Milan:
We were supposed to play a venue a bit outside the centre, but due to the local Governments strict fire regulations the venue was closed down and our gig was moved to more local Alcatraz. It was a very nice, but huge venue where really big stars like Josh Stone was to play later, so we enjoyed using the same showers and toilets as the big stars Being on tour makes you more aware of your daily and primary needs, like how is the shower in the venue (and are there any!), is there toilet paper in the loo, what food will we get today, is there internet in the venue..so quite limited. All these things were perfect, and we also met some really nice fans outside the venue before the show making us feel really special. Gig went really well, we had a great time on stage! I also got to meet some of The Gathering fans that have sent me really nice messages on myspace earlier. Beautiful people, thanks for coming

After the show we had a great party in the bus, starting as always with Black Sabbath’s Volume 4 kicking off the night. We discovered it was our tour managers (Sjoerd) birthday was due after midnight, so whiskey and champagne, beer and wine; you name it we drank it! I was amongst the last ones standing going to bed at 7:30 in the morning. Next day was travel day so we were allowed We had a lot of fun, Marjolein was ruling the party! Think she was happy we had next day off

Day off:
Woke up in a beautiful little village in south France, went for a stroll in the sun with some nice people from Autumn, caught up with the René, Gema, Marjolein in a café for breakfast. It was the first day we could really feel the sun warming our pale northern European winter skin! Our sound engineer got his hair shaved off in a hair dressing saloon but by our merch boss, Gema, he looked soo beaoootifoool! We got Sjoerd some nice prezzies and went for a drink in a local bar with extraordinary drawings on the wall and extraordinary people behind the bar. It was all a bit surreal as the bar maid seemed rather drunk (or crazy) and the drawings contained female private parts. This was discovered after we made our orders which turned out very very nice. A quick drink, lots of fun and some nice tapas and we went off all together for a meal singing happy birthday songs for Sjoerd and eating lovely food!

Next day we were in Barcelona, where the rain embraced us as we arrive the venue. Autumn kicked off the night again, doing a great show, and the audience was a really nice crowd making us feel very welcome!

I have to say I never in my wildest dreams thought we would have such a great time on the road. The guys in TG are just the sweetest and funniest (which I of course knew from before, but got even more of on the road). When Frank gets some whiskey down there is no end to his dry jokes, I am laughing so much! Dj René is the ultimate boss kicking off the after party with his excellent DJ’ing using Hans’ superb Ipod collection! Marjolein is, as said before, the queen of the night totally awesome with funny comments and dance moves! Hans tunes in to being the master of jokes, stories from touring and silly comments, so there are big smiles around all the time! The Autumn guys and girl are beyond our dreams of being great band to tour with! Such a great bunch of people! We are having an incredibly time with them!

At least but not last our crew, Wouter, Sjoerd, Linda and Gema, and excellent driver Stefan (haaaaaaaaase) are totally topping the ice cake with their fantastic work and great humour!

Alicante:
I was in Alicante in September last year, and was really looking forward to going back. We woke in a boiling bus a bit outside the city, and the sun hit our..really nice! Did a little stroll in to the city, got some laundry done and had nice lunch. The venue was nice, except for the massive hole in the roof of the showers and backstage where our support band had a lot of fun looking through! Bastards!

Granada: Some of us got up early to get into the city and have a look at this beautiful place, and some of us just went for a little walk in a big group having coffee and tea sitting outside. This is very special for us to do early February, so we were all smiling One even picked an orange from a tree..not sweet enough, but still..just doing it is exotic enough for us up north. Gotta mention the crew of the venue who cared so well for us and had a really cool attitude. Thanks!! The crowd for the night were really awesome giving us and Autumn so much energy. Thanks a million!

Beautiful Madrid. Some times we have time to see a little of the city, but very often we have to park outside and don’t get any chance to see much, as the case here. Just managed a little walk and sit down for a nice cup of coffee. Back in the venue I chatted with some friends of mine from Bergen based band called Audrey Horne, just finishing recording a video in Berlin. Looking forward to the final result as it sounded pretty crazy and full of funky stuff!
Autumn had a good show that night. Fans turned up singing along with their songs and long hair was thrown around everywhere. We also had a good time with the crowd well warmed up by Autumn giving us a great time on stage! Got to meet a few after the show, and all very nice people!

