Live from Boston Logan....On my way home. :-) (Part 1)
Here I sit in Boston Logan Airport - exhausted, jet-lagged yet full of gratitude for going home in a few hours. Europe was terrific, it really was and I have many stories to tell, but I am so ready to be home and not live out of suitcases (and for that matter lugging them around with me from airport to airport). I miss the familiarity of home - of course my dog, my family, my neighborhood, my own bed, having access to all my stuff yet not having to carry everything I own around with me....ect ect.
Bergen was gorgeous, and everyone working in the hotel as well as the festival was so sweet and helpful...and EVERYBODY speaks PERFECT English, so I had no problem communicating. See the education system in Norway is superb, in some ways much better than ours, and everyone starts learning English in 1st grade, and even in through college. Also everyone in Norway is entitled to higher education, so most of them have their Bachelor's or higher, and when they work they are paid quite a bit more than we are. On the other side of that coin, however, everything in Norway is far more expensive - namely food as Heather and I found out when we shopped for ingredients. For example? Cucumbers. They were $4 a piece. $4 PER CUCUMBER. WHAT.
We worked most of the trip, but the shows I did see were amazing and everyone helping us out were as well. We made quite a few friends with some really cool people, and that almost made up for some of the MASSIVE FUCKERY that came with working that gig.
First there was "The Grill Incident" - i.e. probably the most horrible night in either of our lives (and she was a Hurricane Katrina victim).
Heather and I had been promised a kitchen in which to cook - which really is not a lot to ask for, you know, two chefs hired to make food. Instead they gave us a fucking tent outside with a charcoal grill and told us to make these FROZEN CHEAPASS hamburgers and hot dogs to sell to the patrons like the goddamn county fair - rather than writing out a nice menu and serving bands like we had been hired to do - which is why we had flown our asses over 4,000 miles in the first place. As it got dark and we were waiting for someone to bring us fucking LIGHTS for this stupid fucking tent, we were hurrying trying to get shit set up and people were crowding around us getting pissed off. It got to be even more of a shitshow when the grate on the grill kept falling down with all the food on it, and the smoke filled the tent the entire night, burning our eyes and killing us slowly. We were backed up with people wanting food all night with this crazy shit happening, large angry Norwegian metal guys being pissed off at us and crowding us from all sides, and meanwhile we had no lights, no change to give patrons, a piece of shit grill that was fucking worthless as our only means of cooking killing us with smoke. Worst night ever, and if it hadn't been Heather I was working for I would have walked away immediately. Such shit.
It was like having a nightmare about the characters from Metalocalypse trying to kill us.
So yeah - There was that.
Heather went off on the organizers afterward, and told them that if they tried pulling that shit on us again we were DONE. She proceeded to demand an INDOOR kitchen (the specification for being indoors was apparently necessary), to cook for the BANDS and VOLUNTEERS like we had originally been brought there to do, and to create our OWN menus. And if those requirements were not met then we were walking away.
Needless to say, the next night was much, much better.
Flight's about to board. More later. :-)
Bergen was gorgeous, and everyone working in the hotel as well as the festival was so sweet and helpful...and EVERYBODY speaks PERFECT English, so I had no problem communicating. See the education system in Norway is superb, in some ways much better than ours, and everyone starts learning English in 1st grade, and even in through college. Also everyone in Norway is entitled to higher education, so most of them have their Bachelor's or higher, and when they work they are paid quite a bit more than we are. On the other side of that coin, however, everything in Norway is far more expensive - namely food as Heather and I found out when we shopped for ingredients. For example? Cucumbers. They were $4 a piece. $4 PER CUCUMBER. WHAT.
We worked most of the trip, but the shows I did see were amazing and everyone helping us out were as well. We made quite a few friends with some really cool people, and that almost made up for some of the MASSIVE FUCKERY that came with working that gig.
First there was "The Grill Incident" - i.e. probably the most horrible night in either of our lives (and she was a Hurricane Katrina victim).
Heather and I had been promised a kitchen in which to cook - which really is not a lot to ask for, you know, two chefs hired to make food. Instead they gave us a fucking tent outside with a charcoal grill and told us to make these FROZEN CHEAPASS hamburgers and hot dogs to sell to the patrons like the goddamn county fair - rather than writing out a nice menu and serving bands like we had been hired to do - which is why we had flown our asses over 4,000 miles in the first place. As it got dark and we were waiting for someone to bring us fucking LIGHTS for this stupid fucking tent, we were hurrying trying to get shit set up and people were crowding around us getting pissed off. It got to be even more of a shitshow when the grate on the grill kept falling down with all the food on it, and the smoke filled the tent the entire night, burning our eyes and killing us slowly. We were backed up with people wanting food all night with this crazy shit happening, large angry Norwegian metal guys being pissed off at us and crowding us from all sides, and meanwhile we had no lights, no change to give patrons, a piece of shit grill that was fucking worthless as our only means of cooking killing us with smoke. Worst night ever, and if it hadn't been Heather I was working for I would have walked away immediately. Such shit.
It was like having a nightmare about the characters from Metalocalypse trying to kill us.
So yeah - There was that.
Heather went off on the organizers afterward, and told them that if they tried pulling that shit on us again we were DONE. She proceeded to demand an INDOOR kitchen (the specification for being indoors was apparently necessary), to cook for the BANDS and VOLUNTEERS like we had originally been brought there to do, and to create our OWN menus. And if those requirements were not met then we were walking away.
Needless to say, the next night was much, much better.
Flight's about to board. More later. :-)