Category: Gigs Abroad

Gigs from Abroad – Part 15

In the years from 2016 to 2018 we decided with some friends to undertake an annual jaunt to visit the Christmas markets in Germany.  In the first year we headed to Stuttgart for my debut appearance there, and it was appropriately exceptionally cold. The city is the largest in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg and is in close proximity to the Black Forest and is also Germany’s ‘car capital’. Famous previous residents include the footballer Andreas Muller and the current Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp.

The Stuttgarter Weihnachtsmarkt is one of the largest and oldest Christmas markets in Europe comprising of over 280 stalls in the city centre. It contained an absolutely superb model railway, an artefact I am always eternally fascinated by. Our accommodation was next to the Sudheimer Platz and in the corner of the square was Germany’s first ever funicular built in 1929. It is virtually still in its original format including the old cable car which is in itself a listed building! It takes you on an interesting 550 metre journey on a 28% gradient up to the hilltop area of Waldfriedhof.  

Stuttgart Christmas Market. Image Credit europenbestdestinations.com

In 2018 we returned and this time desired to head out on a train trip to another market and Esslingen was referenced to us as a good place to visit. The market town is located on the River Neckar and lies about 9 miles southeast of Stuttgart and one of its twin cities is Neath in Port Talbot.  When there we traversed up and down the considerable number of lung busting wooden steps to reach Esslinger Burg, the old fortress which once protected the city and the accompanying panoramic views.    

The main rationale for our visit to the town was to attend their famous Medieval Christmas market and the olde world ‘Game of Thrones’ vibe of the event was very enjoyable. It felt novel as alongside the obligatory food and drink and traders selling other wares they had jugglers, minstrels, acrobats and fire magicians. There was also musical entertainment in two separate areas thus we saw a band called Oro on Esslingen Market Stage 1 and a chap called Gudbrugger Goldstein on Esslingen Market Stage 2.   

In the middle year we headed to Heidelberg, and this was the second time I had visited the city.  Heidelberg has considerable history in that around 400,000 years ago ‘Heidelburg Man’ died in a nearby town and his jawbone was discovered in 1907. It was subsequently confirmed that his remains were the earliest evidence of human life in Europe.

The city is in the same large state as Stuttgart and is in the warmest region of the country and also contains Germany’s oldest University, founded in 1386. The city hosted the 1972 Summer Paralympics and famous residents include Friedrich Ebert, the first ever president of Germany, racing driver Nelson Piquet Jr, German football manager Hansi Flick, musician Jackson Browne and actor Michael Fassbender of 12 Mens A Slave and X-Men fame. They were also referenced in Harry Potter as having a high quality Quidditch team called Heidelberg Harriers!

We encountered another funicular which is used by 1m passengers annually. It heads up to Konigstuhl where on our visit we encountered some snow showers, the halfway point is the Castle where we took a break for a beer in the huge bar room.  

Heidelberg Funicular. Image Credit klook.com

Our train trip that weekend was over to Mannheim, which is an anachronism for a German city as the streets are built on a grid pattern (like Glasgow) and are numbered accordingly, this quirk results in its nickname of the Square City. One more famous Mannheim resident to cite here is one of the finest ever tennis players Steffi Graf.

I recall having a sally around a huge department store where there was a comfortable seated area showing Saturday afternoon football on several TV screens which unsurprisingly was populated by primarily the male population! Whilst in attendance at the Mannheim Market we saw the Mannheim Brass Orchestra.

On our last night in Heidelberg, we made the catastrophic error of imbibing too much vino tinto creating a perilous journey the following day. Two further challenges abounded, the first that it is a 50-mile commute back to the airport involving a couple of changes on the rails.

The second was the below freezing weather resulting in us waiting on the runway for an interminable time at the vast Frankfurt Airport before fortunately being given the all clear to depart. Prior to setting of we then had the strange and unfamiliar experience of the plane going through the equivalent of a car wash to clear off the snow. We had a very early night when we arrived home that evening!

