I imagine it must be nice to afford to be calm. I remember envying people for being able to keep their cool when I couldn't. Then it hit me the fundamental difference is whether you can afford the cost of things going wrong. A lot of problems can easily go away if you have the money to throw at them.
I took a quick trip to Greece and Bulgaria last week. I'm glad I did because... well, I had this thought during the Amon Amarth show in Bulgaria, the final show of both festivals. That these moments I get to live at shows are so rare and so precious.
The trip went well overall, though the festivals weren't easy on my body (making me do post-show anatomy recaps... you know, when you go online and try to identify what exactly hurts) and there were moments when I was very worried about how things would go.
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Like on arrival in Greece. Because I'm a brokeass, I booked the cheapest flight to Athens which was landing 90 minutes before midnight. And for the same reason, I booked a hotel that was within a one hour walk from the festival grounds. The festival took place in Kallithea (name means "beautiful view"), right on the coast of the Salonic Gulf.
When I started looking up hotels, I thought I could get away cheaply, as prices started from 30-something euro and the places looked pretty nice and clean in photos. But... well, I guess fortunately? I have the habit of taking all negative reviews and reading them all. And there were some really disturbing tales about these cheap places, all located in the same central area just a bit north of the Acropolis. I'm not one to care about reviews mentioning drugs and prostitution - that's basically the Frankfurt train station area and it's always been fine, at any hour of day and night. But I draw the line at theft... and there were plenty of mentions of that and worse - muggings, broken windows. Um, no. So I kept eliminating hotels one by one and, as I went through the list of hotels, sorted by price in ascending order... the cost of a night kept going up. To 40€, to 50€, to 60€...
At 60€ is where I stopped and booked a hotel on the coast, about a 50 minute walk away from the festival grounds. A pretty uncomplicated walk too, along the same one big street going along the coast. It also promised a safe, 24 hour reception - always super useful when arriving late and leaving early. And it was just across the big street from the X96 (airport express bus) station. It had really low review grades when it came to value for money, comfort, facilities... people were complaining about the noise of the big street. But there was no mention of theft or bed bugs, so I figured I'm not a sensitive daisy and I was already paying enough. Booked this place.
Okay. Getting to and back from the festival and departure sorted. But there was still arrival. And both Google Maps and the Athens public transport website showed no X96 after 6pm. Which seemed a bit odd to me given the first ride was at 4:02am. But oh, well, look for other options. There was no other direct option. At best, I had the option of just one change. Either taking one of the metro lines (M3) or an express bus (X95) to central Athens and then a tram (T6). Thing was... the last M3 departed from the airport 30 minutes before midnight and the last T6 departed before 1am. So if my flight was going to be more than one hour late, I wasn't even going to have this option. Walking from the airport was out of the question, Athens is so big, the airport is in the east, Kallithea is in the west - there are over 30km taking the shortest path... across a mountain. Waiting at the airport until morning to take the first X96 at 4:02am would have brought me to the hotel faster than walking this path after landing.
But I figured I hadn't paid a bit over 60€ a night to just let the first night go to waste, so I resolved that if the plane lands really late, I would take the X95 (all night express bus) and then the 010 to somewhere a bit further from the festival grounds and then walk to the hotel for about 1 hour. Would have added up to about 3h to get to the hotel, but oh, well... no more better options at that hour.
Problems go away if you can afford to throw money at them, but taking a taxi would have probably costed more than a hotel night, so...
Taking the M3, a ticket from the airport was 9€, but I could also use it on the trams. Taking the X95, a ticket was 5.50€, but I couldn't use it on other means of transportation, meaning I'd have to buy a regular 2.70€ ticket for the tram. 8.20€ in total, 0.80€ cheaper than taking the M3. I still resolved to take the M3 if I arrive in time to still catch it because it was twice as fast (so I would be gaining over half an hour of sleep) and then I wouldn't have to worry about getting a second ticket when arriving in Athens.
