach have haunted me over the years. I spent sleepless nights at William and Mary wondering why things turned out the way they did with my host family, what I could have done to improve the situation, how much was really my fault. I wish I could tell you that I have found the answers to any of these questions, but that would be a lie. The questions never go away, they are always there in the back of your mind, just waiting for an idle moement to spring up in which they once again can plague your mind. The trick then is not to answer them, but to come to terms with the fact that what's done is done, and time spent worrying about it is time ill spent. Reflection is one thing, without looking back on the past we cannot learn from it, but harping on it, worrying about it is just a refusal to come to terms with the fact that it cannot be changed.
Anyway, I think I have waxed poetic (or perhaps philosophic) long enough here, and besides, my bag of "Erdnußflips" is empty! I think I can honestly say Erdnußflips are one of the reasons I love Germany so much. The ultimate snack food, they are essentially peanut flavored cheese curls!! (I know you are thinking "Ewwww, gross me out" right now, Mom, but you have to admit the idea is pretty awesome!) Anyway, with that I am going to sign off for now!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Summer Breeze and Round 2 of the apartment hunt
Yup, from the title you might have guessed it, but here is the bad news first: I have heard back from all of the rooms I was interested in in Hamburg and Lübeck and struck out with all three of them. So I will be starting my whole search routine over again immediately. I am going to change a few things in my profile and my little introductory letter, and am going to concentrate on ads with telephone numbers, as it is harder to ignore a phone call than an email or text message. That has been the most frustrating aspect of my time in Germany so far, the fact that I send out scores of Emails and never get responses. I must have written at least 50 emails in the past few weeks, and I think I got maybe 3 responses!! Anyway, I just hope that all this craziness and stress will lead to me finding the perfect place to live!
Anyway, on to fun stuff, like Summer Breeze! After getting an unexpected message from my friend Flo, saying that there was a seat left in his car and he knew of a a guy in Kreuznach who wanted to sell his ticket (Festival was already sold out). As I was already looking for an excuse to head south to familiar territory, I jumped at the chance, and jumped on a train to Kreuznach the very next morning. I didn't have much time to prepare for this little adventure as Flo and co. were leaving on Wednesday morning, and I didn't hear from him until Monday night, and didn't really have a chance to get filled in on all the details until I got to Kreuznach. Not even knowing where I was going to sleep, I got off the train at the ugliest train station in Germany (I'm serious, Kreuznach won this distinct honor several times from TV-Personality Stefan Raab) only to run into none other than my old friend Jan Seidel, who not only happened to also be going to Summer Breeze, but offered to put me up for the night and take me shopping for the festival! It was as if perfectly planned, but Jan didn't even know I was coming, and I didn't even have his cell number, so there is no way we could have planned it! Guess someone was looking out for me^^
I had been trying to get in contact with Flo for a while now to straighten things out with the ticket, so we went to go visit Flo at work at the gas station. Between him waiting on customers, I found out that the ticket he essentially promised me was from some guy that his his ex-girlfriend knew. Luckily enough, I know the girl, so I called her up, only to find out that she didn't even know the guy personally, she just heard over some internet community that he had a ticket he wanted to sell. In disbelief, I hung up the phone and immediately began to scour the internet looking for a ticket. At around 22:30, after several hours of searching, I managed to find a guy in Bavaria who was selling his ticket because he couldn't make it to the festival. We worked it out so that he would send the ticket to Dinkelsbühl with his buddy, who would meet me there and sell it to me. I was kind of worried that ti wouldn't work out, but it actually came off without a hitch, and I was able to get a ticket for the same price as if I had bought it 6 months ago!
Our 11 man team set out for Dinkelsbühl the next day in 2 very German cars, a Ford station wagon (Degen, Christina, Schum, Jan, Laura) and a Ford Transit bus (moi, Flo, Andy, Maria, Mandy, Toby) both stuffed to the gills with groceries (i.e. meat and beer), tents, combat boots, and T-shirts from various metal bands. A guy Flo knew from last year saved us a nice spot next to his. Little did we know, though, that he (23-24) was travelling with his 17yr old girlfriend and her entire possie of teeny-boppers. They definitely grated on our nerves, constantly making a racket and often using/abusing our grill and camping chairs, but we managed to make it through the whole Festival without killing them, so they can't have been that bad!
