World's Appreciated Kitsch

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Day 15_09.01

…he violently woke them up at 8 o’clock and he wasn’t kind at all…

Not a nice way to end the last night of our tour, I guess.

Yeap, this was the 10^th and last show of the tour. The Monday’s show in Patras got cancelled due to various reasons. So, we managed to complete 10 out of 13 shows of the whole tour and the 2 out of 3 ones that got cancelled were about to take place in Greece. No comments.

We headed to Ancona in order to get the ferry to Patras.

Actually, we are now in that ferry and we have to spend around 20 more hours in a couch… The wi-fi access is fucking expensive; 6 euros per hour, fucking thieves… So, it’s time for us to discuss the whole tour, read books and magazines and have as much rest as we can.

We are arriving at Patras on Monday evening and 2 of us have to drive to Athens to return the van. I’ll stay in Athens and the other dude will take the bus in order to return to Patras. Back to reality, back to ‘normal’ life. This depresses us a lot.

Check out this blog tomorrow to learn what happened in day 16 and read our last thoughts about the I Want You Dead winter tour.

Hugs.

Day 14_08.01

…we enter the Autostrasse at around 2 and after passing Bologna and Ancona (with just one stop to eat), we arrived in Montesilvano (a suburb located 5km away from Pescara) at 18.30. The drive to Pescara wasn’t so easy, because there was incredible fog during almost all the trip and there was traffic, too. The drivers reminded us of the Greek ones, by the way. That’s not a compliment, for sure.

So, we parked the van outside Blackest pub. It was nice to meet again the Straight Opposition guys. I consider them friends of mine, especially Luca and Ivan… While unloading our stuff from the van, a middle-aged guy (kinda drunk) asked us for some directions… 10 minutes later I figured out that my mobile phone was missing… Fuck. We desperately tried to find that guy, we visited all the bars / pubs in the area but we found nothing. My mobile was lost and I got frustrated… It was freezing outside, as well, so I decided to forget about that incident and try to have some fun inside.

The show started at 11 o’clock. A band called Methodic Massacre played first. Thrash metal stuff; they even covered Sepultura’s ‘Arise’ and Slayer’s ‘Reign In Blood’. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to that kind of stuff, though and neither were the other guys.

IWYD played at around 12-12.30. Their show was one of the best in this tour. I really enjoyed their set, and they did enjoy it, as well. The pub was packed with people and we had a great time. Straight Opposition headlined the show and caused chaos in the pub. Stage dives, sing – alongs and mosh!

We are working on a tour with them that will take place in May; they’ll definitely visit Greece once again!

So, it was already late and we had to split in 2 houses. Diastro and I had a cosy sleep at Ivan’s (Straight Opposition’s singer) house, while the other 3 guys had a disastrous night at another guy’s place…

Van essentials: Tragedy, Tribes Of Neurot, Martyrdod, Laurin Hill.

Day 13_07.01

We woke up at 1.30 o’clock after noon; we overslept but we definitely needed that! It was time for a walk downtown…

Zurich is a very quiet yet big city. It’s was very weird for us to cope with the city’s routine. Everything was sterilized, ultra-clean and there were tons of multinational companies, banks and churches; we even visited two of them to pray to God to save our souls…! Moreover, everything was so expensive and consequently we ended up eating supermarket shit. But after all, Zurich was a really nice town.

Back to the squat (the guys told us that it’s gonna be evacuated in a month or so, so they are simply gonna find another place to squat), we had delicious vegan dinner including something called seitan (if I’m right…); I dunno what’s this, to be honest.

We had already decided to leave after the show in order to cross the Italian borders and find a hostel / motel / whatever near Milano. In this way, we could split the long drive. This decision was not clever at all and you’ll read below the reason why…

So, the show started at 10. Amer Beton played first, Zeppo were next and 3^rd were IWYD. At the time that the guys started to play (that means 12.30-1), tons of people have gathered; the squat was fully packed, more than 200 people attended the show. That obviously means heavy smoking; very bad for me, ha ha! Well, IWYD played a hell of a show, trashing the place up. The feedback was awesome, as well. IWYD played an encore but people continued asking for more; incredible!

Banzai punk, one man band with drum machine, was about to play next but we had to leave, so we didn’t watch his set at all. The guy was kind enough to buy IWYD & Keep It Real merch and give me a free copy of his CD as well. Thanks.

We left Friesi squat at 2.30-3…

We avoided a pretty bad accident on the road to the Italian borders. We were entering the tunnel when the van stuck in the icy road… I felt that we were about to get killed or that the van will crash somewhere and we’ll get seriously injured. After a bunch of maneuvers the van stopped. Everyone was safe. We were very lucky. I was in a shock for a couple of minutes since I was the one driving… Hard times…

So, after getting sure that everyone and everything were OK, we continued the trip to the Italian borders. We found a hostel just near the borders but it was expensive so we decided to pass the borders and find something in Italy… We were searching for a fucking place to sleep (except of Holiday Inn and other expensive hotels) for almost 2 hours. We even passed Milano… The nearest city after Milano was Parma, so we entered the city in our search for a hostel / hotel / motel / whatever. We found a 2-star hotel at around 9 o’clock in the morning in order to crash for just 3,5-4 hours… We paid 130 euros for this rest, fuck. Day 14 had already started…

Van essentials: radio, Shora, sorry I don’t remember anything else…

Day 12_06.01:
We left Prague at 9 o’clock in the morning since we had a long trip to Switzerland ahead. After 8-9 hours of driving (and having already crossed south Germany) we reached the Italian / Switzerland borders. It was the first time we had to show our passports and get controlled after Romania… As the serious custom officer informed us ‘Switzerland is not in the E.U.’. Alright! So, we got a bit interrogated about where we were going, for what purpose etc. And when we told him that we are a band, he started asking about our promotional stuff, t-shirts / records. He searched the van and found our vinyls and the distro. He even checked out a copy of Keep It Real fanzine, haha! His next word wasn’t funny though; ‘tax’. Yeap, we had to pay taxes for our records. What the fuck… 50 euros lost.

We continued the trip to Winterthur totally pissed off.

Winterthur is a small but nice city located 50-60km after the borders. We arrived at GGS31 squat where Raffi & Vogi were waiting for us. GGS31 is a 13-year old squat (a real squat; I mean they do not pay rent to the state and they do not have contracts, it’s like Greek squats), where a lot of bands have played in the past.

The show was cool, nothing special but cool. Zeppo from Switzerland played first; technical stuff, think something between Meshuggah and System Of A Down with some punk / hardcore elements. Absolutely not my cup of tea, but the guys ruled technically. Next in the row were IWYD. They played a really nice show, full set, including their 2 covers (Integrity and Terror). People (around 40 gathered) seemed to like them. Amer Beton from France played last, delivering fast hardcore / punk a la Spazz, with both male and female vocals. Their guitarist’s Los Crudos t-shirt impressed me more than their music, though…

After the show we decided to leave straight for Zurich, even though it was already late. We called Daniel, the guy that organized the show there, in order to ask if he can host us in the squat, and he was cool with it. So, we arrived in Friesi squat, Zurich, after half an hour drive. It was 4 o’clock in the morning so we managed to find some square-meters in the floor to sleep. To be honest, this place wasn’t the cleanest one we ever visited… but the guys were very hospitable.

Van essentials: Neurosis, Uptight Bastard, I Witness and…my iPod.