Onward to Stuttgart!

Friday was a day off gigwise and was spent at work followed by a few hours at home in the evening researching some things on Stuttgart. I found a plan of the underground system so I knew exactly where I was to go when I arrived. Luckily, I also found a map of how to get to the venue from my hotel. I think it would have been a lot trickier for me had I not found this stuff!

I arose early on Saturday morning, packed a bag with my notepad, a T-shirt, my brush, tickets, passport and that was pretty much it! The platform at Lewisham Station when I arrived was packed out but that was due to what looked like a huge party of German schoolkids (up to about the age of 18) there - one girl threw a gum wrapper in the air and it managed to hit me. In one second she turned from looking ultra-cool and sophisticated (which she did, I'll say that for her) into incredibly coy and embarrassed. She muttered "scuse me", giggled and turned bright red :-)

I decided to take the tube to Heathrow Airport all the way along the Piccadilly line and I have to say that it wasn't half as hard as I thought it would be. It only took 50 minutes, cost just £3.50 and there were plenty of seats to go around once you got past Piccadilly Circus. Very good. Unfortunately, Heathrow was incredibly confusing once I got there. I followed the sign which said British Midland on it to Terminal 1 only to find a sign when I got there saying "British Midland passengers travelling to Germany please check in with Lufthansa at Terminal 2". Mightily pissed off, I bombed back to Terminal 2 worried and paranoid that I was going to be late for my flight. As it turned out I needn't have worried. I had a ton of time to spend in the airport and it ended up being a bit boring. Still, in this case anyway, it was definitely better to be safe than sorry.

The flight to Stuttgart was fairly uneventful. I had a window seat and a row to myself which was quite nice and for food they just served us a sandwich and a drink. Not too bad really and the flight was a short hour and 20 minutes. We did land half an hour late though which was annoying because I hardly had any time in Germany as it was. As soon as we landed and made it to the terminal I had my first culture shock. It's incredible that I did German in school for several years and now have just forgotten 95% of what I learned but that's what has happened. I even bought a German phrase book at Heathrow to try and help me but I knew I would never bother using it. When I found the U-Bahn at Stuttgart Airport I looked for a ticket machine rather than a window and finally got it to accept a 10 Mark note for my ticket to Winterbahn. The train journey was about 50 minutes through some pretty countryside but the thing I noticed most of all during my journey was how beautiful some German girls are! The trains also go damn fast! After arriving at Winterbahn there were no signs to help me figure out which direction to set off in but I did know which road the hotel was on and so I basically set off and hoped I was going the right way. Well, of course I wasn't and realised this after about 10 minutes so I turned round and went back the way I came. Luckily, once I knew I was going the right way finding the hotel was easy and after about another 10 minutes I found the hotel. I checked in using my best English and went to my room for an hour. It was really nice, quite big with a double bed and its own bathroom plus satellite TV and a mini-bar! I had 2 bottles of Pils out of that for a very reasonable 5 Marks apiece before I went out again.

Finding the way to Schorndorf for the gig was a lot easier than I expected it to be as the path down to the main road into Schorndorf basically followed the highway for about 2 miles. It was a really hot day out and I saw people tending their little patches of allotment that they had. I did notice though that there were no lampposts on the side of the path at all so I thought it would be terrible walking back to the hotel. I wasn't really worrying about that too much though! Typically enough, when I finally reached the main road into Schorndorf a car pulled up at the side of me and a man starting jabbering at me in German. It soon became painfully apparent that he was asking me for directions. Why does this kind of thing always happen to me? Embarrassed, I had to shrug and say "ich bin englisch" at which he looked mildly disgusted before he drove away.

I finally found the place I wanted to be. There were no signs outside but it was a building with graffiti literally all over the outside of it so I knew I'd found what I was looking for. There were a couple of vans parked outside but I didn't see anybody I knew until Chuck came wandering outside. He looked rough, like he hadn't slept for a week. A smile crossed his face when I went over and he clapped me on the back. That was when Chris came out playing his guitar. Chuck called over "look who's here" and Chris just chuckled, hugged me and said the thing I'd been expecting "what the fuck are you doing here man?" :-) I'd felt surprisingly nervous about seeing these people, god knows why, but it was good to feel at ease straight away. It's what people tend to forget about bands sometimes. They're just normal people who happen to be in bands. Anyway, I went inside and stood by the door while George soundchecked his drums. His method seems to be to play the drumline from "Another One Bites The Dust" and Chuck stood at the back of the room dancing around and singing along :-)

Much of the afternoon was spent sitting in the little café next to the main room drinking free beer, playing pool and just chatting to people. I got to talk to The Tone for the first time which was fun - I found out that Dan had read that review I did of them on Back To Nowhere where I called him "a bit of a twat". Oops :-) George was being the demon of the pool table beating everyone that challenged him (including me). Well, everyone except Ryan who surprised everyone by winning.. Of course, I let George win as I didn't want to hurt his obviously fragile ego :-) Alison came in a little bit later - she'd been sleeping upstairs. Jason came in and introduced himself to me and then his face brightened when I reminded him that we'd met before in Vegas. He then told us about Chuck wanting to throw the TV out of the hotel window there!

George was limping around all day. This was due to an incident where he ended up walking around Prague for 7 and a half hours! As he said, "no one knows the streets of fucking Prague like me man!!!!" :-)