ATTENTION:
If you happen to have any photo or video material of our shows during this trip, please get in touch!
People asked us after our trip to Spain how it was, what we did between the shows and how Spain was etc. Because it’s hard to describe it with words we tried to give you an idea what us tourists did over there below. With lots of pictures. It’s nothing spectacular though. If anything it’s a nice way for us to look back at our trip to Spain, a time we’ll never forget:
When we got a message from Carles (Deathwishteam Girona) asking if we would like to come over to Spain to play some shows, we were pretty excited to say the least.
Below you can read what happened on our trip. Being the spoiled tourists we are, we ofcourse took a lot of pictures. They’re not even close to the images we have in our minds, the memories etc, but it’s a start.. Oh well, just start reading…
The poster for the entire tour. Posted on various internet sites.
20 FEB – TUESDAY – SINT ANTHONIS
Tuesday evening. 19:00. We decided to leave for Spain on Tuesday so we would arrive a day early in order to chill and look around a bit. After all, aside from playing we wanted to enjoy our stay as much as possible.
After picking up the van and our friend Peter (owner of the van as well) we were ready to load everything in the van and start the long drive to Spain.
When everything was stuck together nicely in the van (both people and stuff) it was time to start driving. But not without our life-saving device or should I say best friend… TomTom (GPS), without him we would have get lost like a zillion times. None of that though, because of this wonderful piece of technology we wouldn’t have to worry about reading maps etc. Okay, so we were all set, byebye Holland, Spain here we come.
21 FEB – WEDNESDAY – GIRONA
After a lot of rain, fog (to the point we hardly could see anything, oh well…), and mountains (driving as fast as possible on our way down so we would get up the mountain pretty easy…) the weather got better and better the closer we got to Girona. Pim, Remco & Joep took turns driving and around 15:00 a we arrived in Girona. We were a bit early though so first we started to look around in the city. We parked our van in a secure parking garage and off we went.
First stop was a cafe where we enjoyed our first Spanish beers. The sun was shining, we were in a foreign country, nobody telling us what to do, we were enjoying ourselves. The mood was set.
Around 17:00 it was time to meet Carles from Deathwishteam Girona, the dude that arranged everything for us. We gave him a call and he came to pick us up. Quickly we found out he was one of the nicest guys we’ll ever meet (we owe you dude!). He took us to the place we would be staying. An appartment he’s renting just for bands. Let’s see. A TV, playstation, couches, chairs, beds. Damn, this was going to be great!
After we got ourselves some food in the local supermarket (and totally forgot one bag with stuff in the supermarket, even before we had to pay for it… ofcourse we found out about it when we were already back in the appartment… typical) we chilled a bit. Most time was spent playing Bully (Canis Canem Edit) on the PlayStation 2 though. Carles told us FC Barcelona was playing a soccer match this night, so we decided to go watch it together with him and his friends.
We enjoyed some beers, had some nice conversations with Carles and his friends. As a bonus we watched his friends throwing ashtrays at eachother and slamming a knife into the wall. Nice!
After the match it was time to get some sleep.
22 FEB – THURSDAY – GIRONA
When everybody was awake and we enjoyed our first meal of some baked eggs we were ready to explore the city a bit more. This was going to be our last chance, so off we went.
First of all, DAMN, Girona is beautiful! We had a quick glance already on the first day, but now we had a better view of the city. We really enjoyed it. Let’s not spend too many words on this, but just look at the following pictures and you know exactly what we mean. If you ever get the chance to check it out, do so. It’s great.
After our trip into the city it was time for the first show, at Club Blau:
Club Blau is a disco. Nice! From the outside it looked like a gigantic warehouse but from the inside it’s a nice & shiny disco. The atmosphere was great, lots of people and we played a good show. Aside from us Burkah played, a heavy metalcore band that even covered a Born From Pain song! Nice to hear something Dutch far away from home. The coolest band was “Charles Bronson Discipline” though, great guys, great sound. We all loved it.
Pictures by Carles.
After our show the other room opened up as well and a big techno party started. Nice senorita’s all over the place, needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves. At the room where we played some alternative DJ was spinning his records. Not that interesting to be honest. Oh well, can’t have it all!
When a couple of hours passed and we were done partying, it was time get back to the sleeping place. For the last time. After a short drive and a long walk we chilled and talked a bit with Carles and then it was time to go sleep. We wouldn’t see Carles again after this. We’ll meet again though. One day.
23 FEB – FRIDAY – ZARAGOZA
Once awake, Joost and Pim decided to pick up the van. We didn’t want to leave too late, because we decided to go visit the FC Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou. Barcelona was kinda on our way, so it wouldn’t take us too far away from our original route.
On our way to pick up the van, we came across these nice graffity drawings. Girona has some nice artists for sure:
After that we got our stuff in the van once again and we went off to Barcelona. When we got there we just walked around the gigantic stadium and chilled a bit in the sun. We didn’t even go inside, we just wanted to check out the place. Luckily the fries and hamburgers were only 4 euro (!). Expensive, but that’s something you can expect over here.
When we left the stadium the sun was still shining but the closer we got to our destination, Zaragoza, the shittier the weather got. It didn’t look pretty when we arrived. Zaragoza is a really busy city traffic wise and it was raining a lot. People just park their cars in the middle of a crossroad, no shit! It’s insane. And weatherwise, after two days of sun we felt like home again. Rain, rain, rain. LET IT RAIN.
