Lachlan and Shane in Treptow Park.
Day 10
I was woken up this morning by a gentleman changing all the hostel’s beer kegs, which I respect is a difficult task to do quietly, however question its necessity at 7:30am.
The mattress was very firm and appears to be bedbug free which is always a nice touch.
Lachlan and I walked our bags to a laundromat near Cassiopeia and couldn’t work out how to get the tokens to wash our clothes. Eventually we got a lady working in the bar across the road to help us and I still managed to mess it up by putting washing powder all over the floor.
We had breakfast up the road from the laundromat and Shane rode a rental bike over from the hostel to meet up with us. Lachlan was very upset because we were being overrun by wasps.
Some plain clothes police offices kept smirking at his discomfort with the situation.
We finished breakfast and then headed back to the laundromat. Our washing was finished so we put the clothes in little wheeled baskets and drove them to the dryer. I needed help working that too.
We left and walked around near Cassiopeia and took photoautomat pictures before going to an Aldi to get some groceries and then walked back to the laundromat.
We waited for the last few minutes of the dryer cycle and then took everything back to the hostel.Once we had put everything back in our rooms we hired some rental bikes and rode to the Soviet Memorial in Treptow Park. We wandered around for a while before riding back towards the hostel to get kebabs for lunch. On the way I almost got hit by a police car. We had kebabs and finished our drinks down by The Spree. There were also many more wasps there.
I folded all my clothes and then met Shane and Lachlan down by the van to go and pick up These New South Whales from their hotel. I was really excited to see them.
We picked them up and it made me really happy to see them all. We went to their friend Corey’s place to pick up their strobe light and smoke machine before driving to the venue and loading in.
I got Simon a new snare drum head and he put it on his snare in the car park out the back.
The venue was called Musik and Frieden.
The in house engineer, Peter was really great.
We set up and sound checked both bands and then Lachlan and I rented bikes and rode to the chemist to get hime some ulcer ointment.
I saw Alex Lahey and said hello to her but she either didn’t recognise me or just really didn’t want to talk to me because she completely ignored me.
When we got back to the venue we saw Clowns and said hello to all of them and invited them to the show.
The show was very good, one of my favourites so far and the crowd really enjoyed it. A man in the front row spent more money on merchandise than I’ve ever seen before. I think he bought one or maybe multiples, of everything.
It was really special to see the first show These New South Whales played overseas. They played really well and the show went down a treat, I thought. I’m really happy they’re on the rest of the tour.
The local support band and all their friends managed to get in to our dressing room and drink all the rider before DZ Deathrays had finished playing which was very nice of them. The singer looked like Indiana Jones and asked everyone what they thought of his band about a thousand times.
We loaded out and packed the van. I drove back to the hostel by myself while everyone else has gone out partying. Hopefully Lachlan is quiet when he comes home.
Simon putting a new head on his snare drum.
Day 11
I woke up and walked down to the front of the hostel and hired a bike to ride to breakfast. I got some muesli and walked around for a while before riding back.
Shane asked me to get my Leatherman out of the van so he could pry his power adapter out of the wall.
I remixed some coolant concentrate and topped the van up again. It was at its lowest ever this morning. When I topped it up and I think I might have found the problem. There appeared to be a split in the plastic reservoir. Maybe not though, I might have just spilled some coolant.
I unpacked almost everything out of the back of the van to get my Leatherman out, just to have Shane tell me he didn’t need it anymore.
We checked out of the hostel and I sat around waiting for everyone for a while.
Lachlan and Tom leisurely went to breakfast while Shane, Simon, Jamie, Todd, Will, Ben and I waited (almost) patiently for them.
We departed slightly after schedule and ended up in a terrible amount of traffic. The safety warning light came back on even though I’d only just filled up the radiator. I went in to the slow lane and prepared for a breakdown.
We stopped at a service centre to check everything and everything seemed ok when I turned the van back on. Very suspicious. We got food there and that pushed our arrival time back a bit.