On Wednesday, there were a few bands that played in the party tent, but nothing I was interested in, so I stayed back at the campground unpacking and setting up. On Thursday the Festival really got started. Waking up to the sound of hundreds of car stereos blaring various types of metal, we sat around and complained about how poorly we slept. This would become a habit throughout the festival, as we were rarely able to sleep past 9am due to the noise and the bands we were interested in seeing rarely starting before 2pm. So after sitting around and complaining for a while, someone would get hungry and we would set off to eat brunch. We hit all the major food groups such as steaks, pork steaks, turkey steaks, sausages, and ground beef Frikadellen, with canned ravioli, spaghetti, and various types of soup. All this was washed down with "5,0" beer in cans, because glass was verboten on the campground. Don't bother trying to find 5,0 on the internet, their whole schtick is that they have a really simple logo and don't advertise and use the money they save to deliver a quality product for cheap. Well, quality is not exactly the first word I would use to describe the taste of 5,0, but I have definitely had worse!
All throughout Thursday more and more people arrived. I'm not sure exactly how many, but it was somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000!! As the day went on, more and more of the festival-goers showed up at the concerts, until you really had the feeling that EVERYONE was there for the headlining bands. On Thursday I ended up seeing a bunch of bands, starting with Deadlock and Vader in the early afternoon, later J.B.O and a few songs by Walls of Jericho. We took a break for dinner, and I went to go check out Cantus Buranus, though I was not impressed, so I left early and got a decent spot for Katatonia on the other stage. A few songs in, I caught of a glimpse of Flo, but I couldn't be sure until I caught a glimpse of Mandy's red hair, and Toby's black arm (as one of maybe 4 black guys at the Festival, Toby made our group relatively easy to find^^). I tried to make my way over to them, but there were just too many people between us. I knew I only had one possibility to make it over there: I would have to wait for a mosh pit to break out and "ride" it over to them! Sure enough about 5 minutes later my opportunity arose, and within seconds I was standing with my friends! Friday was much more relaxed. I only went to see The Haunted, Schandmaul, Sabaton, and Amon Amarth, though seeing Amon alone was enough to tire me out to the point where I couldn't even stay awake during Firewind's concert afterwards! There must have been at least 25,000 people watching Amon Amarth, and when that many people are at a concert just standing up is feat. Add random mosh pits and tons of crowdsurfers to the mix, and it feels more like you are at the gym than at a concert!
Saturday came along and it was time for us to carry out our carefully crafted plan to be in the front row for Opeth, the biggest band playing the festival that year. We decided to head out during Moonspell, fight our way forward while people either left or moved over to the other stage for Legion of the Damned. We knew there would be a lot of Volbeat fans there, but figured if we were as far forward as possible during Volbeat, we could slip through to the front when they finished.We started off strong with Maria, Mandy, Andy, Jan, and Laura, but as the hours dragged on we began losing people to hunger, thirst, and nicotine addiction. In the end only Maria and I made it to the front row, with Andy close behind. Due to technical problems with one of the guitar amps, we got to see an Opeth jam session while the problems were being resolved. At first just noodling around, the various members took turns steering the song in certain directions, until it suddenly became a cover version of Deep Purple's "Soldier of Fortune." In the middle of the song, the other guitar was fixed and he jumped right in with a sweet solo. It's always cool to see a band do something that is not really characteristic of them, and despite the fact that almost 20minutes of their playing time was spent ironing out technical problems, it was highly enjoyable. An added bonus was the lack of crowdsurfing, which had reached truly aggravating heights during Volbeat.
