Leipzig: Tuesday (the final chapter!)
Jun. 10th, 2004 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrphThere shouldn't be much to say about Tuesday, should there? Got up, left Leipzig, flew home. Nice and simple... yeah, right...
The waking up bit went ok. Made it down for an early breakfast, mostly to say farewell to Karen - she had an early flight from Berlin to Bristol (there's only one a day, it seems), so she had to be out of Leipzig by mid-morning. Had breakfast, said farewells, wandered back to my room and finished packing.
The plan was for us to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gigib and the mob in the lobby at eleven, head to the station and get one of those group discounts on our tickets. The plan went wrong. We made it down to the lobby just after eleven, ran into most of the mob (bitbat, chimera_s, ninshubur and others) and took silly photos. We also had to rescue our luggage, which almost got stored away by the hotel...
...and then we discovered that as we were late,gigib had already left for the station (...we were the only two people waiting for her), so we headed that way ourselves. There was some confusion with ticket machines, and with working out just which queue we were meant to be in. Still, we got to the platform ok - catching up with Lorena, Simon and gigib just before we boarded the train.
We had a nice uneventful train trip to Berlin. We got off the train... and spotted Karen getting out of the next carriage, looking more than a bit stressed. This was a surprise, as her flight was supposed to be in the air at this point - seems there'd been some confusion at Leipzig station, and she'd boarded the train at the right time/platform only to find it was heading in the wrong direction... :-(
Things continued to go wrong when we reached the airport. On the plus side, Karen managed to transfer onto our (Luton) flight. On the minus side, I checked in. Thendavefish, who was behind me in the queue, was told that he couldn't check in... because that flight wasn't checking in yet. He pointed at me as an example that this wasn't true. They turned a bit pale and realised that they'd just booked me on the flight to Newcastle...
That was fixable. I think it took a little more effort to get my luggage back, once they realised that was also heading to Newcastle... a very stressed lady appeared and returned it about ten minutes later, just before that flight took off...
I resisted the lure of Duty Free.
The flight wasn't bad. Except for the landing. There seemed to be a lot of very low cloud around Luton - enough for them to call off the first approach and pull up quite steeply. We got the "don't worry, it's purely routine" announcement, and the second pass was fine.
And that, pretty much, was it. Luggage was collected. The mob dispersed, after a final "don't we all look knackered" photo.davefish, Karen and I were the last three - and headed off to three different coaches to get back to our respective home cities (I'd booked a late coach, to allow for any delays, and had to haggle with the driver to catch the first one along. Thankfully, it worked). And that, pretty much, was that. Another year, another Leipzig.
Bands seen: 12
Clothing purchased: none
CDs purchased: 5 (plus three compilations in magazines and the festival sampler)
Magazines purchased: the latest Zillo, one free copy of Sonic Seducer
Alcohol: not much.
Band of the weekend: Dust Heaven (with New Days Delay in close second)
Overall verdict: that was fun.
The waking up bit went ok. Made it down for an early breakfast, mostly to say farewell to Karen - she had an early flight from Berlin to Bristol (there's only one a day, it seems), so she had to be out of Leipzig by mid-morning. Had breakfast, said farewells, wandered back to my room and finished packing.
The plan was for us to meet
gigib and the mob in the lobby at eleven, head to the station and get one of those group discounts on our tickets. The plan went wrong. We made it down to the lobby just after eleven, ran into most of the mob (bitbat, chimera_s, ninshubur and others) and took silly photos. We also had to rescue our luggage, which almost got stored away by the hotel... ...and then we discovered that as we were late,
gigib had already left for the station (...we were the only two people waiting for her), so we headed that way ourselves. There was some confusion with ticket machines, and with working out just which queue we were meant to be in. Still, we got to the platform ok - catching up with Lorena, Simon and gigib just before we boarded the train. We had a nice uneventful train trip to Berlin. We got off the train... and spotted Karen getting out of the next carriage, looking more than a bit stressed. This was a surprise, as her flight was supposed to be in the air at this point - seems there'd been some confusion at Leipzig station, and she'd boarded the train at the right time/platform only to find it was heading in the wrong direction... :-(
Things continued to go wrong when we reached the airport. On the plus side, Karen managed to transfer onto our (Luton) flight. On the minus side, I checked in. Then
davefish, who was behind me in the queue, was told that he couldn't check in... because that flight wasn't checking in yet. He pointed at me as an example that this wasn't true. They turned a bit pale and realised that they'd just booked me on the flight to Newcastle...That was fixable. I think it took a little more effort to get my luggage back, once they realised that was also heading to Newcastle... a very stressed lady appeared and returned it about ten minutes later, just before that flight took off...
I resisted the lure of Duty Free.
The flight wasn't bad. Except for the landing. There seemed to be a lot of very low cloud around Luton - enough for them to call off the first approach and pull up quite steeply. We got the "don't worry, it's purely routine" announcement, and the second pass was fine.
And that, pretty much, was it. Luggage was collected. The mob dispersed, after a final "don't we all look knackered" photo.
davefish, Karen and I were the last three - and headed off to three different coaches to get back to our respective home cities (I'd booked a late coach, to allow for any delays, and had to haggle with the driver to catch the first one along. Thankfully, it worked). And that, pretty much, was that. Another year, another Leipzig.Bands seen: 12
Clothing purchased: none
CDs purchased: 5 (plus three compilations in magazines and the festival sampler)
Magazines purchased: the latest Zillo, one free copy of Sonic Seducer
Alcohol: not much.
Band of the weekend: Dust Heaven (with New Days Delay in close second)
Overall verdict: that was fun.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-11 01:42 am (UTC)Sonic Seducer is... well, yes, it's a very useful bag (shame it's not waterproof, but you can't have everything). :) And the compilation CDs are fun (I actually sat there with my scissors and cut out the CD inlays. How sad is that?). Beyond that... my German isn't good enough to judge.
Although the sheer number of bands they cover every issue is scary. And it's interesting to note that neither Sonic Seducer nor Zillo usually does live gig reviews...
no subject
Date: 2004-06-13 05:21 am (UTC)