058 The road to Munich
What a lovely holiday,
Theres nothing funny left to say.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe I should pick up photography.
I remember thinking to myself, 'Oh my God, this is it!'. As I walked through Olympiapark, with Magda by my side and 68 000 other people trying to get home after the gig. The sun went down, and it was dark, but still warm. I was humming When We Were Young, the last song of the show. And there it was, running through my head. 'This is it.' 'Is this really it?' This was it.
The whole idea of going was nothing but crazy.
16th June. Facebook informs me there are still some tickets available for Take That's Wembley concerts. I realise lads are on tour. And there are shows in Europe. I write to Magda about it in lavishing 4 sentences. She turns me down flat, but until she does, I spend a hopeful hour watching fancams of Rob singing Angels in Sunderland, Stadium of Light, while thrilling with excitement. Then I devote the rest of the evening to being all mopey and yes, still watching Angels, breathing in the warm air of the night through the open window and imagining I was there, because, as I thought back then, that was as much as I was gonna get.
1st July. Magda sends me and e-mail saying she's 98% sure she wants to go. Half an hour later it was a yes and I was jumping up and down like a crazy person, in front of 3 confused friends, who I totally forgot were with me.
2nd July. We spend half a morning on the phone between Cracow and Warsaw, deciding everything from tickets to hotels. By 12 o'clock it was all done. On 28th July I jumped on a train to Cracow, and that's when the fun started.
29th was probably the longest day of my life. We woke up around 5ish to quickly finish packing and get ourselves ready for the road. I still remember ironing my clothes the day before, which I hated, and in the morning standing in the kitchen, making sandwiches for the ride, whereas Magda was making bento boxes. It was exciting, the idea of setting off to somewhere new, yet on the other hand fully incomprehensible that we'd be seeing lads live on that very day. At 6am in Cracow? Didn't seem real at all.
11 hours in the car and it was a blast, believe me. Picture two gals on their way to Munich, listening to Take That all ride long, in turns with The Best Of Robbie Williams - life seldom gets any better. That's when Hold Up The Light became Magda's song. And Magda still was 'not so sure' about Howard vs. Jason. And we talked about Mark not wanting to have sex with the band, after having screamed, 'and I, I still wanna HAVE SEX with you!'. We sung Patience the way it's supposed to be sung, at the top of our lungs. And we both did proper hand movements each time Never Forget went on - and yes, Magda was driving, so she had it harder.
But the journey provided us with its own amusements. We saw some disturbingly looking cars around us with metal parts waggling around underneath them or wheels ready to fall off. At one petrol station we wasted solid 15 minutes waiting for a Spanish guy to get his coffee and move the hell away - 'Dude, we're on schedule here, and by the way, good luck getting to Spain at your speed'. He made such a fond memory, this guy did, that every now and then, for the longest time, one of us would go, 'Oh, I wonder where the Spanish guy is, do you think he's getting close to home?'. On our last stop before Germany, while slowly sipping on our coffees, we were trying to determine whether the car that just broke down near by with yellow plates was British or Dutch. We decided on Dutch, cause the owner didn't look British enough. After all, we knew what British guys looked like, right? And needless to say, we were having a blast every time we saw two trucks pass each other, 91 going on 90 on a motorway.
Then there were the M-shaped overcrossings somewhere where the woods were old, dark and magnificent. And I had a pile of papers on my laps with maps and roads and signs, and names of the cities. And we were driving into the sky so dark, Magda said we were going to Mordor.
Germany welcomed us with windmills and a terrible stench of pure nature. The roads were wider, the cars a hell lot faster and every God forsaken village we passed had a drawing with its must-see attractions, like a cosmonaut. Plech would turn out to be ultimately my favourite (between Pegnitz and Nuremberg), while Magda would become more of a Pfaffenhofen kinda girl. Imagine a conversation:
- Where do you live?
- In Pfaffenhoffen?
- Where??
- Pfaffenhofen. Near Schweitenkirchen.
We had to watch out for intersections around Cheimnith (A4 to A72) and Hoff (A72 to A9), but both went pretty smoothly - and I had Magda to thank for that, for she had checked out everything, and I mean everything, beforehand. Also, German motorways are good like that - you've got 3 or 4 different signs that you're approaching an Ausfahrt. We said 'Hello' to Dresden, or rather 'See you in a day'. We even made up our own little game of guessing which town the cars around us were from. Soon enough I was convinced that every car with a B (Berlin) was going to Munich for the concert, just like us, because:
1) there wasn't a show in Berlin and
2) where else would they be going?
The weather decided to torment us - it was sunny, then rainy, than sunny again, and it changed every 15 minutes, driving us nuts with uncertainty (yeah, there was a roof over our part of the stadium, a really fortunate coincidence, since we didn't pay any attention to petty things like the possibility of rain when we bought the tickets - but the lads would get wet, visibility would be worsened and basically rain equaled crap; even more so for Magda, who didn't listen to her mother's solicitous enquiry to wear a GORE-TEX jacket!). The scenery started to get more and more beautiful, as we moved closer to the mountains, with towns nestled in mountain valleys, straggling in front of us. I still remember one place where each lane of the motorway went separately as we were driving up a huge mountain (which each time wasn't easy and Magda had to lean forward to make us move faster) - the view high up was simply stunning. And then we got soaked in a sudden violent rainstorm at the top.