Before I depart this week, I want to pay my own homage to Steve Albini who died this week at the tender young age of 61. He was an excellent music producer and undertook the task by concentrating solely on enhancing the band which resulted in hardening Wedding Present’s sound and creating my favourite Pixies album ‘Surfer Rosa’, amongst many other achievements.

Steve Albini on stage. Image Credit rollingstone.com

I caught his later band Shellac once, but my abiding memory is witnessing the intensity of Big Black when I saw them on their penultimate ever British date at Manchester Boardwalk in 1987. The gig gods smiled on us as we only heard about the date on John Peel four days before and queued at the venue at 8pm to obtain one of the last remaining tickets, an unforgettable night!  

Gigs from Abroad Part 14 – Lubeck

The annual lads trip returned to Germany in March 2017 to visit Lubeck. The city is in Northern Germany and is South westernmost city on the Baltic Sea coast and was originally part of the Hanseatic League and created its own Lubeck law in 1226 and remarkably retained its status as an independent city right up to the eve of the Second World War in 1937. During the war it had the dubious privilege of being the first German city to suffer a significant RAF bombing attack, where 20% of the city centre was destroyed.

Lubeck panorama. Image Credit fotocommunity.de

Lubeck old town is Germany’s most extensive UNESCO World Heritage site and quirkily has the highest number of tall church towers worldwide, with 6 church towers exceeding 100 metres. The city is also famous for Lubeck Marzipan, which has a museum dedicated to it. They also had the honour of hosting the G7 conference in 2015.

There was an art scandal there in the 1950’s where a restorer was tasked with renovating old paintings rediscovered after World War 2, but he rather cheekily painted new works and passed them off as restorations. This scam was not discovered until decades later and the writer and Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass covered the tale in one of his novels in 1986, Gunter being a nearby Lubeck resident in his later years. 

Lubeck Marzipan. Image Credit blogspot.com

They have their own regional airport in Lubeck, but we travelled through Hamburg International Airport and the commute was very easy as the train line lies on the Vogelfluglinie which could take you if you wished to all the way through to Copenhagen.  

It was our first trip abroad since the Brexit vote the previous year and I recall it generated a discussion topic with one bar owner with us disavowing responsibility for the decision as not one of us had voted for it. One of the worst implications of Brexit is the creation of unnecessary impacts on musicians touring to Europe with additional expenses caused by extra red tape requirements of multiple visas that is now enmeshed within this process. This could have been so easily averted with a small amount of enlightened thinking when our government was negotiating the agreement, but averted it was not!

On the second day we undertook our traditional train trip, in this instance this was a short commute to the 19th century seaside town of Travemunde, which as the largest ferry port on the Baltic Sea has direct connections with many Eastern European countries.

It was wall to wall sunshine on our visit and we ensconced ourselves in an outdoor area of an Italian restaurant for a few drinks and resultant pizzas. We watched a huge car transporter ship passing by in the dock and one of our party who shall remain nameless tripped up entering the building and nearly took out the dessert display cabinet!

We returned late afternoon and had a sally around Lubeck and admired the old-fashioned vibe of the city, despite going into one somewhat dubious bar where there was brazen drug dealing clearly taking place in the establishment.

We visited Lubeck Finnegan’s which is an Irish pub located on Mengstrasse within the old town overlooking the River Trave. Whilst we there an artist called Steve Highway was playing, not to be confused with the similar named Irish Liverpool footballer of the 1970’s!

Lubeck Tonfinks. Image Credit veganfreundlich.org

We then traversed on to Lubeck Tonfinks Kulturecafe & Bar which is a multipurpose establishment which is a café by day and an inviting cosy bar at night. They also have a book exchange, readings and exhibitions alongside live music. On the night we attended there was a local band called Maces playing. The bar was in a busy area of town that regretfully we only discovered late on Day 2 so we may have to return to investigate another time. Half of us headed home the following morning while the other half kept rolling on to nearby Kiel for a New Model Army gig that evening.