Category Archives: UK

London, Feb 2020 – heavy metal and museums

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I’ve not posted anything on here in a while and wanted to document my recent trip to London with Austin (my son) to see his favourite band… Sabaton! We hopped on a train on the Friday and got to London in good time for a KFC once we’d checked into Clink261 where I stayed last year on the way to Germany. A cracking hostel, a very short walk from Kings X / Euston.

The weather wasn’t great – one of those named storms came in – but we got pretty lucky with the weather. Most of Saturday was free, so we walked down to the British Museum and then on the Imperial War Museum where we had lunch with a very long-standing friend (notice that I avoided saying “old”), Alison. It must be a decade since we last met up, and it was great to finally see her again. We grew up together and have literally known each other all our lives.

With Sabaton’s Pär

Austin and I made it to Wembley Arena in good time for our interview slot (just!), and I used his questions to find out some details about the band from founder member and bassist Pär Sundström. It’s the third time I’ve interviewed him, so I was glad of the help coming up with the questions!

The gig was amazing. Everything we’d hoped for and more. The review is over on the Moshville Times site. We even got an invitation to the after-show party! OK, so the raucous days of Motley Crue and the like are kind of gone (especially when you involve lovely guys like the Sabaton crew) so it was OK to take an 11 year old with me. We had a quick drink each (lager for me, Coke for him), wept over the fact that it cost over a tenner, got an autograph and left. The time was well spent as it meant that the Tube station wasn’t packed by the time we got there. Oh, and thanks to Kaie for the McDs at dinner!

I’d opted to spend an extra day in London rather than heading back on the Sunday, which turned out to be a good thing as almost every train and flight was cancelled due to the weather. We popped down to the Natural History Museum which was rammed with people avoiding the bad weather. The dinosaurs were, of course, the first stop and then we walked around The Cocoon which shows a lot of behind the scenes stuff. Really interesting.

Imperial War Museum

For lunch, Austin opted for a Burger King so we walked along the road in the weather that seemed to be freaking out a lot of the locals. Honestly, you can tell they’ve never been to Glasgow. I mean, it was wet but hardly much more than a heavy shower! After lunch we went back to the NHS and explored the Human Biology exhibit. Which opened with “creating life”. Which led onto that talk… Hey ho. Every day a learning day!

We had enough time to go to the Science Museum before it closed, and I was really happy to find they had a decoding / encryption exhibition on in the basement. I wonder if we have time to organise a school trip before it ends…? Austin had been a little bored just looking at things, but got absolutely buried in decoding messages in the activity area to the point that they had to usher us out at closing time!

For dinner we completed the “set” and had a Subway each, and used the rest of the evening to chill out. Unfortunately we couldn’t shower as there had been a blockage in the pipes at the hostel and only the ones on the ground floor were working. Likewise the toilets… Not a major problem if people aren’t selfish, but I did have to yell at two guys who had hogged the cubicles in the gents for 15 minutes. Come on, if you’re taking that long to poo then you need a doctor not a lavatory!

Monday was a challenge, though. I signed up to travel alerts from Avanti West Coast as I knew there was still disruption from the Sunday. The first email told me to watch for more alerts. Then I was told that trains could get to Preston and a bus would cover the rest of the journey due to flooding. Then I was told all trains were cancelled from Euston and to go home via Kings X and Edinburgh. Then it was updated again to tell me that the train would leave from Euston after all, 27 minutes late, and go via an altered route to be back on schedule from Crewe.

At the show!

So off we walked to Euston only to find that the train wasn’t on the board. Or any others to Glasgow. Checking at information, we were told to go to Kings X, which contradicted Avanti’s email and website. Of course, we’d walked past Kings X so get to Euston… A hurried plod back there and we waited for the platform announcement we needed. And then we ran like hell to get a seat. Credit to Austin he flew as we headed for the front carriage (most people obviously went for the nearer ones) so we could grab a table, which we did. Teamwork!

On the way up, my phone kept buzzing. WordPress was informing me that our traffic was somewhat higher than normal. Sabaton had shared out review on facebook and it got a ton of views! A nice ego boost as the weather went from bad to worse outside.

