.Day 3.
.27th December 2011.
03.55
When we started the trip from Skopje to Sofia this morning, we couldn't have imagined what would follow...
We reached the MK / BG borders 2 hours later and at first they simply did not let us in because as they claimed we
didn't have the original license for the van. We gently tried to convince the border police that we are just a touring band
that has to play in Sofia in a couple of hrs, but we didn't succeed.
A bunch of more tries and countless phone calls (to the company we rented the van from and to the greek embassy) we were stuck in the middle of nowhere trying to figure out what the fuck we could do.
The first thing we did is something that we hardly do. We cancelled our appearance in the Sofia Xmas fest.
We felt terribly sorry about this but we couldn't act in a different way.
It seemed that we were in a very bad situation; there were some rumors that we were about to face a huge problem even if we tried to drive to Serbia or even get back to Greece. The whole tour was on a high risk.
It actually occurred our minds to return to Greece and cancel it...
So, the van company owner insisted that we had to wait for a day in order to send a new van from Thessaloniki in the GR / MK borders. That means that we had to cancel the Novi Sad show, as well, and then travel all the way to Zagreb passing 2 borders and dealing with corrupted border policemen.
2 of us did one last attempt to pass the MK / BG borders without the van in order to ask the BG border police whether they would let us in or not, but the MK border police went really angry and acted definitely hostile towards us.
I must admit that we were in a very unpleasant situation with constant fear of what will happen next...
Nevertheless, we decided to risk some more and reach the MK / RS borders.
After a while we made it to Serbia (a bottle of whiskey was the tax we paid by the way...) and we started the long trip to Novi Sad totally relieved.
Our enemy at that time was the weather. We had to be very careful because we were traveling inside a huge foggy cloud.
We arrived in Novi Sad around 1 o' clock, after 14hrs being on the road...
We met Bojan (the local promoter) downtown. He was kind enough to host us for one more night.
We went downtown to make some exchange and get some food.
Bojan & I got followed by 6 nazis after we bought our food. Fortunately nothing happened.
We learned that there's a nazi party tomorrow, 300m away from the place that our show is going to take place...
I don't think that we'll have any problem, though.
We are now having some rest at the Rebuild Hardcore Collective Headquarters; a office / bar that Bojan and a lot of other guys playing in bands, photographers, artists, activists just launched. It's one of the best hardcore / punk places I've been.
I wish we had such a thing in Greece...
That's all I guess.
We had a very hard day. We need some sleep.
Take care.
-a. & iwyd-