Around 3 o'clock, when the gates were opening at Olympiastadium, we were still on the road, perhaps getting close to Nuremberg. It was funny thinking about all the people who had been at 7am that morning possibly standing in line already, while we'd been a whooping 1000 kilometres away. At that hour too they were pushing to get to the front rows and we were surrounded by fields and windmills, singing The Flood happily in our little speeding car.
We ate our bentos somewhere between Pegnitz and Inglostadt, where you needed a ticket to go to the bathroom (not an easy task, honestly, it was like buying a ticket for the underground) and where the toilets were working like spaceships. Then we got stuck in a traffic jam near Inglostadt (Staugefahr signs were lit and cars flashed their backlights) that lasted to the very Munich. The weather went so bad, we actually started praying for Munich to be in, what we called, "a lane of light" and not "a lane of rain". But I got so thrilled seeing Ms everywhere (Munich!), I wasn't really nervous of us running late. After all, if we missed Pet Shop Boys, we wouldn't be terribly sad about it.
The first thing I saw was Allianz Arena, with its massive white construction made of what looked like air bubbles, towering on the far right. That's when it got to me that we were there, in Munich. Next, indicating where we had to exit the motorway, stood the black towers of HighLight. An underground Petueltunnel created a bit of an anxiety as to where was our exit, but it went all right. When we reached Schleissheimer Strasse, it was only a turn into Hohenzollernstrasse (and a first look at the famous McDonald's) standing between us and our hotel. I couldn't believe how fast it all went, but as soon as my eyes met the word Vitalis plastered on the side of the building, my mind went pretty blank. That's usually what happens when I get so anxious and excited, I forget to think.
Underground parking turned out to be a small disaster - we had no idea how the hell to get out of there and on our 4th or 5th try, Magda bent one of her mirrors. But she's a tough girl, she figured it out and when we finally saw the daylight again, she walked out of the car, bent the mirror right back with one firm swing and screamed at me, 'How long do you plan on sitting there? We've got a concert to go to. Move!'. Which was exactly what I needed, since it was half past 6 already and the show was starting in 45 minutes.
Inside, although the receptionist was a bit rude and we got two rooms instead of one ('We could provide you with a double old-smoker's room.' 'No, thank you.'), everything else was up to par. I got changed, while Magda found a place to park. And then, you guessed it, off to Olumpiapark it was.
Theres nothing funny left to say.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe I should pick up photography.
I remember thinking to myself, 'Oh my God, this is it!'. As I walked through Olympiapark, with Magda by my side and 68 000 other people trying to get home after the gig. The sun went down, and it was dark, but still warm. I was humming When We Were Young, the last song of the show. And there it was, running through my head. 'This is it.' 'Is this really it?' This was it.
The whole idea of going was nothing but crazy.
16th June. Facebook informs me there are still some tickets available for Take That's Wembley concerts. I realise lads are on tour. And there are shows in Europe. I write to Magda about it in lavishing 4 sentences. She turns me down flat, but until she does, I spend a hopeful hour watching fancams of Rob singing Angels in Sunderland, Stadium of Light, while thrilling with excitement. Then I devote the rest of the evening to being all mopey and yes, still watching Angels, breathing in the warm air of the night through the open window and imagining I was there, because, as I thought back then, that was as much as I was gonna get.
1st July. Magda sends me and e-mail saying she's 98% sure she wants to go. Half an hour later it was a yes and I was jumping up and down like a crazy person, in front of 3 confused friends, who I totally forgot were with me.
2nd July. We spend half a morning on the phone between Cracow and Warsaw, deciding everything from tickets to hotels. By 12 o'clock it was all done. On 28th July I jumped on a train to Cracow, and that's when the fun started.
29th was probably the longest day of my life. We woke up around 5ish to quickly finish packing and get ourselves ready for the road. I still remember ironing my clothes the day before, which I hated, and in the morning standing in the kitchen, making sandwiches for the ride, whereas Magda was making bento boxes. It was exciting, the idea of setting off to somewhere new, yet on the other hand fully incomprehensible that we'd be seeing lads live on that very day. At 6am in Cracow? Didn't seem real at all.
11 hours in the car and it was a blast, believe me. Picture two gals on their way to Munich, listening to Take That all ride long, in turns with The Best Of Robbie Williams - life seldom gets any better. That's when Hold Up The Light became Magda's song. And Magda still was 'not so sure' about Howard vs. Jason. And we talked about Mark not wanting to have sex with the band, after having screamed, 'and I, I still wanna HAVE SEX with you!'. We sung Patience the way it's supposed to be sung, at the top of our lungs. And we both did proper hand movements each time Never Forget went on - and yes, Magda was driving, so she had it harder.
