26.12.2012 // 01.30
Day_two
Well, today was really hectic...
Woke up around 10.30 after having a good 8-hour sleep at the cosy and warm house of Dimitar and his brother. Had a coffee and then Vasko came to visit us. Talked for a couple of hours about everything varying from the hardcore scene to the Balkan history. I have to say that Vasko is one of the smartest yet most outspoken guy I have ever met. He can talk for hours and hours, and he never talks bullshit, he knows so many details of the history of our area. We left the house around 13.00, visited a local record store for a while and then started the trip after saluting our buddies.
We've been through the borders a lot of times but we had that positive feeling that everything would be OK that time... But on the contrary, we had to deal with corrupted border police once again in Macedonia... After they held us waiting a bit, they asked us to pay (secretly) 20 euros, got 2 of our vinyls and even tried to get us saying that Larisa and Volos are a part of Macedonia... Do the math.
Then we have to face the Serbian border police... They held us in there for almost 1 hour and a half, searching for everything (literally everything) in the van, after having body searched us one by one in an investigation room...
Completely pissed off we continued our trip to Kraljevo, where we arrived around 20.00.
Kraljevo is a nice yet quite city with a population of 100,000 citizens. Vojkan and his cousin (they also play in a well-known underground hardcore band called The Truth - used to be called as The Truth Of XXX) have established the Pozitivna Omladina (translated into Positive Youth) collective and they organize shows regularly trying to spread the positive hardcore / punk message to young people in Kraljevo. The show took place in a tiny room in the attic of a rock bar called Rock Club Bounty. The room was packed with a lot of youngsters and some not that youngsters. A local metal / punk band called Punished played first and the crowd went nuts immediately, since Punished is the one and only heavy band in Kraljevo, existing since 1992. They even played an encore consisting of Youth Of Today's 'Honesty' and Napalm Death's 'Scum'. Hooray!
We wanna thank their drummer Vojin, for his help concerning the drum equipment.
We wanna thank their drummer Vojin, for his help concerning the drum equipment.
ALECTO took the stage around 22.30 and delivered an intense half an hour show playing the 4 songs from their 'Minyma' 7", a bunch of songs out of their previous CD plus a new untitled one. The kids were into their music and rewarded Alecto with mosh pit and stage divings.
We loaded the van afterwards and headed to the office of the collective, ate tons of chili con minced soy and mashed potatoes, and we are now ready to sleep for ever!
Tomorrow we'll have a 3-4 hour drive to Novi Sad; can't wait to meet crazy Boyan and his crew.
Goodnight!
Van essentials: Raw Nerve, Last Hope, Χατ Τρικ, Bastions, Senses Fail.
