Category: Gigs Abroad

Gigs Abroad Part 7 – Utrecht

I am fortunate to have a regular group of pals who undertake an annual weekend trip away in Europe, though our first post-apocalypse trip next year is a change of direction again to Belfast. The trips consist of a splash of culture, music, and lathering’s of ale!

There have been numerous incidents along the way, Uncle George’s Wallace and Gromit imitating ‘Wrong Trousers’ in Munich springs to mind, but that is another tale entirely.

Whilst I am referencing our visit to Munich, we did our usual Day 2 train trip, this time to the nearby chocolate box town of Freising. Upon arrival we climbed the hill out of town to Brewery Weihenstephan which is the oldest brewery in the world and is an independent profit-seeking enterprise owned by the Free State of Bavaria, where we proceeded to spend a leisurely couple of hours in the sunshine.

Brewery Weihenstephan. Image Credit TripSavvy.

When we landed back at the small train station, we noticed it had a very thin platform. This fact became hugely relevant when a seemingly endless freight train sped through and the air pressure it created was extraordinary, perturbing enough for adults and I am sure it would have been terrifying for kids.

I recall there were a suite of large outdoor beer halls in Munich with a particularly huge site contained within the local park. 

On another trip in Heidelberg, we passed a sleepy town called Bruschal and decided to jump off and have a peruse. A couple of the lads hunted down a bar whilst a group of us were peckish, so we headed to the Thai Restaurant across the road from the station. I was a tad dehydrated so I put in a simple request for some Jasmine Tea. They mistook the order and proceeded to brew six pots of tea for all of us, you could hear the kettle running for over half an hour, it must have displayed as a mysterious spike on the Karksruhe district electricity meters!  

On a subsequent visit to Heidelberg, we took a break from the Christmas markets to head up into the hills on the funicular train. As we approached the apex there was a voluminous drop of snow from the heavens which caused some significant hindrance to the bemused looking driver on the return trip.

Returning to the musical spectrum, we visited Utrecht in 2012. After landing, we made a tactical error at Amsterdam station by catching the slow train, which stopped at every lamppost en route! The lesson was learned, and we ensured we caught the express train when returning back to Schipol airport. Whilst residing there, we undertook our day trip into the bright lights of Amsterdam.

Utrecht is an ancient city dating back to the Middle Ages, is the fourth largest city in the Netherlands and Utrecht University is the largest in the country.  It is an eminently walkable city with a proliferation of barges and gobsmackingly enormous bike shelter storage areas that created in my mind the scenario of desperately trying to find your bike at the end of a long day. They also have miles of bike lanes that you absolutely do not cross unwittingly for the fear of being flattened!  

One night we found Utrecht T’Oude Pothuys, residing on Oudegracht. It is situated in a grand old building that is over 400 years old and it has a canal side patio therein. It was an inviting place and had an olde world feel and have music on every evening of the week and is open until 3am at the weekends. On our visit a local act called De Avonduren were playing who had a jazzy trip hop vibe about them.     

Utrecht T’Oude Pothuys. Image Credit russchertekstenbeeld.nl

Gigs Abroad Part 6 – Hamburg

The annual lad’s trip in March 2011 returned to the fair country of Germany, this time to Hamburg. The city has had its fair share of travails over the centuries, great fires, cholera outbreaks, carpet bombing in WW2 and even a significant flooding in the 60’s which took many lives. It is now a modern cosmopolitan city that it is probably the most touristy place we have visited on our trips.

As we boarded the plane, there was a huge group of lads dotted around in the seats heading out on a stag day, I can’t remember the chap’s name so for simplicity let’s call him Smithy.

We arrived about mid-afternoon on the Friday and passed through the Hauptbahnhof main station en route. Much to our infantile amusement there were posters for Shaun Das Schaf (Shaun the Sheep) and Rory das Automobile (Rory the Racing Car) which we chortled about over the weekend!  

Directly from the hotel we bounced into the first bar we passed whilst heading into the centre of the city. The mein host, on hearing our accents smiled and proceeded to open a back room and ushered us in for us to discover that it was full of dubious war paraphernalia.  

To increase our discomfort, he then proceeded to boot up the jukebox and put the ‘Sink the Bismarck’ track on! We made plans to escape after a quick beer, but due to a communication breakdown we ended up having to have another drink there. It was rapidly turning into a strange start to the weekend.

The centre of town was a little tacky to be fair and Smithy’s stag boys were spotted in the Reeperbahn area. Within that area was the Hamburg Reeperbahn Academy situated on Hans-Albers-Platz.  

Hamburg Reeperbahn Academy. Image Credit www.hans-der-kanns.com

We wandered in and discovered that were was a function room behind the bar which served as a disco, nightclub and live venue and stayed open to the eye-popping time of 7am. They regularly have original or covers bands playing. The place had a decent vibe to it and a band called Darryl and Pals were on stage when we attended.

Directly next door was another bar called the Hamburg Ranch House which we pottered into and saw an act called Wild Touch who were apparently a regular band on the local circuit since 2004.

The overriding news story of the weekend was the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima in Japan. Around this time, I kept harking back to the prophetic line of Billy Bragg of ‘And the incident at Tschernobyl proves the world we live in is very small’ from his 1986 track ‘Help Save the Youth of America’.

On Day 2, we made a visit to one of Europe’s most famous football teams St Pauli’s stadium, located in the dock area of the city. They are arguably recognised more for their unique social culture than their football and they are quantified as one of ‘Kult’ clubs. They generate a strong affinity from supporters far and wide due to their commendable left-wing politics and have distinctive skull and crossbones on their merchandise.

St Pauli Stadium. Image Credit portalsinfoblog.blogspot.com

Nearby to the ground we found a superb pub, arguably one of the best bars I have ever been into which we christened the ‘St Pauli Bar’ as I cannot recall the actual name. The nearest musical comparison to the St Pauli ethos would be punk and ska and this was booming over the sound system and the clientele had such character and there was a nice modicum of ‘edge’ to the place.

St Pauli had just recently managed to gain promotion to the Bundesliga, the highest division, where they were now playing their city rivals Hamburger SV in the Hamburger Stadtderby. I was chatting to a genial local lad who had attended the derby only twenty-three days earlier where they had remarkably beaten their much bigger rivals in their home stadium, this was locally such a big deal that he was almost in tears while reciting the memories of the match.

To grab a local comparison, it would be on the scale of Stockport reaching the topflight and going on to win at Man City or Man United. We spent a terrific couple of hours in this establishment. When we boarded the flight home the next day, it was abundantly clear that Smithy’s stag do crew had been pushing the envelope all weekend and they were literally shells of their former selves!