YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz in Berlin, August 3rd
Concert report #2!
As I said in the previous entry, I spontaneously decided to attend another gig. This time I got my ticket a little cheaper over eBay. Boarded the ICE at 12:30 and I was glad I reserved a seat as it was packed. Well, it *is* the holiday season after all...I arrived at Berlin central station at about 15:40 and took the S and U-Bahn to Hermannplatz. The venue Huxleys Neue Welt was already in sight but I decided to go to my hotel first for the check-in.
The hotel was pretty close, about 10 minutes on foot. I checked in, went up to my room and was in for a surprise…
Room 1
Room 2
Room 3
Apparently they upgraded me from a single room to a quadruple room! O_o
Seriously, I had almost as much space as I do in my own apartment…perhaps even more so since it was cleaner. =P
Also, they had gifts placed on each oft he pillows…
=D
GUMMI BEARS. ON ALL FOUR OF THEM. FOR FREE. It’s like I fucking won the jackpot or something.
Anyway, left my stuff there and went back to the venue. The weather that day was awesome. The sun shone and we had up to 30°C.
I arrived at 17:00 so the line was pretty long by then.
Huxleys 1
Huxleys 2
Huxleys 3
I wasn’t the last person to get there though, there were still plenty of people lining up behind me. Also, lots of people were curious about who’s playing as all sorts of random people came up and kept asking about it.
Of course, we were also being filmed again.
Cameraman
There was also a group of fans going around saying that since this show would be recorded, we wanna get the whole brothers/sisters thing right, i.e. when Gackt shouts for his brothers, only the men shout back and only the women do when he asks for his sisters. Usually the girls kept screaming even when he said „brothers“. I was curious whether this would work out for once…it didn’t though. Heh.
It seems that further ahead some girls were pulling off that numbers shit again. >.>
That's not how lining up works. Writing a number on your hand doesn't secure your fucking spot! Stay in line like everybody else or have some friends secure it for you if you have to go to the toilet or whatever. Usually these people just abuse that system so they can stay away for hours only to arrive at the last minute and claim back their spots in line. Goddammit.
Anyway, doors opened a bit late at 18:18. It was organized pretty well, they only let in a limited amount of people at a time so there was no pushing and squeezing like in Cologne.
Since I left my stuff at the hotel I didn’t need to go the coat check. So despite the fact I arrived much later than in Cologne I ended up being further in the front (I’d say within the first 10 rows).
The stage
Back of the venue
The venue looked pretty nice and it was big enough to put up various camera equipment for the live internet broadcast. There was even a camera crane to the right so I’m guessing the livestream looked much more bearable than last year’s Bochum broadcast.
Of course there were also a few cameramen within the crowd.
Everytime the camera crane moved above the crowd, people cheered and waved into the camera.
Fyi, it wasn’t even recording at that point. You can tell by the red light not being on. That’s filming 101, guys! >_>
The concert started started at 19:50 (20 minutes late).
At first I hard hardly any space to move but it got better as the concert went on. I also noticed that while the sound still wasn’t perfect, it was better than in Cologne. The vocals weren’t drowned out by the music as much.
The whole atmosphere was amazing just like last time. People were screaming along, jumping and having a blast!
Songs like The End of the Day and Moso Girl are already stuck in my head despite this only being the second time I listened to them (and it’s nice we finally know the names of all the new songs).
The band seemed to have a great time on stage again.
There was one moment where Jon put his arm around You who didn’t notice him at first and freaked out when Jon was suddenly behind him. He couldn’t help but laugh about his own reaction, haha.
Also, this time TWO red bras landed on stage (seriously, who keeps doing that? xD)
Jon put it on again like he did in Cologne only this time he got groped by Gackt. O.o
I can’t remember at which song this occurred but one of Gackt’s water bottles landed directly in front of me (and probably slid through my legs as the girls in front of me searched for it and picked it up somewhere behind me).
During the encore people once again didn’t manage to sing along to Uncontrol when prompted to. Can’t blame them, I can’t memorize the lyrics for the life of me either (I know Redemption and Jesus and a few others but for some reason Uncontrol’s lyrics always slip my mind).
Ahh, that was embarrassing. xD
At the end Gackt once again promised to be back and shouted “ICH LIEBE EUCH ALLE”. His German there sounds surprisingly good, haha.
U:Zo left the stage last. He pulled off the same stuff as in Cologne except at one point he laid down on the pedestal and pretended to sleep, haha.
The concert ended ca. 21:45.
