Day 12 - Potsdam to Leipzig

Day 12 Potsdam to Leipzig

Epic breakfast cooked by Katscha, Potsdam

We all woke up at 10.30 with slightly sore heads and headed downstairs into the kitchen for breakfast.  Katscha had prepared a lovely breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, bread and coffee. We sat and chatted for a while then went to load our gear from the night before. We had plenty of time to get to Leipzig as it was only a couple of hours away and we didn't have to be there until 6. Katscha was also going to Leipzig that day, as her sister was opening a cupcake coffee shop and she was helping with the final preparations. The shop just so happened to be on the same road as the venue 3 doors up and she said, if she finished in time, she would like to come and see us play again. We couldn't leave without seeing the mechanical knife again so Katscha set it up in the bar and we basked in all of it's glory.

Morning Dave!

We set off to Leipzig at around 2.30, Katscha gave us some water and two Club Mate's for the journey. Club Mate is a caffeine drink that is very popular in east Germany. It has a very strange taste, which if I had to describe it I would say that it tastes somewhere between iced tea, lemonade and Lucky Charms (the cereal).

Where we didn't play in Leipzig.

We arrived at the venue in Leipzig after an easy journey and said hello to the guys there. The venue was quite small, but very homely. It looked like the lounge of a house in fact.  We were still quite early and Maria who was putting on the show hadn't arrived, so we decided to go for a walk around a nearby forest with a nice little river running through it. We returned after about an hour and were greeted by the lovely Maria. We unloaded the gear and drove back to Maria's place to hang out before the show. Maria lives on a massive squatted caravan type compound quite near the venue. There are around 30 people living there at the moment and everyone has their own house-trailer. They are very big inside and apparently they stay very warm in the winter. Maria gave us a tour of the whole place. it was awesome! There were different trailers for the toilet, showers and kitchen. Maria also showed us the venue that they have there where she sometimes puts on shows, it was massive. We would be sleeping in a caravan next to Maria's place that had an awning outside with a sofa and a table. It was all very cool and we felt like we were on holiday.

It was like we were on holiday!

We went back to the venue for dinner. At various places around Leipzig they have a thing called community cooking, where you can get food for 1.50 euros, this evening it was this venue's turn.  The chef for toady had been cooking since we got there at around 5, and after a total of 4 hours it smelt amazing!  We ate dinner outside in the garden with everyone else and it was lovely, we didn't eat much hot food in France so it was really nice to eat a hot meal. It was a slightly spicy soft potatoes and stuffed pepper dish. It was divine!

We found the cupcake coffee shop!

We were the only band playing that night and the plan was to play after everyone had finished eating at around 9.30. The only problem with that with the weather being so nice, was that people were eating and then going to the park to drink and there weren't many people left at the venue. It was around 10pm and most of the people had gone to the park to drink so Maria came to us with a proposal. The chef had suggested the most amazing idea. He had taken the short walk to the nearby park and thought that we should take the show to the people.  We really liked the sound of this! Everyone was really nice helping us to carry our gear to the park, someone even lent us their pull cart for the bass amp and drum stands.

Where we didn't play.

We arrived at the park at around 10.30 and set up the gear. Maria had arranged to use the electricity from one of her friend's apartments close to the park, as they had a huge extension cable. The people from the venue had also bought along lights, a disco ball and a crate of beer, which really made it look cool. The electricity came on at around 11, by which time enough texts and word had got round of the first guerilla gig like this to happen for a crowd of about 50 - 60 people to gather. This was definitely a bloody great idea! Just before we started to play Katscha turned up after going to the venue to find we weren't there. Lovely to see her again. We started playing soon after as no one knew how long it would be before the police might turn up. We started and about 3 minutes into the first song a neighbour came over to complain, we came right up to Sam's face and started shouting at him in German. Out of about 60 people, she had to choose one fo the only 2 people who can't speak hardly any German! Brilliant. We stopped playing while Maria and a few others spoke to her and we were told to carry on. She apparently said that she would call the police if it carried on longer than 20 minutes. No one was at all phased by her and just said she wanted to make a fuss about nothing. It was the weekend after all!  They shouted encouragement for us to keep playing until the police arrived. By a stroke of absolute pure luck about 15 minutes into our set and right in-between two songs, we saw a police van drive by a mere 10 meters away from where we were, but as there was no noise they had no reason to be alarmed. I'm not sure if they didn't see us or if they just didn't care but they didn't stop, so as soon as they drove round the corner we carried on! Shortly after there were people lighting flares and the atmosphere was really great! Maria passed a hat round and people were extremely generous.

Kicked off in the park, flares and everything.

We didn't stay long at all after we played, and with everyones help we carried all the gear back to the original venue making it no hassle at all. We were so very grateful for all that helped make this happen. It was so much fun, even though was Mike was quite nervous about the chance of the police showing up while we were playing. It was as if it had never happened! 

We left the gear at the venue and walked back to Maria's place.  We sat on the sofa, chatted by candlelight and listened to Electric Electric, who are another really good french band. We were pretty tired after what was a interesting, great day, and went to bed at about 2.30. We'd also been looking forward to sleeping in our little caravan.