I was worried about these things, about how I'd get around, but... I had been pretty thorough when it came to studying options, studying places via images on Google Maps to know what to expect when I arrive there, making sure I have all that info available offline on my laptop too... there wasn't much more I could do.
We boarded and therefore departed late. Because people bring more shit than they're allowed to, then engage in screaming matches at the gate. Because people travel with kids who have the talent of dispersing at the worst possible moments and in the worst possible places. We still landed 5 minutes early. Then waited for over half an hour for the buses to come to pick us up because... no idea! It was after 11pm when I got off the plane. Then we waited some 20 minutes more because someone had forgot something on the plane, had to debate that at length with the crew, then had to go up (twice!) to look for it.
When is it the time to panic? Barely over 10 minutes to the last M3 when I finally got off the bus and into the airport. Raced past people to passport check, resumed racing after that. And then got lost after exiting the airport and crossing the street. No more metro signs. Time to panic. Saw someone going up some stairs leading up to a glass-covered bridge. Hmm. On a hunch, I raced up the stairs too. The metro signs resumed up there. At the other end of the bridge, a hall where you could buy tickets. For express buses, metro. 4 minutes to the last M3. Dashed past the ticket machines (not enough brainpower to deal with figuring them out) and went straight to the office with humans. Bought a ticket, raced down the stairs and ran into the final M3 of the night.
The display and announcements are fortunately bilingual, in English too. It was a struggle not to fall asleep, but I did it. Got off at Syntagma in central Athens, got out, found the tram station pretty easily, just a few minutes to the second to last T6, took it to the end station, walked some 10 more minutes to the hotel (there's some interesting vegetation in Athens that we don't have here), checked in pretty fast at the reception, went up to my room... and, barely freed from worries over how I'd get to the hotel, found new things to lose my mind over!
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Losing my mind chapter 2: the hotel room
The place looked pretty worn out overall, but oh, well, I'm not picky. But then I couldn't turn on the lights. There was a key card, which I inserted in the slot next to the door. One way, then the other, kept trying the light, nothing. Had to eventually go back to the reception. Where there was nobody anymore. Fuck! A few good minutes of going around like a caged animal. Then the guy showed up again. Told him the lights didn't work. He told me to insert the card. Um... had already done that, every way I could shove it in. He then came up with me, shoved the card in, moved it in there, mumbled some incantations, summoned Satan or something... until the lights finally worked. Whew.
Then started unpacking and noticed a note on the desk. Which contained this little bit: "if something gets stolen" - wut?! I had picked that hotel precisely because no reviews mentioned theft. Going around the room a bit more, noticed that only one half of the double balcony door could close fully. And to make it clear, anyone could easily get into that balcony from the balconies of the nearby rooms or from the tree in front of it. And I mean pretty much anyone, not even talking about a fit cat burglar.
My laptop was also a few mm too big to fit into the safe.
Problems go away if you can afford to throw money at them, but I couldn't afford another hotel.
Bonus: there was no hot water. You couldn't change the shower water temperature, you could just turn the water on and off. It would feel even worse after the festival. Too sweaty and dusty not to shower, but the shower water was so cold for how tired I was...
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Losing it chapter 3: Athens and Athens weather
The festival day was going to be the hottest and, worst of all, the sunniest of the week.
I didn't hurry to leave under those circumstances. But eventually had to. With a lot of sunscreen.
Now... in theory, temperatures weren't that high. 31°C-32°C, realfeel 35°C. Meh, I'd say in Bucharest, where I've been to shows at over 40°C and it was fine. But Bucharest has big trees, producing proper shade. Athens has almost none of that. So the same temperatures that feel okay in Bucharest feel murderous in Athens.
There are few big trees in Athens save for palm trees... which look cool, but don't produce much shade.
There are oleander
trees! My dad has two in two big pots and, while they've flowered, they never grew above 1m. In Athens, they're on the streets and they're small trees. They can't help much when it comes to shade, but they do look cool.