Before I went on tour I bought new socks that I wanted to make sure nobody else had. When washing clothes on tour it can all get mixed up and 15 people all with black socks…..
So I got some silly Hello Kitty socks which of course got some attention. Actually one of the pink ones have been (clean to notice!) moved around in the bus, waking up everyday on a new spot (I think even it has been tweeted slapping René).

Yesterday Marjolein, Frank and me did an in store acoustic show in a massive shop in Lyon. It was my very first one with the guys, but it went really well! We really enjoyed it! And thanks to Claude from the shop who organized everything well for us. Back in the venue we had a marvellous chef cooking brilliant food for us! Two very happy bands and crew Funny what food can do to you! This night we also had French Osm’oz on the bill, a band that has supported TG before. Very nice guys that unfortunately have been through some pretty rough times lately loosing their singer. One thing I noticed with the French audience is that they are really listeners and not talking so much in between the songs. It is a very nice gesture to the band!
We loved it!

Today we are in snowy Switzerland finally back to play the show that was moved last year. Right now we are watching Sesame Street mash up playing Slayer and gangsta rap! Great!

…to be continued…

10 shows are done, Hugo has left the building, eh I mean the bus, and have just reached the venue Alcatraz in Milan. We have finally reached the + side of the Celsius scale. No snow and blue skies. It is a great start of a new day.

Thinking back it feels like it’s been a long time on the road, but at the same time it has gone soo fast!

Our new super friends in Autumn are such a nice bunch of people. We are having a great time with them! As Marjan said so well: “everyday is Saturday for the next three weeks!”

Our first gig in Krefeld went very well. Autumn kicked off the night wonderfully! It was the very first gig with The Gatherings former bass player, Hugo, in 6 years, and it was so special for me to share a stage with this wonderful musician! He plays his instrument in such a natural and perfect way, and it was as if he still was the bass player of the band. He sure did an excellent job on this tour. As you probably know Marjolein has a day job that required her to work this first week of our Euro tour. A lot of people turned up from several countries for this first gig of the tour! Such a nice crowd

Second day in Erfurt started with having a very nice breakfast and shower in the venue before sound checking. Suddenly the colour in Hugo’s face turned paler and paler, then rather green and off he went. Next stop was the hospital getting some funky stuff to stop his stomach cramps and glucose to give him something to run on. A big pile of vitamins and anti bacterial gels was bought in to everyone on the bus to boost the immune systems and keep the germs at safe distance. Getting the stomach flu flowing on a tour bus is just not handy!

We needed to make a plan B, C, D, E for the nights show. Do we have to cancel the show? Will Hugo manage to play? If yes, how many songs will he manage? Will we manage to play the songs without a bass player? Does anyone in Autumn know the songs? Hugo manage to get up and stand on his feet half an hour before the show, so we go for plan B: he does as many songs as his body allows. This hero manages almost half the set and then his body says Enough!! We go on without him, get an amazing help from the audience who is such a great supporting crowd! Thanks!! Luckily Hugo get to rest well and will be on his feet again the next day.

Berlin the next day runs quite smooth, a good gig, Hugo is back on his feet, not top form, but it is definitely going in the right direction. Autumn did another great show, and I got their song “The heart demands” on my brain…and it stayed there for the next week. Luckily it is a very nice song

After Berlin is a day off and we woke in Karlsruhe were the next gig will be. The nice people at the venue open it so we can get showers and coffee. We wander around a bit then eating some food in the evening. I know when travelling you have be a bit careful with what you eat, and being a Norwegian there are a lot of different bacteria’s my body never tried before. We go to this nice restaurant, everything looks safe and I go for the fish. You know sometimes you just eat food and there is something wrong even though the taste is quite OK. Our beautiful Chilean merch coordinator have a little piece of my food. We leave the restaurant for the bus, and we both meet at some point telling each other that stomach is acting weirdly.
As you might know on a tour bus there are certain rules; toilet can only do the pee so you have to save yourself for when there is a toilet available. We check the nearest restaurant and they are open to midnight in case of emergency. One hour goes and I am parked at the toilet in this place with the worst food poisoning ever! The people in the restaurant are just the nicest, so understanding and giving me water and smiles. Thank you so much!!! Luckily the bus is parked for the night, and our fantastic tour manager Sjoerd is just the sweetest and best friend when my body was just not working at all. He and Hans got me to a hotel nearby so I could be on my own and recover over the night.
Without giving away to many details I am in a pretty poor shape until 6 o’clock in the morning when I finally fall asleep for 1,5 h on the floor. I get to rest the day in the hotel, drinking a few sips of a cola and getting some more sleep later. 18:30 I crawl out of the bed and in the shower half sitting half standing thinking playing a gig in 3 hours seems rather impossible! Somehow I get myself to the venue with help of Sjoerd (man, I own him my life!) and I am on stage with the nicest audience that give me so much energy keeping me through the show. I will never forget you guys!!