We made Edinburgh in good time, Austin stopped me getting off in Newcastle when I felt homesick, and we managed to get a ScotRail train through the light snow to Bearsden so I could drop him right back with his mum. As a bonus, his big sister happened to be on the same train! Small world!

As it stands – this is the Friday after – my “Delay Repay” for the journey down has been refused by Avanti and I’m appealing it. They claim that the ticket I provided wasn’t valid for the journey I was on. Which is crap as it’s the exact same ticket their conductor scanned, and he’s the one who told everyone to claim as we were almost half an hour late arriving. I’ve also got a claim in for the Monday as we were over ninety minutes late getting home then. Of course, there’s no claim option for “train cancelled, had to get alternative service” so we’ll see how that works out.

Wacken 2019: Hamburg and home

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So, it was time to bid farewell to Wacken / Heide and start the journey home. I’d built in a day in Hamburg as it’s another city I’d not visited before.

The traffic was “fun” as Mark drove us from my hostel to the city centre. The additional traffic due to everyone leaving Wacken is well handled, but things do happen… like a vehicle fire on one of the main routes out of the festival! For those on public transport, they increase the capacity of the trains and put on extra services.

It took us a little over ninety minutes to get to Hamburg, Mark dropping me at the main train station where I found a left luggage locker to store my suitcase for €4. Cheap enough. The next thing I noticed was that Germany is a little like the UK around twenty years ago… in two ways. One: smoking still seems that bit more acceptable and far too many people still do it (including one heavily pregnant woman I spotted, for f_ck’s sake). Two: lots of stuff is closed on a Sunday.

While the train station was busy, the city streets around it were not. Most of the restaurants and cafés were open, but not a single shop. Talking of food, Germans certainly seem to like theirs judging by the sheer number and variety of outlets you find at their train stations! Not content with an overpriced bakery and a coffee shop like we usually get, I’d estimate that Hamburg HBF played host to at least forty fooderies as well as a couple of other outlets.

Well, I was here to see a bit of Hamburg so I did. I aimed myself at the watery area to the south and just… wandered. The first thing I found was the town hall, which currently has an exhibition detailing the lives and thoughts of a handful of transgender people. All in German (though there are QR codes linking to English language websites for us foreigners) it was a simple yet heartwarming place to spend a little while. It’s also a staggering building.

Lunch was needed, so I found a nice spot and took a pitstop to try and eat some of the food I had left from the festival. I perched on some steps by the Binnenalster, the south of which was playing host to a lot of stalls as part of the local Pride celebrations. A cool breeze, lovely view and people running around in rainbow flags made for a very pleasant way to pass some time.

Afterwards, By luck I came across Google’s German offices and grabbed a quick selfie there. Sadly, it was closed to I didn’t get to see what wonderful décor they had inside (not that I would have been able to get in anyway).

I spotted a few towers as I walked, so geared my ambling towards them. One, the magnificent Lookout Tower (part of the St Nikolai memorial), looks like one of the oldest in the city. I didn’t go up the lift inside, but the tower is a staggering piece of architecture. It’s the highest church tower in the city (fifth highest in the world) and if it was designed to be imposing then it works.

The church acted as a reference point for allied bombers during the war and was itself hit in 1943. It now serves as a memorial to the tens of thousands killed by the bombing raids. There are a lot of building works going on nearby, so I hope it doesn’t get obscured.

Next up was St Katharine’s which chimed the hour as I walked past, reaching the port area which is hugely impressive. More impressive are the potential water levels which can break the (very high) banks of the waterways during the flood season!

There is a lot in this area, the south bank, including the Hamburg Dungeon, Maritime Museum, Mechanical Museum and the Miniatur Wunderland… which I’d forgotten was in Hamburg until after I’d arrived. You need to book in advance for this. While you can walk up, the waiting time to get in (as they have to limit the numbers inside at any one time) can extend into several hours – three by the time I walked in. If I’d realised beforehand, I would have booked my ticket weeks ago. Next time, definitely!

By now I was actually starting the flag. The last few days have really been catching up, so I decided to head to the airport. Thankfully, Hamburg makes this very easy. Hop on an S1 train from platform 3 at the main strain station, makes sure you get on one of the first three carriages, and you’re there in 25 minutes. All for the tiny price of €3.30.