There are also fig trees. Again, they don't grow too big, but how cool it is to have fig trees on the street.
And citrus trees. On the street. Never mind that they don't grow big either, it's just too cool to have life quite literally give you lemons for free.
Which is why I was shocked to find lemons on the pavement and some of them had been stepped on?! Who does that?! How can you have citrus trees on the street, fruit there for you, you just have to reach out and grab it... and then not only you don't do that, but also step on the ripe fruit already fallen out?! I thought that was the saddest thing. Lemons are expensive... And mandarins even more so...
Btw, I've tried growing lemon and mandarin trees inside. It's so fucking hard. So it breaks my heart to see that there is a place where they grow so easily and people don't even seem to appreciate that...
Also, while their shade may not be enough for humans... it's enough for cats to rest there during the day, in between night time hunting expeditions.
Speaking of cats. You may have heard they prefer warmer temperatures than humans, which is why you'll often find them on warm car engines, on warm laptops and keyboards. And why there's a lot more of them on the streets of the cities around the Mediterranean. Let's say Athens did not disappoint when it came to feline encounters.
The black one was waiting at the entrance of a pet shop, while the orange one probably fancied my ice cream...
Speaking of which... I'm normally up for trying/ leaving with more sweets. But it's really hard when ingredient lists are using a different language with a different alphabet and you can't understand most of what's written there. So I only got this ice cream...
Now I can map most... if not all, Greek characters to transliterations thanks to school Maths/ Physics, but I don't know the language and it doesn't resemble any other language I know so I can make guesses to fill in the gaps. Like I can with Swedish thanks to similarities with English and German. Not saying Dutch too, because there they will normally have ingredient lists in French or in German too, which obviously makes it easy. But in Sweden, ingredient lists are most often just in Swedish and in Finnish.
But with Greek, it's different. Transliterations help on the streets with place names, but not that much in the supermarket. On this ice cream, "pecans" is for some reason in English, "karamela" (καραμελα) is pretty obvious, then "gala" (γάλα)/ "galaktos" (ɣάλακτος) is "milk"... "milky"? That's where "galaxy"/ "Milky Way" come from... another one of those little tidbits you learn in school. "karamelomena pecans" (καραμελωμένα pecans) is probably "caramelised pecans". "siropi" (σιρόπι) is probably "syrup". I'm thinking the text on the ribbon is probably the brand name and the "farmes" (φάρμες) part of it might be "farms"? But that's as far as the combination of knowledge and guesswork goes. Beyond that... it's all Greek to me...
I knew arriving three hours in advance for such a big festival wouldn't be enough. A dozen of people were already at the entrance. At least I got to be in the shade of taller people for most of the wait there because there was no other shade. That place is just a giant concrete slab right by the water, zero shade. And I really mean right by the water - there are festival videos filmed from boats on the water right outside the festival perimeter.
Also, as disappointed as I was with the VIP packages at the Vampires show, I really should have bought one here because it did come with actual half an hour early entry... for half the price. It's just that the website said nothing about early entry (being in the supermarket and staring at labels is one thing, but at home, when checking out a page in Greek, I can just copy and paste and pass the whole text through a translator). Given I hadn't, I had to wait for about half an hour, squished like a sardine in the sun. And then there was a half a km run to the barrier. Yeah, no way I was going to be able to be fast enough over such a long distance, especially not in that sun, when having to race down some stairs, with my knee hurting, getting out of breath... and also stopping to pick up a collector ticket... even though no more than a dozen people got in before me. I made it to the barrier, but barely at the edge of the stage on Sami's side (and it was a big stage because this was a big event, in case the half a km run through the festival area didn't make that clear). Wasn't too bad as I was still at the barrier and that's one spot where they don't have pyro right on the edge of the stage, so that's where they come the closest to us.
