Hurricane Festival

Every festival I've been to this summer has been the best one yet. I didn't think anything could beat ATP: The Breeders, nor Primavera Sound, but it seems that Hurricane just did! My first tent-festival in two years, and I'll remember it for persistent hangovers, best in show wellies, new and lovely Irish friends, and slow sunsets. I live-tweeted the whole event, but due to some sort of transmission failure, you're experiencing a delay. There will be a similar delay until I get my photos online.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present a weekend in Scheeßel:

Thursday 18 June 2009 23:26
Wrong tram stop? We are lost in Bremen :)

23:45
Not lost. At our accom. Bremen is flat and mild and the inhabitants friendly so far.

Friday 19 June 2009 10:34
Made train with nanoseconds to spare, epic sprint through station. Please rain stay in Bremen.

12:47
Tent up before first rain. 3 in tent, drinking sangria from carton listening to FNM.

14:06
Second rain over now. Hot again. Think music starts soon. Becks=yuck

14:25
Aah portaloos, how much I haven't missed you

15:44
Glasvegas..Go Square Go! Raining hard, subsiding..?

Glasvegas were the weekend's one disappointment. They opened the festival, and only played three songs!!

16:55
The Horrors, sweet! Hour of hot sun, looks like another downpour approaches



18:52
The Sounds sounding good. Sangria in a box ftw. Love Hurricane

19:40
Waiting for the Editors. FNM playing through speakers 'Like a snake between two stones/it itches in your bones'

23:30
KOL. Doing it. I am watching with one eye

The next ages were spent wandering around the festival's many camping areas and carparks, where we still couldn't find what we were looking for. Had some fun on the hunt nonetheless, before passing out in the tent.

Saturday 20 June 2009 10:05
Urgh the reconstruction begins

Pretty bad hangover on Saturday. It got worse until it finally went away in the late afternoon.

18:32
Really is something how soon after a hangover one can recommence. Mars Volta are sounding crazy

19:52
Fleet Foxes yay! We are fully recovered & dancing & found the hot Irish

20:23
And now Pixies!!!

21:21
Regrouping ahead of FNM. Weather stabilised, not exactly warm but nice. Watching crane bungy

22:55
We are at the front waiting for FNM.. atmosphere is jubilant..squee!!



FNM's set was fabulous. The crowd were lapping it up, and my team had made it to very close to the front. This meant a lot of pogoing and screaming, and nearly wetting myself a few times. Details are what you're after, right? Got a couple of good pictures, all in good time.

Sunday 21 June 2009
01:06
Oh god Nick Cave is singing The Ship Song

01:19
He just dedicated Henry Lee to PJ Harvey

Nick Cave was incredible. I kind of needed some time to process having seen FNM again, but there wasn't any, because there was Mr Cave singing 'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!', and 'The Ship Song', both 'Henry Lee' and 'Stagger Lee', 'The Mercy Seat'.. beautiful. Moving on to day 3, severe sleep deprivation, but it's all for a good cause!

15:19
And we're back in time for Gogol Bordello. Yuck ice cream. Good merch. Wait for pics

15:38
If pirate was a genre Gogol Bordello would own it

16:54
Lily Allen: loud, better than I expected

18:07
Eagles of Death Megal. Thought I knew them, turns out I don't. Weissbeer: it's make or break

20:52
Ladyhawke just kicked our ASSES! Jane says: NZ reprazent!

21:20
NIN next

21:37
God is dead! And March of the Pigs!! NIN

I was expecting newer stuff from Trent, but then he went and played a load of tracks from The Downward Spiral! It was great.

22:50
And now: Friendly Fires FTW

22 June 2009 12:57
Back in Bremen. Lunch time, whaddya know, Monday is Knuckle Day!

So now I have these three nights in my own bed, before heading to Glastonbury on Thursday. Must make the most of them. Photos to follow. I've started posting my Primavera pics - you can see them here.