After the gig
I was thinking about staying and watching the band leave the venue but went straight to the hotel after all. =P
Back at the hotel I was confused as to why there was no electricity in my room. Turns out I had to put my key card into a slot next to the door to turn it on…the guy at the reception mentioned something about that but I guess I wasn’t really listening. Whoops. :p
The next day I checked out at 11:00. My train departed at 19:19 so I had plenty of time to walk through the city and look at stuff. At first I headed to the Volkspark Hasenheide. I read that apparently it's full of drug dealers, and...it's true! They're EVERYWHERE! O.o And they fuckin' try to sell their drugs to anyone, they even offer them to mothers with their children. o_O So yeah, didn't stay long there because the drug dealers and their boldness made me kinda uncomfortable, haha.
I passed the Columbiahalle at one point...
Columbiahalle
Ah, that brings back memories. I attended my very first gig in May 2006 here!
Been to the Brandenburg Gate as well. There were a bunch of street performers here, most notably this guy...
DARTH FRICKIN VADER
Brandenburg Gate
Look at his frickin' boots! xD
Took some pictures of the Bundestag as well and went down to the Bundestag subway station...aka The Hive entrance from the first Resident Evil movie (the only halfway decent one out of the movies before Paul Anderson made it a God Mode Sue fiction for his wife Milla Jovovich =P)
THE HIVE D:
Took a long walk through the Tiergarten and ended up at the Victory Column.
Tiergarten
Victory Column
I rested here a bit (didn't go up the column though) until it started raining. >.> Went back through the Tiergarten towards Alexanderplatz and saw this on my way.
Show Your Heart...?
Okay YFC, which one of you is responsible for this? xP
I thought about going up the tv tower but the waiting time would have been really long. I should've thought about that and reserved a ticket...
TV tower
By that time it was really raining a lot so I stayed below the tower and waited for it to stop. Oh, I also saw this:
What the...?
A beer bike. o_o
It's what it looks like. A tiny mobile bar. On a bike. And yes, all these people are pedalling to keep it moving. xD
Eventually I began walking towards the central station (and yes, I was walking the entire time, didn't use any public transport xD). I like how train stations like that are basically more like shopping centers which trains just happen to pass through.
Train station 1
Train station 2
There was a nice miniature model of the train station too:
Miniature
Something about that makes the little boy inside me happy. =P
Anyway, took the train home at 19:19 and that's pretty much it. xD
Had a pretty good time even though the weather on the second day kinda sucked.
Looking forward to a full YFC album now!
As I said in the previous entry, I spontaneously decided to attend another gig. This time I got my ticket a little cheaper over eBay. Boarded the ICE at 12:30 and I was glad I reserved a seat as it was packed. Well, it *is* the holiday season after all...I arrived at Berlin central station at about 15:40 and took the S and U-Bahn to Hermannplatz. The venue Huxleys Neue Welt was already in sight but I decided to go to my hotel first for the check-in.
The hotel was pretty close, about 10 minutes on foot. I checked in, went up to my room and was in for a surprise…
Room 1
Room 2
Room 3
Apparently they upgraded me from a single room to a quadruple room! O_o
Seriously, I had almost as much space as I do in my own apartment…perhaps even more so since it was cleaner. =P
Also, they had gifts placed on each oft he pillows…
=D
GUMMI BEARS. ON ALL FOUR OF THEM. FOR FREE. It’s like I fucking won the jackpot or something.
Anyway, left my stuff there and went back to the venue. The weather that day was awesome. The sun shone and we had up to 30°C.
I arrived at 17:00 so the line was pretty long by then.
Huxleys 1
Huxleys 2
Huxleys 3
I wasn’t the last person to get there though, there were still plenty of people lining up behind me. Also, lots of people were curious about who’s playing as all sorts of random people came up and kept asking about it.
Of course, we were also being filmed again.
Cameraman
There was also a group of fans going around saying that since this show would be recorded, we wanna get the whole brothers/sisters thing right, i.e. when Gackt shouts for his brothers, only the men shout back and only the women do when he asks for his sisters. Usually the girls kept screaming even when he said „brothers“. I was curious whether this would work out for once…it didn’t though. Heh.
It seems that further ahead some girls were pulling off that numbers shit again. >.>
That's not how lining up works. Writing a number on your hand doesn't secure your fucking spot! Stay in line like everybody else or have some friends secure it for you if you have to go to the toilet or whatever. Usually these people just abuse that system so they can stay away for hours only to arrive at the last minute and claim back their spots in line. Goddammit.
Anyway, doors opened a bit late at 18:18. It was organized pretty well, they only let in a limited amount of people at a time so there was no pushing and squeezing like in Cologne.
Since I left my stuff at the hotel I didn’t need to go the coat check. So despite the fact I arrived much later than in Cologne I ended up being further in the front (I’d say within the first 10 rows).