Anyway. I didn't know beverages (you could bring your own inside, as much as you wanted, frozen too and you could get water for free inside) and umbrellas would be unrestricted, but considering the burning sun, it was a very good choice they made there. I was sweating like crazy.
I wasn't familiar with Bleed from Within and I'm not into metalcore in general, but these two festivals I saw them at made wonder... how did I not know about this band before?! Thumbs up!
Heaven Shall Burn were unfortunately plagued by some sound problems at the start, but I still loved them and stylistically, they were such a good choice for that spot between Bleed from Within and the co-headliners. Would have been really cool to have Mille guesting for a song with them, but it didn't happen. Oh, well...
Then it was time to get the stage ready for Kreator...
As sunny as it was, it was also windy and the wind kept blowing the massive curtain behind which the stage was being prepared. So people got tasked with holding it in place. In case it wasn't clear, that's a really big and heavy curtain, so having to hold it so the wind doesn't blow it in? Definitely not a job I'd envy!
And there was yet another thing to keep turning in my mind... how long were they going to play? The schedule had 2.5 hours between the time they were to start and the time Amon Amarth were to start after them. With 30-60 minutes for changeover, that's 90-120 minutes for Kreator? Could it be? Too good to be true? I've never seen them play more than 90 minutes. Maybe they did, ages ago, but definitely never since 2015.
Side note: I really wanted to see a 90 minute Kreator show this summer.
The Gefle Metal Festival was the first one they're playing at to announce a schedule. It seemed perfect. I would have loved to return to Sweden. But the cheapest way to get there would have been train to Vienna, fly to Stockholm with a layover in Warsaw, then take the train to Gävle. But even this cheapest flight was over 200€ and adding up the trains it got me to almost 300€. One way. Double that when also considering the way back, 600€. The cheapest hotel was close to 170€ per night. Two nights, before and after the last festival day... would have been 340€. Plus 109€ per one festival day. Over 1000€ to travel to Sweden and see a single festival day, 4 bands on the main stage, none of which I was particularly interested in. There were other bands I love at that festival, just not on the same day. 3x what I make in a month. 3x the cost of this trip to Athens and Sofia.
Then Masters of Rock in Czechia and Rock Pod in Slovakia also had them playing 90 minutes on their schedules. Cool lineups overall too. Masters of Rock also has bands like Battle Beast or Soulfly, while Rock Pod has a fun Czech punk band on the same stage right before Kreator. But both these festivals are in small towns where all was sold out. And all that wasn't sold out in nearby towns was at outrageous prices. Plus how do you get out of there late at night after a show? Masters of Rock did show some bus schedules, but there was nothing of the kind for Rock Pod.
Then they were announced to play 90 minutes at Wacken. Already sold out, in a muddy cow field in the middle of nowhere, plagued by thefts every year. Yeah, no. Happy for them because it's an iconic event, but Wacken was never an option for me.
Then Beyond the Gates in Bergen, Norway announced them to be playing 90 minutes there too. The lineup was kinda meh for me, but both the city and the venue look gorgeous. I would have loved to be able to go. Cheapest flight from Bucharest, with a layover in Amsterdam: close to 800€. Just one way. FML. I didn't even bother to check hotels after I saw that. That's even more costly than flying to Canada to see Aerosmith would have been, so the Norway idea died in its infancy.
I went for what I could afford. Release Athens and Sofia Solid, both of which had the added advantage of Amon Amarth in the package. Judging from other Release Athens events, this was going to be big and it was possible to also have a 90 minute set. But all of these events only had a schedule announced the day before, so I was only going to see it only on the day of my departure to Greece. And when I did... I freaked out. What if there was a mistake? What if it was too good to be true.