But the journey provided us with its own amusements. We saw some disturbingly looking cars around us with metal parts waggling around underneath them or wheels ready to fall off. At one petrol station we wasted solid 15 minutes waiting for a Spanish guy to get his coffee and move the hell away - 'Dude, we're on schedule here, and by the way, good luck getting to Spain at your speed'. He made such a fond memory, this guy did, that every now and then, for the longest time, one of us would go, 'Oh, I wonder where the Spanish guy is, do you think he's getting close to home?'. On our last stop before Germany, while slowly sipping on our coffees, we were trying to determine whether the car that just broke down near by with yellow plates was British or Dutch. We decided on Dutch, cause the owner didn't look British enough. After all, we knew what British guys looked like, right? And needless to say, we were having a blast every time we saw two trucks pass each other, 91 going on 90 on a motorway.
Then there were the M-shaped overcrossings somewhere where the woods were old, dark and magnificent. And I had a pile of papers on my laps with maps and roads and signs, and names of the cities. And we were driving into the sky so dark, Magda said we were going to Mordor.
Germany welcomed us with windmills and a terrible stench of pure nature. The roads were wider, the cars a hell lot faster and every God forsaken village we passed had a drawing with its must-see attractions, like a cosmonaut. Plech would turn out to be ultimately my favourite (between Pegnitz and Nuremberg), while Magda would become more of a Pfaffenhofen kinda girl. Imagine a conversation:
- Where do you live?
- In Pfaffenhoffen?
- Where??
- Pfaffenhofen. Near Schweitenkirchen.
We had to watch out for intersections around Cheimnith (A4 to A72) and Hoff (A72 to A9), but both went pretty smoothly - and I had Magda to thank for that, for she had checked out everything, and I mean everything, beforehand. Also, German motorways are good like that - you've got 3 or 4 different signs that you're approaching an Ausfahrt. We said 'Hello' to Dresden, or rather 'See you in a day'. We even made up our own little game of guessing which town the cars around us were from. Soon enough I was convinced that every car with a B (Berlin) was going to Munich for the concert, just like us, because:
1) there wasn't a show in Berlin and
2) where else would they be going?
The weather decided to torment us - it was sunny, then rainy, than sunny again, and it changed every 15 minutes, driving us nuts with uncertainty (yeah, there was a roof over our part of the stadium, a really fortunate coincidence, since we didn't pay any attention to petty things like the possibility of rain when we bought the tickets - but the lads would get wet, visibility would be worsened and basically rain equaled crap; even more so for Magda, who didn't listen to her mother's solicitous enquiry to wear a GORE-TEX jacket!). The scenery started to get more and more beautiful, as we moved closer to the mountains, with towns nestled in mountain valleys, straggling in front of us. I still remember one place where each lane of the motorway went separately as we were driving up a huge mountain (which each time wasn't easy and Magda had to lean forward to make us move faster) - the view high up was simply stunning. And then we got soaked in a sudden violent rainstorm at the top.
Around 3 o'clock, when the gates were opening at Olympiastadium, we were still on the road, perhaps getting close to Nuremberg. It was funny thinking about all the people who had been at 7am that morning possibly standing in line already, while we'd been a whooping 1000 kilometres away. At that hour too they were pushing to get to the front rows and we were surrounded by fields and windmills, singing The Flood happily in our little speeding car.
We ate our bentos somewhere between Pegnitz and Inglostadt, where you needed a ticket to go to the bathroom (not an easy task, honestly, it was like buying a ticket for the underground) and where the toilets were working like spaceships. Then we got stuck in a traffic jam near Inglostadt (Staugefahr signs were lit and cars flashed their backlights) that lasted to the very Munich. The weather went so bad, we actually started praying for Munich to be in, what we called, "a lane of light" and not "a lane of rain". But I got so thrilled seeing Ms everywhere (Munich!), I wasn't really nervous of us running late. After all, if we missed Pet Shop Boys, we wouldn't be terribly sad about it.
The first thing I saw was Allianz Arena, with its massive white construction made of what looked like air bubbles, towering on the far right. That's when it got to me that we were there, in Munich. Next, indicating where we had to exit the motorway, stood the black towers of HighLight. An underground Petueltunnel created a bit of an anxiety as to where was our exit, but it went all right. When we reached Schleissheimer Strasse, it was only a turn into Hohenzollernstrasse (and a first look at the famous McDonald's) standing between us and our hotel. I couldn't believe how fast it all went, but as soon as my eyes met the word Vitalis plastered on the side of the building, my mind went pretty blank. That's usually what happens when I get so anxious and excited, I forget to think.
Underground parking turned out to be a small disaster - we had no idea how the hell to get out of there and on our 4th or 5th try, Magda bent one of her mirrors. But she's a tough girl, she figured it out and when we finally saw the daylight again, she walked out of the car, bent the mirror right back with one firm swing and screamed at me, 'How long do you plan on sitting there? We've got a concert to go to. Move!'. Which was exactly what I needed, since it was half past 6 already and the show was starting in 45 minutes.
Inside, although the receptionist was a bit rude and we got two rooms instead of one ('We could provide you with a double old-smoker's room.' 'No, thank you.'), everything else was up to par. I got changed, while Magda found a place to park. And then, you guessed it, off to Olumpiapark it was.