The stage
Back of the venue
The venue looked pretty nice and it was big enough to put up various camera equipment for the live internet broadcast. There was even a camera crane to the right so I’m guessing the livestream looked much more bearable than last year’s Bochum broadcast.
Of course there were also a few cameramen within the crowd.
Everytime the camera crane moved above the crowd, people cheered and waved into the camera.
Fyi, it wasn’t even recording at that point. You can tell by the red light not being on. That’s filming 101, guys! >_>
The concert started started at 19:50 (20 minutes late).
At first I hard hardly any space to move but it got better as the concert went on. I also noticed that while the sound still wasn’t perfect, it was better than in Cologne. The vocals weren’t drowned out by the music as much.
The whole atmosphere was amazing just like last time. People were screaming along, jumping and having a blast!
Songs like The End of the Day and Moso Girl are already stuck in my head despite this only being the second time I listened to them (and it’s nice we finally know the names of all the new songs).
The band seemed to have a great time on stage again.
There was one moment where Jon put his arm around You who didn’t notice him at first and freaked out when Jon was suddenly behind him. He couldn’t help but laugh about his own reaction, haha.
Also, this time TWO red bras landed on stage (seriously, who keeps doing that? xD)
Jon put it on again like he did in Cologne only this time he got groped by Gackt. O.o
I can’t remember at which song this occurred but one of Gackt’s water bottles landed directly in front of me (and probably slid through my legs as the girls in front of me searched for it and picked it up somewhere behind me).
During the encore people once again didn’t manage to sing along to Uncontrol when prompted to. Can’t blame them, I can’t memorize the lyrics for the life of me either (I know Redemption and Jesus and a few others but for some reason Uncontrol’s lyrics always slip my mind).
Ahh, that was embarrassing. xD
At the end Gackt once again promised to be back and shouted “ICH LIEBE EUCH ALLE”. His German there sounds surprisingly good, haha.
U:Zo left the stage last. He pulled off the same stuff as in Cologne except at one point he laid down on the pedestal and pretended to sleep, haha.
The concert ended ca. 21:45.
After the gig
I was thinking about staying and watching the band leave the venue but went straight to the hotel after all. =P
Back at the hotel I was confused as to why there was no electricity in my room. Turns out I had to put my key card into a slot next to the door to turn it on…the guy at the reception mentioned something about that but I guess I wasn’t really listening. Whoops. :p
The next day I checked out at 11:00. My train departed at 19:19 so I had plenty of time to walk through the city and look at stuff. At first I headed to the Volkspark Hasenheide. I read that apparently it's full of drug dealers, and...it's true! They're EVERYWHERE! O.o And they fuckin' try to sell their drugs to anyone, they even offer them to mothers with their children. o_O So yeah, didn't stay long there because the drug dealers and their boldness made me kinda uncomfortable, haha.
I passed the Columbiahalle at one point...
Columbiahalle
Ah, that brings back memories. I attended my very first gig in May 2006 here!
Been to the Brandenburg Gate as well. There were a bunch of street performers here, most notably this guy...
DARTH FRICKIN VADER
Brandenburg Gate
Look at his frickin' boots! xD
Took some pictures of the Bundestag as well and went down to the Bundestag subway station...aka The Hive entrance from the first Resident Evil movie (the only halfway decent one out of the movies before Paul Anderson made it a God Mode Sue fiction for his wife Milla Jovovich =P)
THE HIVE D:
Took a long walk through the Tiergarten and ended up at the Victory Column.
Tiergarten
Victory Column
I rested here a bit (didn't go up the column though) until it started raining. >.> Went back through the Tiergarten towards Alexanderplatz and saw this on my way.
Show Your Heart...?
Okay YFC, which one of you is responsible for this? xP
I thought about going up the tv tower but the waiting time would have been really long. I should've thought about that and reserved a ticket...
TV tower
By that time it was really raining a lot so I stayed below the tower and waited for it to stop. Oh, I also saw this:
What the...?
A beer bike. o_o
It's what it looks like. A tiny mobile bar. On a bike. And yes, all these people are pedalling to keep it moving. xD
Eventually I began walking towards the central station (and yes, I was walking the entire time, didn't use any public transport xD). I like how train stations like that are basically more like shopping centers which trains just happen to pass through.
Train station 1
Train station 2
There was a nice miniature model of the train station too:
Miniature
Something about that makes the little boy inside me happy. =P
Anyway, took the train home at 19:19 and that's pretty much it. xD
Had a pretty good time even though the weather on the second day kinda sucked.
Looking forward to a full YFC album now!