They did play 90 minutes. And while they didn't play anything I hadn't heard before, they brought back Extreme Aggressions, which I love and only got to hear live once before - two years ago in Innsbruck. They also brought back Hail to the Hordes, which is always going to be special for me. And the song I discovered them with, Phantom Antichrist. They also brought back Strongest of the Strong from the new album, something else I appreciated. The new album being so poorly represented in setlists over this past year since it came out has been bothering me to no end. They used to be so fucking fierce when it came to promoting new material live. The previous three album tours had as many as seven new songs in the set. And at least four. Now they've only played the title track at all shows and maybe one or two other new songs and that was it, a "big ones" set otherwise. I was really, really hoping for Conquer & Destroy, for which they've recently put out a video... but that didn't happen.
Still a very good live experience.
Amon Amarth also had a longer and better set than on last year's tour. They brought back Death in Fire, which is the song that really got me into death metal. Put Your Back into the Oar was insane. Before their set, festival staff were distributing flyers with let's try to set a biggest rowing pit record. During Put Your Back into the Oar, during the "row! row!" part, everyone sits down and pretends to be rowing. Maybe I got to excited about that and I put too much energy into it, but I felt my batteries dangerously low afterwards. I was already exhausted after Kreator and the rowing drained me even further. Minutes later, I felt like I was about to pass out. I know what it feels like, been there before... I had no more water at that point, so I asked for some from the guy next to me and I got on my knees. Kept on headbanging though. I recovered and lasted to the end. Even caught a pick from Olavi. But because I'm an idiot, I probably lost it at the hotel or at the airport next morning...
After the show in Innsbruck two years ago, I heard You Can't Always Get What You Want played in a park. As I was returning to the hotel after the show in Berlin this March, it was Boulevard of Broken Dreams. This time, it was Californication from a food truck right outside the festival grounds.
According to the schedule in the tram station, the T7 wasn't running anymore. My body wanted to crash right there in the street, I was that exhausted, but was relieved not to have to spend more money on that too. Except that... on the way back to the hotel, I would see that not only was the T7 still running at that hour of the night, but also the X96. You know, the airport express bus, which I had found online wasn't running between 6pm and 4am. It was after 1am and two of them passed by coming from the airport. They come directly from the airport and stop at the hotel where I was staying. Takes them 70 minutes. And cost 5.50€. I had paid 9€ and took the M3 to central Athens, where I had to change and take the T6. Took some 90 minutes. The 2.70€ I saved by not taking the T7 after the festival weren't even covering the 3.50€ I had paid extra (and needlessly) the night before...
Passed by a cemetery. Probably the tidiest-looking place in all of Athens.
I got to the hotel at 2am. Entrance locked. Rang bell. A guy, another one, not the same as the night before, came and opened the door. Asked him if he's be there in 2-3 hours because I'll need an invoice when I check out. Sure, he said, what room, so I can have it ready by then? 306. Dashed up. Laptop was still there. Same problem with the card. Opened the balcony door curtains, maybe it helps me see better how to shove it in. Did not help. Took off my massive scarf I had been almost fully wrapped into, which left my "Big Skull" Kreator t-shirt visible in all its glory. And went back downstairs to the reception. Explained the problem, how I had hit it the night before too. And he came up with me.
During which time he asked me how was the live... because "I'm a metalhead as well and saw the t-shirt..." - yeah, hard to miss. The artwork covers all the front part.
Just like the other guy the night before, he shoved that card in the slot in various ways, moved it around, recited some incantations, summoned Satan (or something, but more about
what who he summoned in a moment), almost took that slot apart... eventually got it to work - "don't touch it until you leave!" - yeah, I wasn't going to.
Remember the balcony door curtains I had pulled out of the way? Well, as I turned off the light in the room and only left the bathroom light on, I noticed I was being watched by a cat burglar from the balcony. Or maybe by a demon that guy had summoned while moving the card in the slot.
Told ya! Not hard at all to get into that balcony from nearby ones or from the tree in front of it. Or maybe the cat was included in the room price...
Got to sleep for a couple of hours. Then had to get up and get ready to leave, take the X96 to the airport and fly to Sofia.