Tour Diary pt1

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…