I’d already checked in, so I’m now sat at the McDs in the check-in lounge (there isn’t one after security) using one of their plug sockets to charge my phone. I should probably buy something but I’m not hungry!

My flight’s delayed by 30 minutes, so not due to take off until 22:15 local time. I should land in Edinburgh around 23:05, and with luck will be on a Megabus to Glasgow before midnight. An hour to get there and then a ninety minute walk home.

My own bed! For three nights. Then off to Bloodstock…

And an update…

I was walking to my gate after finding about the only not-stupidly-overpriced item in the Duty Free for my son when I saw a familiar t-shirt. Was that Joe and the band he manages, who have just played Wacken and who would possibly be heading home… which happens to be Glasgow? A quick facebook message confirmed it was and I spent the rest of the evening in the company of Saor. A lovely bunch of hard-working musicians, who cruelly (!) “forced” me to drink Jagermeister.

The company was welcome because our flight was further delayed (of course it was), and we also had some fun as the staff at the airport, specifically a couple of Emirates reps, had no idea what gate our flight would be at. Lesson learned: believe the police and the boards, ignore Emirates staff as they’re bloody clueless.

Back in Blighty, Joe offered me a lift back to Glasgow as they had a spare seat in their van. Better than hanging around for an hour and booking a last-minute Megabus! I gratefully accepted, and was dropped off pretty much where I’d have arrived anyway, only a fair bit earlier. The walk home was a little over an hour, but it pretty much killed my suitcase as the dodgy wheel, knackered in my initial train-chasing sprint 10 days earlier, seized so I ended up partially dragging my bag home rather than just rolling it. As a result, said wheel is now half a wheel having been scraped away across three miles of paving slabs. RIP cheap suitcase.

I got back to the flat around 3:15am and to bed around 7:30 after trying to catch up on work, do a laundry, drink tea (which I couldn’t as I had no milk) and generally just faff around like an idiot instead of getting sleep.

Anyway, Bloodstock in 3 days time!

Wacken 2019: To Germany!

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While Wacken is off to the west of the country, near Hamburg, I’ve never been to Berlin despite hearing many great things about it. Time to fix that.

I’d checked flights, but worked out that train was about the same price, about the same time, far more comfortable and dropped me off 50m from a hostel. So after waving bye-bye to Joy, I headed to the international terminal at St Pancras and jumped on a Eurostar to Brussels. Then promptly fell asleep. I woke up briefly and the cars we were zooming past were on the wrong side so I assumed we were in France (or the police in Kent were in for a bad day). I nodded off again and my phone told me I was now in Belgium.

After a minor panic getting my 4G to work even though I thought I’d set it all up before leaving, we pulled into Brussels and I located the first of my German trains. A short while later I made a final change onto the one which would take me to Berlin.

I got talking to a nice German lady (who’s near-opening shot was “What on earth is that Boris Johnson doing?”) for most of the trip, and she helped me decipher the conductor’s instructions that we change carriage as, due to an electrical fault, the aircon was borked. Sadly this meant being moved to first class.

We pulled into Berlin Hauptbahnhopf a shade over 7 minutes late which isn’t bad for an interrupted journey (they had to make an unscheduled stop to get everyone to move carriage) and my hostel was ridiculously easy to find. I’m currently ensconced in the Meininger by the train station and it’s pretty much like a budget hotel only with two bunks in each dorm room.

Berlin is like the UK a while ago – it’s hit and miss if people will take card payments and everywhere closes around 9-10pm, but after some hiking I managed to find a place called Curry-One which sold me a “Berlin Menu”: currywurst, chips, mayo, ketchup and beer for €6.50. Very nice it was, too!

Job done, back to the hostel and asleep on top of the covers in the top bunk as it was so bloody warm!

Wacken 2019: Acton and Bloodywood

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Long story short as I’ve got a lot to get through! Up, breakfast, met Joy at Victoria station (11 years since we last crossed paths, apparently!). We headed to Backpackershack in Acton where I’d managed to find space for two bodies. A bit of a hike but a nice enough place above a pub. The lady who let us in and sorted the room was from Glasgow!

