Hans left first from the festival as he had to get down to Charleroi for a flight to Dublin, and wanted to stop in Brussels on his way there. It was great to see him again after so long. I think we should set a rule that we never meet in the same country again! [...]

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The final day. We rose at a reasonable time and realised we were all out of beer. Hans walked off to see early bands while we kept on going on into down to find out that the small supermarket was closed on a Sunday. Argh. Fortunately, there’s another supermarket around a corner which we hadn’t [...]

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Today was more of a festival day. The sleep overnight wasn’t too bed all things considering – like the number of us in a tent and the lack of mattresses or padding of any sort. The earth underneath kind of fit round the way I sleep so it wasn’t as bad as it could have [...]

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Currently in a tent provided by Belgacom at the Graspop festival in Belgium. Bad typing is due to French keyboard and 10 minute time limit! Mixed weather, great band and only a few panics… More next week when I’m back in the UK!

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We’d arranged to meet Marina outside the festival campsite around 11:30, so we had plenty of time to grab some food and get packed. The train station is only a short walk up the road from the hostel and within 20 minutes we were sat on a train (filled with long-haired people in black clothes) [...]

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I woke at a reasonable hour and made sure I was all packed up. I had time to do a quick email check and get breakfast before I had to walk over the road to the hauptbahnhof for my coach to Brussels. Hans was already there doing the tourist thing and we’d agreed to meet [...]

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An interesting day to stay in Frankfurt with it’s large immigrant ex-Turk population, with the two countries facing each other in the Euro 2008 semi-final. A huge screen was erected in the town centre and no segregation of fans was made (or required), beer on sale all day and very nice weather. I was actually [...]

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Frankfurt was hot. Damn hot. So hot and muggy that sleep wasn’t easy. The snoozes I’d had on various coaches probably didn’t help either. I woke around 9-ish as Hans had told me his flight from Darfur was landing at 7:30. I’d checked the buses from the airport and that would mean he’d get here [...]

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I managed to repack my bags and get everything safe and secure. On the Monday morning, Mike shook my hand goodbye as he had to get somewhere with internet to do some work and left me to sort my stuff out and freshen up for the journey to Tampere Airport and on to Frankfurt. I’d [...]

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[this and the previous post kind of overlap timewise a bit - I was tapping this all up from memory!] I now needed to figure out a way of getting west. I’d looked at the ferry, but that got me into Rostock at 10pm after a 25-hour journey. Not much use as I don’t know [...]

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