Category: Gigs Abroad

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.

Gigs from Aboard Part 13 Vietnam – Part 2

We continued our Vietnam trip in 2014/15 by heading over to Phu Quoc, an island off the south coast where we spent Christmas Day and the trickiest challenge whilst there was to decide whether I preferred either Saigon Red or Saigon Green beer (for the record it was a marginal preference for the Green).  

When we were sat outside the cabin one evening, we witnessed the surreal sight of a cockerel casually walking down the path and then up the steps of the lodgings opposite. It then proceeded to tap its beak on the door and waited patiently, after two attempts with no reply it retraced its route and strutted off into the sunset.

‘Not the actual cockerel’. Image Credit raising-happy-chickens.com

I was at that point checking that I wasn’t drinking a Saigon ‘special’ beer but then gathered the intel from our neighbours that the previous owners had been feeding it, but they had flown home that morning leaving our resident cockerel shy of a snack that evening. This event reminded me of a story in Paul Auster’s ‘True Tales of American Life’, a book I would heartily recommend.  

Our next destination was Hoi An, with its ancient town and bustling marketplace and excellent food. We hired bicycles for a couple of days and cycled out to the nearby beach and into the residential areas where the tannoy’s on the street spouted out their ongoing Government propaganda.

When we were in a particularly touristy area of Singapore, we were stung with a beer price of nearly £10 (near to Manchester Ritz prices!), but in total contrast in one restaurant in Hoi An I obviously had to sample their local moonshine beer at 42p a pint. Unsurprisingly it was pretty poor fare! As we had been away for a sustained period, there was one night where we craved some different food. In this regard, we discovered a nearby Australian diner called Dingo Deli where we feasted on some excellent cheese on toast and drinkable coffee!   

Dingo Deli. Image Credit tripadvisor.jn.

On New Years Eve we headed down to the busy bars at Hoi An Harbour where they had set up a big stage for the celebrations, and performing was a local act called Louie, who were then followed by a fireworks display.  The only downside was the monsoon weather, so we saw the New Year in with a very tasty doughnut from a street trader before heading back to our digs.

A couple of days later we walked past Hoi An Que Nha Bar on the way to a restaurant and intriguingly we could see a stage set up. We passed a couple of hours later and the place was in full flow, and we were encouraged through the door by the local punters outside. To our astonishment we were provided front row seats in the packed bar resulting in envious glances from later attendees.  

Hoi An river view. Image Credit pinterest.

The venue was in effect a karaoke bar with backing music provided by a band called Hang Truang. We had no idea of the required etiquette as we crouched down on the little stools, but gathered quickly that karaoke was a serious business here and is all about the audience reaction though it turns out we had vastly different viewpoints than the other customers.

One singer who we thought was high quality was subjected to a brutally complete silence at the end of the track, but another performer who literally murdered ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles was rewarded with roses thrown on the stage. I also unintentionally caused a bit of chaos by breaking the lavatory door, and I had only had a couple of drinks! We stayed for about an hour and thoroughly enjoyed our karaoke experience and it was a fascinating insight into the local culture.