Back east and a stop off for brunch to catch up with Andy, Shalene and the not-that-small-any-more Alex (and also Shalene’s dad, who was visiting). Lovely to see them, as always, and as a bonus I had my first ever Macedonian beer.

After that, up to Islington to locate the ridiculously well-hidden Academy2 and Katie who was doing photos for the gig tonight. Burgers, chips and drinks and then off to the gig which you can read all about on The Moshville Times once the review’s been proofread and published!

“Home”, tea, bed and an early start in the morning…

Wacken 2019: Wandering London

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As is my habit, I like just… walking. I’ve been to London umpteen times (nice place to visit, don’t want to live there) and there’s always something new to see and do, usually for nothing. As well as the other stuff that’s stupidly expensive.

This morning at 10:30 (after a £2.50 breakfast that absolutely stuffed me) I left Clink-261, turned left, walked to Kings Cross, turned left onto Euston Road… and kept going. Well, I stopped at the Wellcome Trust that I’d missed on many occasions. I was just in time to get a little tour based around “what happens to our bodies in space?” before wandering around their current “Psychology of Magic” exhibition on the ground floor. Great stuff and all free.

My aim was to head down to Westminster as it’s been a long time since I walked past the Parliament Buildings and the Cathedral. It took me a good while to get down there, passing through the Magnum ice cream shop that’s opened up on Leicester Square, down a few smaller streets because the looked interesting and so on. I dodged the people giving out free cold cans of Pepsi Max because it tastes like stale money piss (why don’t you give out cans of proper Pepsi? Oh, that’s right, it’s because people actually like it so you don’t need to foist it on them to get rid of your excess stock), and finally made it to Downing Street which has a lot of security for what is now effectively a literal monkey house. Ook, ook, Boris. You mop-headed gimp.

From there to Westminster where I’m still impressed by the scale and architecture of both the political and religious structures, though both are currently largely shrouded in scaffolding which is a shame. Democratically elected morons and people who believe in fairy tales aside, they’re both fantastic buildings visually. A shame they’re both inhabited by those with destructive egos.

Down to the River and over one of the many bridges to the south side as I wanted to pass by the Shard. No reason other than I’ve not been there before. Again, a nice wander looking at nice buildings, and a quick stop in at a museum of art and science where I again lucked out by arriving when a little tour had just started. The exhibits were pretty cool – mainly focused on the current topic of dark matter – if more arty than science-y. There was a woman in our little group who had two children with her, a boy of around 8 and a girl maybe 4 years old. He was very observant, and his little sister asked incredible questions. I passed a little comment to her mum at the end and told her never to stop her doing so – a little girl with a mind like that has the makings of being a brilliant scientist in her own right!

On past a large railway carriage covered in gigantic ants (yeah… I know, odd) and then to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London itself. I crossed here knowing, because my memory remembers shit like this from 20 years ago, there’s a KFC in an underground location near the Tower that sells beer! Well. Budweiser. But hey. I found it with not trouble, but was disappointed to find that they no longer sell beer. Boo! I was hungry so ordered a meal… only to find that they also didn’t sell any drinks with sugar in! So, erm, no. Order cancelled, I walked off and looked for a McD’s instead.

I didn’t find one. Seriously, I walked all the way past the rear of St Paul’s (there’s a joke there somewhere) and all the way back to the hostel without passing one! Incidentally, I’d aimed to get from where I was back to the hostel by 5pm. I walked through the door at 17:00. On the dot. I also hadn’t stopped for anything to eat or drink since I set off in the morning. Oops.

As it happens, there was a McDs a 2 minute walk up the road so I splurged £1.99 on a Big Mac and chips before meeting Jonathan for dinner (well, his dinner) and drinks round the corner. Jon, I checked – it was 2001 the last time we met! Bloody hell.

A great night was had between two bars and several pints before he headed off and I collapsed into the 18-bed sweat-pit.

On an additional point, I’ve found London very pleasant on this visit especially given the hot weather which normally makes people short tempered. Sure, the drivers are all dicks (what’s new), but everyone else has been lovely and polite. I even had two people compliment me on my (pink rainbow Death Metal) t-shirt!