Day 10/34 - Szene, Vienna, Austria - 06.11.2010

Today I was the last one to wake up and to get out of the bus. And to be honest – this is how it usually is. Anyway, as I stepped out of the bus a group of Theorians and Leprechauns where ready to take the trip downtown to check out the cultural Haubstadt of Vienna. I joined the group, and we were on our way.

When we left the nightliners, parked outside tonight’s venue Szene, the weather was nice and sunny, but as we reached the city centre the sun had vanished and we were left freezing in our t-shirts. Tobias had a specific mission for his trip downtown – he needed to get his broken drum pedals either fixed or replaced by a working pair.

We got directions to an instrument store from one of the Theorians, but this trail went cold, as no one in the neighbourhood seemed to know anything about it. Then we were told by a local to take the tram here and the train there to get to this instrument store. This was too complicated; as we were convinced it had to be an easier way to come across an instrument shop in Vienna. Then we were told to ask one of the guys handing out opera flyers to the rich tourists. We did, and he told us there was a shop located “right down the street”. But “right down the street” there were no instrument shop. Here we ran into Einars brother Kenneth and our good friend Josten who came all the way from Norway to visit us on tour!

Back on the trail:
Then we found a record store and asked the staff there for directions. They told us that the biggest instrument store was located two stops by tram from the venue Szene. We went there but couldn’t find any instrument shops there either. And now it started to get really cold, and late. Then a local told us to walk a couple of hundred metres down the street. We did. No instrument shop. Then we asked a lady behind an info counter in a shopping mall. She looked it up and gave us the correct address to Viennas biggest instrument store; “Klangfarbe”. They were closing at five. That meant that we had about 20 minutes to get there, and it was pretty far away…. After some more tramming and walking/running we finally arrived at “Klangfarbe”. As we stepped inside they were turning off the lights and asking people to leave. They didn’t have the time to fix Tobias’ pedal, so he had to buy a new one. He bought the exact same model as the broken one. I believe it felt great to spend some hundred euros on something he already had.

Szene, the Austrian venue, was one of the smallest venues of the entire tour. Our spot on the stage was pretty limited with Therion´s rig just behind ours – but it worked out ok. This was one of the better concerts for me personally, as my stage sound was great and I easily managed to get into the groove and enjoy myself. This was unfortunately not the case for everyone in the band – but overall the show went ok. Tor Oddmund left his camera in Vienna, so no pictures on todays blog...

Tomorrow it’s Boogaloo Club in Zagreb.
We’re ready to rock the Balkans!

From Vienna with Love,
Halvor