My Glam Nation Tour travels, part 3: Hamburg - a picture post
Well, to say I had to "travel" for my 3rd GNT show, would be slightly exaggerated. Hamburg is a big city in Northern Germany and only about 300 kilometers away from Berlin. My friend flew in from Helsinki/Finland on Saturday evening and I picked her up at the airport. It was raining, but we did a little tour through Berlin. It wasn't a long tour and it was dark already, so she couldn't see that much, but I showed her the Charlottenburg Palace (the only royal residency in Berlin dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family), the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial and the Potsdamer Platz with the Sony Center. To get back to my apartment we had to drive through the Bülowstraße - in case you don't know: that's where Adam was living in 2003 when he performed in the musical "Hair" in Berlin, so we got a bit nostalgic. :D
The evening was spent quietly at home, watching a DVD and chatting. The next day was Sunday, November 14th, and we were ready to go to see another GNT show in Hamburg.
Hamburg/Germany
The venue: "Grünspan" - the oldest discotheque of Hamburg.
I rented a car to get us to Hamburg and back. About 300 kilometers to Hamburg makes for a good 3 hours on the road. We didn't leave Berlin until noon, because the weather in Hamburg was shitty. The drive went without any incidents (apart from me not finding the right exit off the autobahn) and we arrived in Hamburg around 4pm. After I found a pretty good parking lot not that far away from the venue, we went there to check it out. To our surprise there were already people lining up. It was raining, windy and still more than 2,5 hours till doors were supposed to open. :/ Okay, so we decided to joing the approx. 50 people in line.
I could hear so many different languages in line: German, Finnish, English, Danish, what I thought was Russian but turned out to be Latvian ... people from so many different countries there. The line grew longer and the rain slowed with every passing minute. When we finally got let inside I opted to stand on the balcony. My friend met another Finnish fan and the girls decided to stand downstairs in front of the stage. I was standing 2nd row on the balcony behind some really nice Danish girls. I had a very good view on the stage:
The opening act for all German GNT shows was a German rock band called "Random Hero". They were okay, although it took me some moments to get used to the immense noise they made. But from the second or third song on I could enjoy it. When Adam entered the stage the familiar buzz ran through my body. It was my 3rd GNT show already, but still - when I hear the first chords of "Voodoo" my heartbeat starts racing. It's just such an awesome show! Now, have "some" pics from the Hamburg show:
I knew we would get great videos from this show, the fandom's most famous videographer was standing just a few meters away from me, that's why I chose to take so many pictures instead. But I wanted to record one video and I decided it would be "Sleepwalker". I like watching Tommy during this song and since all other videos always focus on Adam (as it should be), I thought I'd try to focus a bit more on Tommy. Here it is, in HD:
After that I was back to taking pictures:
This was the first (and until now) only concert out of more than a hundred, that didn't get an encore. I can't bring myself to think that Adam didn't feel the energy of the audience, because I think it was a nice vibe there. So, there were some opinions floating around as for the why. Fact is, Isaac got hurt before the show, he cut his hand (pictures tweeted by @IsaacTheCarp):
Another rumor floating around was the statement of a security guy, saying that there's a curfew at the venue, which is 10pm - the show ended 10 minutes after 10pm. But if that was the reason, why did the show not start earlier? Or, if that wasn't a possibility, why not cutting the opening act short, in order to give Adam enough time for his show ("Aftermath" and "Soaked" were pretty rushed too) and at least the opportunity to play an encore? Whatever, there was none. Many people were dissappointed, they are used to getting longer shows here, and when a show doesn't even last 1 hour, they are dissappointed. But they said, the tickets were cheap (which they really were) and so it was okay that the show was short.
After the show we waited outside together with approx. 60 other people, the busses were parked right at the street.
But then people were saying Adam and the gang had left already in a van, so we decided to drive home. My friend was almost scared to death when we went on the autobahn, because "there are NO street lights!" Of course, there aren't, it's the autobahn! I think after some time she got used to the darkness of the street. :D We had to drive by a serious accident. The driver of a big truck lost control over his vehicle after a blowout. The truck broke through the central barrier that seperates the two traffic lanes and came to a stop in the ditch. He'd been loaded with thousands of vegetable cans, that got lost on the street. Another car crashed into the cans. We drove by the scene very slowly and carefully. Police and rescue services were already there and, as we learned later, nobody was seriously hurt.
