Lachlan and Shane in the city park, Piestany.
Day 7
This morning I woke up in Piestany still feeling a bit sick.
Shane, Lachlan and I got up and had breakfast before we went down to the “wellness centre” and had a really hot sauna and a soak in the spa.
After I got out of the sauna Lachlan tipped a giant bucket of cold water over my head that was attached to a little chain.
The steam made me feel a fair bit better, but I’m not sure the cold water really helped other than for comedic purposes.
After our time in the spa we went for a walk in to town through the city park and past an old abandoned hotel called Hotel Slovan. It was very creepy but also really cool. We later learned that shortly before we arrived in town it had been on fire.
Shane and Lachlan went shopping in some souvenir stores and bought some stickers. Shane tried to buy a shirt, but everywhere we went they only had extra small or extra large. After the souvenir shopping I bought us all ice creams. Lachlan had dark chocolate and caramel, good combo. Shane got pistachio and mango, and I’m not too sure how I feel about that.
We walked over the river to the hot springs and palace area of town and had a look around. The town used to be a retreat for royal Slovak families and appeared to have been quite wealthy at one stage. We put our hands in some 60 degree water that smelt like sulphur and then started heading back to the hotel to go the festival.
We stopped in at a pub and Lachlan and Shane had Pilsners and I had a lovely sparkling water. As we left the pub we found Simon sitting alone in the corner of a dark restaurant eating nothing but beef cheeks and drinking beer.
We arrived at Grape Festival and checked in. The festival is held on an old Soviet era airfield. It’s a really great place.
We met our festival guide, Monika and she was really helpful.
Shane and I split the merchandise and then Simon, Shane, Lachlan and I went to catering and had some lunch before going to watch some music.
We met up with Tomas again and he gave us 3 bottles of his home made wine and some apricot liquor from his local area.
I thought something was wrong with Shane’s in ear monitors but it just turned out that Tom had forgotten to unmute them.
They allowed us to have a drum riser as well as two skids for the guitar amps which made change over a breeze.
The show went quite well and had a good crowd response.
After the show we loaded out and I collected the merchandise from the stall. I was still feeling pretty sick but Simon, Shane and Tom decided they would like to stay a bit longer. Lachlan and I decided we would sleep in the van because we are gentlemen.
After we had been sitting in the van for around an hour, Tom came and told us that they were all in for the long haul and to go home without them, so we had waited around all that time when we could have been at the hotel sleeping. Disgusting.
Day 8
I woke up feeling a bit better, my sore throat had mostly gone which was nice.
I had a lovely breakfast with Lachlan at the hotel.
Tom is very hungover and was very late to lobby call. He emerged from the hotel with an incredibly swollen face and was entirely unable to lift his own enormous suitcase in to the van. Once I put it in for him we started driving towards Vienna and stopped off at TESCO for food.
I wondered where our soccer ball had gone and it was revealed that Tom had kicked it in to the darkness and it was lost forever.
Lachlan and Tom went to the toilet and the smell the toilets were emitting made Tom vomit.
We kept driving to Vienna and when we reached the Austrian border we pulled over to get our vignette sticker for €9.
When I came out Shane had discovered we had a flat rear tire from something we must have hit coming in to buy the sticker. Terrible stuff, and not a good start to our immediate entry into Austria, however at least I wasn’t put in a van by masked, armed men in Slovakia this time.
I changed the tire quickly and we continued on our way towards Vienna. I accidentally went the wrong way at the border and the patrol officer sent me to the truck area, for what was the most mediocre van search of all time.
We arrived two hours early to the venue, called Arena. It’s a very trendy looking place.
Lachlan, Shane, Simon and I went to get schnitzels and Tom watched soccer in the van alone because he is a coward.
The place we went to was called Schnitzelpalatz. We ordered, of course, schnitzels. Shane and Lachlan had chicken with chips and a beer, and Simon had the same but with a water. To his dismay it was sparkling.
There was a strange show on TV about Ryan Gosling playing the whole time.
We got back to the venue and started loading in. The venue was very punk and DIY feeling.
Midway through soundcheck a beautiful dog, which looked like a German Shepard turned up. The promoter, Irvin, got very angry at me because we were taking too long to soundcheck and he didn’t like it - to which I paid absolutely no attention.
After soundcheck I walked around the compound (for lack of a better word) that the venue is in. I think there is about 4 different stages there. It is a really interesting place and the big amphitheater looks great.
The buildings look quite old and would have once been very beautiful but have been let go, however they have taken on a different life and a different charm.
I asked Irvin what the buildings used to be and he said it was once a giant slaughterhouse that became a squat for punk rockers in the 1970s.
We talked about punk rock for a while and I commented on his black flag tattoo. He said he regretted getting it because he thought Henry Rollins turned in to a dickhead.
We went up to the apartment and made up our bunk beds. I got some lovely floral sheets with only minimal staining and put them over the raw foam mattress filled with holes and cigarette burns, which unfortunately did not have only minimal staining.
I noticed there was heaps of band tags in green room and spotted a Break Even one and a massive Mawds one too! It always makes me happy to see a Mawds tag in a venue. He’s definitely one of the best people in the world.
The show was fun even though there wasn’t a massive amount of people there, but it was still a great show and I love hearing the band every night.
A gentleman in a red shirt with a mohawk danced really hard the whole time and that really made the show for me. I spoke to him after and it turned out he had driven two hours to see the show. He loved it.
After the show we loaded out really fast and I parked the van in a safe spot and went to bed.
Tomorrow I have a long drive up to Berlin, but first I have to get up early to get the punctured tire fixed.
Simon, Lachlan and Shane enjoying the most popular pastime on tour.