rainbowinthedark

The perfect excuse to get away for a few days.

So the trip begins on the Friday with me meeting Fiona in Edinburgh for a pub lunch. Food was great, beer was expensive. Headed to the airport for about 5pm and once there met up with a friend of mine, Katrina, who was also heading off for the weekend. Had a couple of drinks then said goodbye to her and headed for our flight. Slight electronic issues before take off but nothing major. After our short flight we landed in Dortmund and headed for our hotel where we met up with Ashley and Storm, who had already checked in. We went straight up to the rooms and sat catching up for a while before eventually going to bed.

Got very little sleep on Friday night then we woke nice and early to grab breakfast before going round the corner to the venue. There were only a couple of people there before us so we thought we were pretty certain to get to the front, though Storm had warned us that the Germans don't queue so we were slightly sceptical. Weather wasn't bad and the hotel was very near so pee/recovery from the night before breaks were nice and simple. After waiting for hours security eventually came out around 3pm and started setting up the barriers. Why they didn't do it earlier I don't know. We tried hard to keep our places but ended up split up, though only by a couple of people. Doors were eventually opened around 6:30 and luckily we all made it to the front. Storm (obviously) on Burton's side and the rest of us managed to squeeze in together in front of Mige. The venue was pretty big. Much bigger than the venues they played in the UK. Didn't make much difference to us being at the front but I imagine if you were at the back you'd see fuck all.


First band on was Paradise Lost. The fact that they were the support had a lot to do with me deciding to do this trip. They are fucking brilliant live so it was great to get to see them again and they didn't disappoint. Still didn't play 'Elusive Cure' but they did do 'One Second' so I was happy. Sound was a little shit - the vocals kept getting lost, but apart from that a great start to the evening. It's so much better when you actually like both bands that are playing.

After and hour or so HIM took to the stage and let rip. How did they look? Well - Ville had that nice fancy black blazer type thing and purple beanie on, Mige had had a nice new hair cut and was looking good as was Gas, who has lost a lot of weight recently. Linde had a t-shirt saying 'Three potatoes' in German on it, and I'm not allowed to look at Burton.

First song up was 'Passion's Killing Floor' which as with most of the set was the same as on the UK leg of the tour. The sound wasn't that great. Again vocals seemed to fade in and out a little but that just meant we got the now signature Ville move of gesturing to the sound guy to turn his mic the fuck up. The guys seemed to be having a good time laughing and joking around again and what I thought was really nice was that at one point Ville went round them all and kind of introduced them to the crowd. Differences from the UK leg were that 'Under The Rose' made a comeback and smoking was permitted. Even though he was able to smoke on stage Ville still dashed off during 'Sleepwalking Past Hope' only to come back - after bloody ages - with a cup of coffee! Once the concert was over (after FoH) the lights stayed down so that could mean only one thing... encore!  It was possibly the longest wait in between performance and encore I ever seen but they did eventually come back out and played us two more songs.

At the end of the night we stopped by the merch stand then headed back to the hotel where I was lucky enough to get to smell a certain keyboard player's gig towel!

The next morning we had breakfast then checked out and went with Storm to the train station as she had to head off to continue her stalking mission... After saying bye, Ashley, Fiona and myself had a wander around town. The place was fucking dead. Ok, so it was Sunday morning but still, I expected to see some kind of life. Instead all we saw were big fuck off Rhino's with wings (apparently the symbol for Dortmund's concert house) dotted all over the place (we had a similar thing in Edinburgh with cows). They were all decorated differently so we decided to walk about and find as many as possible. Eventually we had enough so went off to the airport where again we sat and had a giggle before splitting up and going for our flights home.

Altogether a very enjoyable weekend. Thank you HIM for making it all possible.