We arrived at my apartment at 3am on Monday morning. After a quick internet check we went to bed. Our next GNT show should be in the evening in Berlin. That will be another post.
The evening was spent quietly at home, watching a DVD and chatting. The next day was Sunday, November 14th, and we were ready to go to see another GNT show in Hamburg.
Hamburg/Germany
The venue: "Grünspan" - the oldest discotheque of Hamburg.
I rented a car to get us to Hamburg and back. About 300 kilometers to Hamburg makes for a good 3 hours on the road. We didn't leave Berlin until noon, because the weather in Hamburg was shitty. The drive went without any incidents (apart from me not finding the right exit off the autobahn) and we arrived in Hamburg around 4pm. After I found a pretty good parking lot not that far away from the venue, we went there to check it out. To our surprise there were already people lining up. It was raining, windy and still more than 2,5 hours till doors were supposed to open. :/ Okay, so we decided to joing the approx. 50 people in line.
I could hear so many different languages in line: German, Finnish, English, Danish, what I thought was Russian but turned out to be Latvian ... people from so many different countries there. The line grew longer and the rain slowed with every passing minute. When we finally got let inside I opted to stand on the balcony. My friend met another Finnish fan and the girls decided to stand downstairs in front of the stage. I was standing 2nd row on the balcony behind some really nice Danish girls. I had a very good view on the stage:
The opening act for all German GNT shows was a German rock band called "Random Hero". They were okay, although it took me some moments to get used to the immense noise they made. But from the second or third song on I could enjoy it. When Adam entered the stage the familiar buzz ran through my body. It was my 3rd GNT show already, but still - when I hear the first chords of "Voodoo" my heartbeat starts racing. It's just such an awesome show! Now, have "some" pics from the Hamburg show:
I knew we would get great videos from this show, the fandom's most famous videographer was standing just a few meters away from me, that's why I chose to take so many pictures instead. But I wanted to record one video and I decided it would be "Sleepwalker". I like watching Tommy during this song and since all other videos always focus on Adam (as it should be), I thought I'd try to focus a bit more on Tommy. Here it is, in HD:
Click to viewAfter that I was back to taking pictures:
This was the first (and until now) only concert out of more than a hundred, that didn't get an encore. I can't bring myself to think that Adam didn't feel the energy of the audience, because I think it was a nice vibe there. So, there were some opinions floating around as for the why. Fact is, Isaac got hurt before the show, he cut his hand (pictures tweeted by @IsaacTheCarp):
Another rumor floating around was the statement of a security guy, saying that there's a curfew at the venue, which is 10pm - the show ended 10 minutes after 10pm. But if that was the reason, why did the show not start earlier? Or, if that wasn't a possibility, why not cutting the opening act short, in order to give Adam enough time for his show ("Aftermath" and "Soaked" were pretty rushed too) and at least the opportunity to play an encore? Whatever, there was none. Many people were dissappointed, they are used to getting longer shows here, and when a show doesn't even last 1 hour, they are dissappointed. But they said, the tickets were cheap (which they really were) and so it was okay that the show was short.
After the show we waited outside together with approx. 60 other people, the busses were parked right at the street.
But then people were saying Adam and the gang had left already in a van, so we decided to drive home. My friend was almost scared to death when we went on the autobahn, because "there are NO street lights!" Of course, there aren't, it's the autobahn! I think after some time she got used to the darkness of the street. :D We had to drive by a serious accident. The driver of a big truck lost control over his vehicle after a blowout. The truck broke through the central barrier that seperates the two traffic lanes and came to a stop in the ditch. He'd been loaded with thousands of vegetable cans, that got lost on the street. Another car crashed into the cans. We drove by the scene very slowly and carefully. Police and rescue services were already there and, as we learned later, nobody was seriously hurt.
We arrived at my apartment at 3am on Monday morning. After a quick internet check we went to bed. Our next GNT show should be in the evening in Berlin. That will be another post.