Sunday came along and after quickly packing up the rest of our things, we hit the road towards Maria and Mandy's parents place near Abstgmünd/Schwäbisch Hall. There we were treated to an ungodly amount of food and we rejoiced at the return of amenities like running water and real toilets into our lives! 5 days of Porta-Potties is really too much... even though things did improve a bit when we discovered 3 of them that had an extremely strong and distinct smell of .... cinnamon! No matter how long it had been since they had been pumped out (which with several thousand people using each block of them was relatively often) they smelled only of cinnamon, which was a truly pleasant alternative. After climbing back into the Transit with our beltbuckles just a bit looser than before, we hit the Autobahn and were back in Kreuznach with in 3 hours. Well, that's a wrap on Summer Breeze 2009, I think. I'm happy to answer any and all questions people have; the comments here on Blogspot and on Facebbok have sparse recently though... If you are interested, reviews of the bands are up on www.summer-breeze.de in German, but haven't yet been translated.
Anyway, on to fun stuff, like Summer Breeze! After getting an unexpected message from my friend Flo, saying that there was a seat left in his car and he knew of a a guy in Kreuznach who wanted to sell his ticket (Festival was already sold out). As I was already looking for an excuse to head south to familiar territory, I jumped at the chance, and jumped on a train to Kreuznach the very next morning. I didn't have much time to prepare for this little adventure as Flo and co. were leaving on Wednesday morning, and I didn't hear from him until Monday night, and didn't really have a chance to get filled in on all the details until I got to Kreuznach. Not even knowing where I was going to sleep, I got off the train at the ugliest train station in Germany (I'm serious, Kreuznach won this distinct honor several times from TV-Personality Stefan Raab) only to run into none other than my old friend Jan Seidel, who not only happened to also be going to Summer Breeze, but offered to put me up for the night and take me shopping for the festival! It was as if perfectly planned, but Jan didn't even know I was coming, and I didn't even have his cell number, so there is no way we could have planned it! Guess someone was looking out for me^^
I had been trying to get in contact with Flo for a while now to straighten things out with the ticket, so we went to go visit Flo at work at the gas station. Between him waiting on customers, I found out that the ticket he essentially promised me was from some guy that his his ex-girlfriend knew. Luckily enough, I know the girl, so I called her up, only to find out that she didn't even know the guy personally, she just heard over some internet community that he had a ticket he wanted to sell. In disbelief, I hung up the phone and immediately began to scour the internet looking for a ticket. At around 22:30, after several hours of searching, I managed to find a guy in Bavaria who was selling his ticket because he couldn't make it to the festival. We worked it out so that he would send the ticket to Dinkelsbühl with his buddy, who would meet me there and sell it to me. I was kind of worried that ti wouldn't work out, but it actually came off without a hitch, and I was able to get a ticket for the same price as if I had bought it 6 months ago!
Our 11 man team set out for Dinkelsbühl the next day in 2 very German cars, a Ford station wagon (Degen, Christina, Schum, Jan, Laura) and a Ford Transit bus (moi, Flo, Andy, Maria, Mandy, Toby) both stuffed to the gills with groceries (i.e. meat and beer), tents, combat boots, and T-shirts from various metal bands. A guy Flo knew from last year saved us a nice spot next to his. Little did we know, though, that he (23-24) was travelling with his 17yr old girlfriend and her entire possie of teeny-boppers. They definitely grated on our nerves, constantly making a racket and often using/abusing our grill and camping chairs, but we managed to make it through the whole Festival without killing them, so they can't have been that bad!
On Wednesday, there were a few bands that played in the party tent, but nothing I was interested in, so I stayed back at the campground unpacking and setting up. On Thursday the Festival really got started. Waking up to the sound of hundreds of car stereos blaring various types of metal, we sat around and complained about how poorly we slept. This would become a habit throughout the festival, as we were rarely able to sleep past 9am due to the noise and the bands we were interested in seeing rarely starting before 2pm. So after sitting around and complaining for a while, someone would get hungry and we would set off to eat brunch. We hit all the major food groups such as steaks, pork steaks, turkey steaks, sausages, and ground beef Frikadellen, with canned ravioli, spaghetti, and various types of soup. All this was washed down with "5,0" beer in cans, because glass was verboten on the campground. Don't bother trying to find 5,0 on the internet, their whole schtick is that they have a really simple logo and don't advertise and use the money they save to deliver a quality product for cheap. Well, quality is not exactly the first word I would use to describe the taste of 5,0, but I have definitely had worse!