We arrived at Hafangklang and I went the wrong way but eventually got to the load in. We loaded in and I struggled around the venue to a park for the van. I saw a park and did a 12 point turn blocking a lot of traffic to get in to it.
The street I parked in made me chuckle, it was called Buttstraße.
We did soundcheck and Tom had forgotten his iPad so I had to walk back to the van and get it for him.
While Tom was tuning the PA, Jamie, Ben and I went for a walk in the park and looked at some dogs and had a nice chat.
After soundcheck Lachlan, Shane, Simon and I sat on some stairs and drank some water before we had dinner.
After dinner we all went for a walk to the Reeperbahn which is always a really interesting experience.
We all went to a pub and Jamie and I had some sparkling water while everyone else had beers.
Simon, Will, Jamie and Lachlan watching Shane explaining the inner workings of The Reeperbahn… or something.
We looked around in a few shops, saw a few knives and a few guns as well as a lot of homeless people and people generally down on their luck.
We made our way back to the venue via The Beatles tribute and there were already quite a few people in the venue for the show. The show was good and Murray turned up, he’s very easy to spot in a crowd.
Everyone helped loading out and we were packed and in the van quite quickly.
Everyone except Jamie, Ben and I decided to go out and before they had formulated a plan for the night we had already started driving back to our accomodation. The drive time was 30 minutes and about 8 minutes in to our drive Jamie realised he had left his backpack at the venue. I turned around and started driving back to the venue. About halfway there, Ben, who was sitting in the back at the time started to smell a strange smell of alcohol, specifically wine. Eventually we could all smell it and by the time we got back to the venue it was quite overpowering. There was a really strange man working at the bar that night and he had taken Jamie’s bag and was trying to be funny by not giving it back to him but just ended up coming across as a dickhead.
We got back in the van and Ben had discovered the source of the smell. Someone had not put the lid back on a bottle of spirits that Tomas had given us which caused it to leak through the whole van and smell absolutely putrid. I’m not sure who was the last person drinking from it was, but they really blew it not putting the lid back on properly.
We got back in the van and drove back out to the accommodation, now another 30 minutes in the van.
About 5 minutes before we got there, the darkened forest, lack of street lights, houses and general civilisation left a dark foreboding cloud of doubt over me. We arrived at the motel and all my suspicions came to life. The motel was dark, no lights to be seen and no people in sight, nothing, despite me calling earlier to confirm a late check in. A note was left on the door to call a number, which I did. Many, many times.
I was greeted by an automated message in German which I couldn’t understand. I tried saying my name, other touring member's names, but the effort was futile. I rang a door buzzer, rang reservations, banged on the door, tried to get in for around 30 minutes before giving up and calling Simon.
The decision was made to try to book a new hotel. All the hotels I called were not answering their phones. I decided that staying in the car park at the motel quite a way out of town and also in the wrong direction for tomorrow’s drive was less productive than trying to get a hotel in town by driving up to one. This was a decision I would most certainly come to regret.
We started driving back towards the city, another 30 minutes in the van before I saw a Holiday Inn. I tried to check in there but couldn’t. There were several other hotels in the area and I tried all of them too but was turned away at every one.
I saw an Ibis and Ibis Budget and hoped beyond hope that they would have room for us. When I arrived, to my dismay they also had no room for us.
Jamie, Ben and I all decided to sleep in the van overnight while the others were forced to party all night because there was no where for us to stay. We found a parallel car park by a main road and tried to make the best of our new sleeping arrangements. I slept at the back of the van, Jamie slept on the seats in front of me and Ben slept on the seats in front of Jamie. We drew the curtains and settled in for some sleep at around 4:30am. I felt sorry for them, it was the second night of their first international tour. Sleeping was next to impossible and every time a truck or van drove past our van, we would rock violently back and forth.
Ben, Todd, Shane, Simon and Jamie in a bar in Hamburg.