Christmas approaches

It's coming up to my second Christmas away from New Zealand. I think that this is a great thing! Last year I spent it in Tuscany with a wonderful group of friends. This year I will spend it in Paris. It's to be my first visit, and I'm quite looking forward to it.

A couple of weeks ago, Evania and I spent a weekend in Cologne checking out the magical Christmas markets. Here are a few images:









And if you're wondering what Cologne looks like, this is a close approximation:



More pictures of Cologne and the markets here. What else?

Last weekend I visited Butlins in Minehead, Somerset for All Tomorrow's Parties: the Nightmare Before Christmas. It was fantastic, lots of great acts including Isis, the Meat Puppets, Fantomas, the Melvins, the Butthole Surfers, Martina Topley-Bird, Mastodon... good weekend. Butlins is a very weird place.

Leaving Turkey

We spent our last week in Turkey at a remote point on the Mediterranean called Gökkaya Bay. We stayed at a bar called Smuggler's Inn, spent our days sunbathing, swimming, sleeping, reading, learning Turkish, enjoying the Mediterranean playground on banana boat and biscuit rides, waterskis and jetskis. In the evenings I helped out at the bar.

Our last evening was a jubilant one. I worked, finding time for a few glasses of red here and there, while Ange kept me company and hung with the locals. Beth and Preeti were there, and also Ahmet (aka hot friend) and his sister Eda. Veli mashed up the sounds and we danced beneath the stars. Later Ilias, with Angela's help, created the most delicious dish I have ever tasted involving poached eggs and yoghurt, and we all sat and ate around the dining tables in the restaurant. Stories were exchanged and occasionally translated, meaning us yabancı could feel more involved.

I got to bed around half two, utterly shattered, and jerked awake not long after as my alarm went off just before six. I stumbled out of bed and gathered myself together. Kamil was already up, and he woke Ahmet while I found Ange. My contacts refused to adhere to my eyeballs, the clothes I had planned to wear were discarded, and we dragged ourselves and our belongings to the dock and onto İzmirli. Eda and Rocket were asleep on board, and they didn't wake up when Ahmet started the engine and pointed us out into Gökkaya Bay. Kamil stood at the dock and we waved goodbye to Smuggler's Inn.



It was a beautiful morning. The sun was not long up, and the sky was still tinted an orange pink. The water was calm, and the bay was populated with sleepy gulets.



With Ahmet at the rudder, we chugged across the bay and into the harbour at Myra. We passed by the dock and continued up a small river, before coming to rest near a restaurant. Here we met Sale and Barış, who were to escort us to Antalya. Our ride was a souped-up and lowered-out Mercedes, and we happily fell asleep in the backseat. We left Demre around 7am, and woke up in Antalya around 9:15am. We were supposed to be at the airport by 9am so we were mildly anxious, particularly since the airport has two terminals which are several kilometres apart, and we only had a vague guess as to which one to attempt.

We got to terminal 2, and went through metal detectors to enter the airport. We quickly found our check-in counter, to our great relief, and got our boarding passes. We were starving, but only had 10 YTL left between us. Ordinarily that would be plenty, but not so in an airport. A chicken sandwich was 11.50 YTL (pretty much NZ$11.50)! We decided to keep looking. Upstairs we were seduced by Burger King. How incongruous to our recent "it's nature" lifestyles. But we were determined, even when we got to the counter and saw that a whopper burger cost 20 YTL! We settled for double cheeseburgers, at 9.50 YTL each. Kind of gross but they hit the spot. After we got our food, I checked an info screen, and saw our flight was flashing "Last Call"! We were not in any state to be missing our flight so we ran ran ran down two escalators and found our gate, only to end up on a bus that took us to our plane.

Three hours later, including equal parts sleep and plotting ways to torture an obnoxiously happy small boy, we landed in Dresden. Being pretty new to travel, we were excited at the prospect of another stamp in our passports, and were most disappointed that the passport control counter was deserted. It's been a culture shock, arriving in Germany, staying in an apartment. Walls, doors, a road outside, a constant stream of cars, no ocean.