Nürnberg is next stop. Breakfast both looked and smelled very nice, but I didn’t manage to eat yet. The guys enjoyed it though. The show of the night went very well, I was still a bit reduced with only half a slice of bread in my body, but crowd was awesome and help me through it! I have to mention two very special persons coming all the way from Mexico joining us on several dates on this tour, including this! Fantastic to have you guys in the audience!!

Our second time in Prague in a half year was a rather colder experience this time. Beautiful city, but so cold we chose to stay inside as much as possible this time. We got to meet our second support act Dying Passion who opened the night well. Our Mexican friends turned up again, and we had a few beers with them after the show. Gig was really nice, the crowd was fantastic, both to Autumn and us! Thank you guys!!

Back in the bus DJ René was boosting the after party with his on the spot techno tunes and Slayer!

Krakow: First I have to say the crowd there was totally awesome! I will never forget it. We have had to do encores every night, but here they even continued after we left stage second time singing “happy birthday” in Polish for TG’s 20 years anniversary..how sweet is that? Everyone we got to meet after the show were really nice people and you all made that day very special for us! Thanks!

In Bratislava most things that could go wrong went wrong except the actual show which went really cool! For some reason the promoter of the venue didn’t want to open it for us as already agreed so we had to wait for hours before we could get in. It is also very handy to just turn off your phone in these situations. Playing the kind of music TG does requires a certain amount of technical equipment, which of course was not provided and needed to be sorted. On top of this Marjolein’s flight to Budapest got cancelled due to heavy snow and needed to be dealt with (that story is involves three airports, one car drive, one bus drive, a few hours sleet at a hotel and several hours of waiting at airports), and the bus needed technical support (not easy during weekend) to be able to drive any further. Our tour manager was definitely reaching his limits when the stage manager just left his desk after Autumns first song. He thought it was much better to have a drink in the bar. During our show he went for a little sleep at the monitor desk… Despite all this the show was really really great, thanks to our amazing crew and the beautiful people turning up for the show!

The early morning of our day in Budapest Hugo was supposed to fly back and Marjolein arrive. But since Marjolein still wasn’t safe in Budapest Hugo rebooked his flight so we were sure to have at least one bass player for the show. We finally got the message Marjolein was on Hungarian ground and in close distance and Hugo could book his flight. We arrived in the most beautiful winter wonderland, and got such a warm welcome by the crew of the venue. The ladies in charge of catering needs to be mentioned here as they did an absolutely amazing job with the food and making us feel so good.! The chef spent 8 hours cooking for us, and boy could we taste that! It was 16 veeeeeeeery happy people that day! The time came when our Marjolein arrived just for sound check and Hugo was leaving us to go home to his family. It was a really special moment for all of us. He did such a good job and was such a nice person to be around! We hope you are happy at home, but we still miss you here! It was of course also very good to have our sweet Marjolein back in the line rocking with us! Show was really special as the atmosphere of the venue and the people were so nice. Thanks so much for the special day!!

Yesterday we played the hottest show of the tour. I think we can say it was freezing outside, but steaming hot on stage in Zagreb But it was such a good show! Nice to spill some sweat while rocking!;) We had a great time, and Bobo (our promoter there) was such a good guy treating us very well! We did a few interviews and even the Zagreb 1 TV channel filmed a bit of our show.

Now Milano: It is 9 degrees Celsius here….As our sweet Gema would say it: it’s beaoooooitfoooool :)

… to be continued…