We had to search a bit for the venue, but when we found it, Carlos (Not Carles) from Real Crisis quickly arrived. After a short talk we decided to get our stuff inside the venue. After that we went to the place where we would sleep, Carlos his home. He lives really nice, cool place. Nice turntables and once again we found something Dutch. Carlos has lots of Dutch records 🙂 He is a big Reaching Forward fan, so the dude has taste. Good to see some Not Just Words Records releases as well.
Ok, time for the show:
As you can see we were being announced as a mix between Cro Mags & Strike First (from the Netherlands as well) hehe. Nice! Check out Strike First by the way if you didn’t yet. Cool band, cool guys.
Carlos soon told us Real Crisis wasn’t going to play tonight because one of the bandmembers was feeling ill. Bummer, because we were looking forward to seeing them play. Luckily Enter The Nightmare was still playing though and they opened up the evening with a great set. Check this band out people! Great guys, good band! After our show they told us to set up quick and start the show because there wasn’t much time left. Ofcourse we were having techincal problems (Stef’s 5150 just stopped working all of a sudden) and a quick start wasn’t happening anytime soon… Oh well, when we fixed everything we had 10 minutes to play left. Those 10 minutes were damn great though. People sang along and we had a great time. The shorter, the better? We loved it.
24 FEB – SATURDAY – GIJON
After a good nice sleep and a fast breakfast we went on the road again. Next stop, Gijon. We started our trip together with Enter The Nightmare & Real Crisis but quickly we lost track of Enter The Nightmare though. A bit later Real Crisis was nowhere to be seen as well. Oh well, we knew where to go. TomTom (GPS) you know…
While driving we noticed people giving us signs and strange looks though… We know we’re insanely good looking but giving signs etc for that is a bit overdone though… So we dediced it was probably something else and stopped at the nearest parking spot.
The left part of the bumper was dangling behind the van, the damn thing was only still attached to the van with a really small cable. We probably drove like that for miles… Oh well, we just took the damn part off, threw it in the back and kept driving.
When we arrived at Gijon there was nobody at the place yet. No other bands, no people, nobody. So we just parked our van and started exploring the city. The haven was pretty nice, check it out:
Because we were getting pretty hungry we found ourselves a place to eat. After we enjoyed some nice French fries we went back to the venue. People were there now and stuff was being set up. The place looked really cool, like some sort of cave.
After we got our stuff inside we parked our van. On our way over there though we damaged a wheel. A bit of rubber was cut out of the wheel. There was no problem in driving like this but we decided we were going to change tires the next day and not worry about it today.
Ok showtime. Check out the poster of the show:
This was the first time we saw Real Crisis play and the last time Enter The Nightmare played. Both bands played a great set. We enjoyed it. People were totally into it.
These pictures by Mario Martinez.
Since we didn’t get to play a full set yesterday we went all out today. But even after we played our set people kept asking for more so we decided to try something different. We played a new song we are working on, for the first time. They seemed to dig it.
After our show it was time to get to the sleeping place. We would stay at the home of the Enter The Nightmare singer, Jairo. Which is a great dude by the way. We had to wait a bit though, since he was waiting for a key. When we finally got the key we started to drive.. and drive… and drive… up the mountain. To the top. When we got there the van with Real Crisis and Jairo stopped and Jairo got out… Apparently he was LOST haha. He couldn’t find his parents place… So we entered the address in our great TomTom (GPS) device and we started driving upfront. Soon we arrived at our destination. After a bord of “paela” and “straight edge beer” (0% alcohol) Jairo offered us we quickly lay down to get some sleep. We were pretty tired.
25 FEB – SUNDAY – DONOSTIA (SAN SEBASTIAN)
We awoke to this sight:
We didn’t have much time to enjoy it though, it was time to change the tire. Joep, Joost and Peter took charge of this operation and changed the tire without any problems. We just drove the van to a dry place (with a roof above our head) so we could change the tire without getting wet.
We quickly found out they made local cider at the place we changed the tire. The people that owned the place were so nice. Unbelievable. Right after we changed tires they opened up some bottles of cider to give us a taste. When we wanted to leave they even offered some bread with cheese as well. They also gave us 3 bottles of cider to take with us. These people were so nice to us, complete strangers for them. While we used their space… Amazing.
After we said goodbye we had to leave though. We left this wonderful family and started our drive to Donostia. Once again Real Crisis and us parted ways somewhere along the road…
When we finally arrived at the venue (we couldn’t find it with our TomTom (GPS) because it was in an other part of the city blablablala, we’re not getting into the entire story right here. But it involved getting into a local internet cafe and finding the place with Google Maps. So aside from TomTom (GPS) we have to thank Google Maps as well.) we enjoyed a great meal of pasta and paela again. It’s not like they eat anything else over there 🙂
Poster for the show:
We played our final show of this tour. The people present seemed to be into it and we really enjoyed this last show. After saying goodbye to real Crisis it was time to start driving home. Byebye Spain, or Africa as Carles calls it.
26 FEB – MONDAY – SINT ANTHONIS
After our final show we drove home straight away. 13 hours later we were back home safely. Tired as hell, but we made it.
After something like 4300 km, packed together with 6 people in a van, we can look back on an amazing experience. We had a blast for sure. A dream come true actually. The people in Spain are amazingly friendly, the great hospitality… We couldn’t have wished for more. We will never forget this.
Carles (Leuk skipak! / “This is Africa”), Real Crisis, Enter The Nightmare and everyone else that made this trip possible. THANKS A LOT! Hope we’ll see you again soon!
PS > If anyone reading this has any pictures from our shows there (or know people that do), hook us up!