All throughout Thursday more and more people arrived. I'm not sure exactly how many, but it was somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000!! As the day went on, more and more of the festival-goers showed up at the concerts, until you really had the feeling that EVERYONE was there for the headlining bands. On Thursday I ended up seeing a bunch of bands, starting with Deadlock and Vader in the early afternoon, later J.B.O and a few songs by Walls of Jericho. We took a break for dinner, and I went to go check out Cantus Buranus, though I was not impressed, so I left early and got a decent spot for Katatonia on the other stage. A few songs in, I caught of a glimpse of Flo, but I couldn't be sure until I caught a glimpse of Mandy's red hair, and Toby's black arm (as one of maybe 4 black guys at the Festival, Toby made our group relatively easy to find^^). I tried to make my way over to them, but there were just too many people between us. I knew I only had one possibility to make it over there: I would have to wait for a mosh pit to break out and "ride" it over to them! Sure enough about 5 minutes later my opportunity arose, and within seconds I was standing with my friends! Friday was much more relaxed. I only went to see The Haunted, Schandmaul, Sabaton, and Amon Amarth, though seeing Amon alone was enough to tire me out to the point where I couldn't even stay awake during Firewind's concert afterwards! There must have been at least 25,000 people watching Amon Amarth, and when that many people are at a concert just standing up is feat. Add random mosh pits and tons of crowdsurfers to the mix, and it feels more like you are at the gym than at a concert!
Saturday came along and it was time for us to carry out our carefully crafted plan to be in the front row for Opeth, the biggest band playing the festival that year. We decided to head out during Moonspell, fight our way forward while people either left or moved over to the other stage for Legion of the Damned. We knew there would be a lot of Volbeat fans there, but figured if we were as far forward as possible during Volbeat, we could slip through to the front when they finished.We started off strong with Maria, Mandy, Andy, Jan, and Laura, but as the hours dragged on we began losing people to hunger, thirst, and nicotine addiction. In the end only Maria and I made it to the front row, with Andy close behind. Due to technical problems with one of the guitar amps, we got to see an Opeth jam session while the problems were being resolved. At first just noodling around, the various members took turns steering the song in certain directions, until it suddenly became a cover version of Deep Purple's "Soldier of Fortune." In the middle of the song, the other guitar was fixed and he jumped right in with a sweet solo. It's always cool to see a band do something that is not really characteristic of them, and despite the fact that almost 20minutes of their playing time was spent ironing out technical problems, it was highly enjoyable. An added bonus was the lack of crowdsurfing, which had reached truly aggravating heights during Volbeat.
Sunday came along and after quickly packing up the rest of our things, we hit the road towards Maria and Mandy's parents place near Abstgmünd/Schwäbisch Hall. There we were treated to an ungodly amount of food and we rejoiced at the return of amenities like running water and real toilets into our lives! 5 days of Porta-Potties is really too much... even though things did improve a bit when we discovered 3 of them that had an extremely strong and distinct smell of .... cinnamon! No matter how long it had been since they had been pumped out (which with several thousand people using each block of them was relatively often) they smelled only of cinnamon, which was a truly pleasant alternative. After climbing back into the Transit with our beltbuckles just a bit looser than before, we hit the Autobahn and were back in Kreuznach with in 3 hours. Well, that's a wrap on Summer Breeze 2009, I think. I'm happy to answer any and all questions people have; the comments here on Blogspot and on Facebbok have sparse recently though... If you are interested, reviews of the bands are up on www.summer-breeze.de in German, but haven't yet been translated.
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