2010/11/28

Day 26/34 - Arenele Romane, Bucharest, Romania - 22.11.2010

After a very relaxing day off in Thessaloniki (Greece) we had all our batteries charged and were fit for fight. Bucharest, Romania was our next stop. Once we stepped out of the bus, we were embraced by several stray dogs who wanted to express their welcomeness to us.



After checking out the backstage (which turned out to be quite nice) we managed to get in touch with our Romanian friend and very true fan Andrea (who currently lives in Oslo, Norway). This was the third time she saw us on this tour (and the eight time this year), which is rather impressive since she actually lives in Norway. Fortunately she was available to give us a really nice guided tour through her old hometown Bucharest. The most impressive (and most horrifying) building was the Palace of the Parliament, also called the Peoples House. The palace of the Parliament is the second biggest building in the world after Pentagon, and was built in only five years (from 1983 - 1989) under the command of Nicolae Ceauşescu.



I would describe Bucharest as a two-parted city. It had many impressive architectural pearls, but the maintenance in general could have been better.

While looking for something to eat, we met a couple of the Therion guys (which we do very often when we’re checking out the city centre). They joined us after our meal, and we started walking back to the venue. After walking for a while we found out that Therion was about to start their soundcheck in just a few minutes. Thomas and Christian had to catch a cab in order to be at the venue in time for the soundcheck. The distance from the city centre to the venue was twice as long as I remembered it to be.

When it was time for soundcheck, we unfortunately found out that we had to deal with the slowest working local crew on the tour so far. When the doors opened and people started entering the venue, they still hadn’t managed to connect all the cables to the drums, guitars, vocals, and keys. To be honest, I’m glad we weren’t the first band to go on stage today. As a special treat from the venue to Loch Vostok, they had made sure that Mano (the guitarist) got radio signals playing Barry White through his guitar amp. After Loch Vostok was done with their concert, everything seemed to be in order.



The concert went well even though we didn’t get to check anything, and the response we received from the Romanian crowd was overwhelming!



I had actually made quite an effort to make a video of our backstage activities, but it ended up being way to embarrassing for certain people. Well, you can at least check out the song I used as theme song for the movie! The never ending success story ..........Babylon Zoo!!



All the best,
Einar

2 comments:

  1. Happy to hear you liked the mini tour which was rather hectic. You are a bunch of very nice people and it was a pleasure for me to show you around in my home city full of strange contrasts. Too bad it was in such a hurry.
    --
    Andrea

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  2. Bucharest is a nice city. I'm happy to hear that there are other people except me who like it. The architecture of the buildings in Bucharest is just spectacular and Bucharest hotels are just great. My wife and I had a really good time, when we were there. Regards!

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