Linz Europe Harbour Festival, Day 1

The first thing I did when I woke up the next morning was do a little update for the site with some photos from the street concerts. Like the obsessive good webmistress I am. About midday, when we’d had a bit of rest, gathered our thoughts and spread our belongings around the room and told reception that we didn’t need housekeeping thanks – housekeeping means you have to tidy up before they come in – we headed down to the harbour.

It was about a mile to walk and as we approached the right place the street was suddenly lined with signs point the way to the festival – signs using the same photo I’d taken that was being used for all the posters. The sun was beating down on us and we finally arrived in the harbour attractively drenched in sweat. Or maybe it was just me and Suzy was dry as a bone; I couldn’t see her through all the sweat to be sure.

We collected our passes – both with minor misspellings, so as to keep our identities not quite secret from the crowds. The stage was set up right by the Danube, with an area for a standing audience between it and the grandstands. A little upstream behind the stage was the MS Stadt Wien, a fancy old paddle steamer being used as a backstage and catering area for crew and artists. Also useful, we would discover over the next few days, for sheltering from the rain.

Hubert and his band opened proceedings at 4pm and their great set was followed by Philipp Poisel. We’d already seen Philipp perform in Hirschhorn last year and Suzy’s become a real fan of his music. We’re in the funny situation where I tell her what Hubert’s said in his dialect and she tells me what I missed when Phillip was telling his own stories. Wir werden aber überleben, oder, Suzy?

Claudia Koreck, whom we’d seen in Ischl, was next having already joined Hubert on stage for one of his songs. Collaboration, baby, that’s what the weekend was about and it was happening in every set, musicians and singers coming together to perform.

After Claudia came Karandila. Fantastic stuff. In a little while their singer Anita came on stage to perform with them. I’d talked to her a little in Bad Ischl, German unexpectedly being our common language. She liked the photos I’d taken of her and when she started singing I went along in front of the stage to photograph her again. Seeing me there, between two lines of her song she waved to me and called “Hallo Sarah!”

Karandila with Hubert and his band, Zdob si Zdub and Claudia Koreck:

The final performer was Klaus Doldinger. Towards the end of his set Hubert came back on stage to perform with him – his song “Goisern” – a cover of “Georgia on my mind”:

And of course all the live long day I’d been photographing:

Click for the set

The Linz trip: in the right direction

We were stranded in Hallstatt. Suzy hurried back down the way we’d come in case any of the technical crew were still around with the equipment van. I waited where I was in the hope that someone might realise that two seats that were previously filled were now mysteriously empty and come back to get us. In a while Suzy came back, there was no-one left. We were alone. And my bag was on the coach. With my phone. Scheisse.

We went back to the Marktplatz to double check, but nobody was around. A couple of dropped promotional flyers the only remaining sign of the musicians. What now? We needed to get to Bad Ischl for the concert in a few hours, but how? The only phone with any useful numbers on it was already happily on its way to Ischl without us. I tried to recall H’s number from memory without success, tried calling home but no-one was there to switch on my computer. I called John and thanks to a long story four years ago he still had the number for Spani, H’s sound engineer on his laptop. Sure, Spani wasn’t on the bus, but it was a start. We called and got H’s number from him. He didn’t pick up. I left a message, “Dude, we’re not on the bus, aaaarrrrgh,” being the general gist. We tried Spani again and asked him to contact H’s manager Hage for us – whose Bavarian German was often too, well, Bavarian for my understanding. A few minutes later Suzy’s phone rang. I answered and found Hage on the line, laughing heartily at our misfortune.

I gave Suzy the phone to talk to Hage and once he’d finally stopped laughing he told her that they’d continue to Ischl and then he’d send the coach back to get us. Thank God. We had a bit of time to kill and went for some Tomatensuppe at Cafe Derbl to warm up and soothe our nerves. Soon enough the bus driver rang and arranged where to pick us up. Not where we’d been dropped, but at a different point down by the lake, where everybody else had in fact headed after the concert. Actually meeting the driver was a whole other story though and involved a whole lot of walking back and forth along the lake front. Someone seemed to be confused about left and right. And it wasn’t us.

Finally we reached Bad Ischl and the driver dropped us off in the town. We could see a few members of Karandila across the road and headed towards them, bumping into Spani on the way. He was pleased to see we’d made it and we thanked him for his help before he went off down the road. Suddenly we were all alone again. The theatre wasn’t in sight and although I’d been to Ischl before I had no idea where we were. “Look for a big yellow building,” I told Suzy. So for anyone in Ischl looking for the Lehartheater, let me tell you now: that doesn’t help, because every damn building in Ischl is big and yellow. We were pointed in the right direction by a friendly local and soon found what we were looking for.

Outside the theatre Karandila were playing once more to passers-by and audience members. Going past me into the theatre Hubert spotted me and we pointed simultaneously at each other, him saying: “You got lost!” and me saying at the same time – and somewhat more accurately: “You lost us!”

The warm up concert in Bad Ischl was sold out and like the street concerts that day formed a great showcase for the harbour festival. By now a number of the other bands’ songs were becoming familiar and setting themselves up to be firmly rooted in my head for the next few days. After the concert we were determined that we would be on the bus back to Linz and were in our seats before most of the others.

About an hour and a half later we reached Linz and the bands were dropped off at their hotel. We were staying at a different hotel though and I spoke to the driver who said it was no problem to take us there. I went back to my 50% asleep, 100% grumpy Suzy to let her know. A few minutes later we still hadn’t gone anywhere though as the driver was still wandering in and out of the bus, picking up empty water bottles and rubbish. Not enamoured of this delay Suzy came out of her sleepy fug just long enough to bellow in perfect, if rather belligerent German, “do you need any help tidying up?” at the bus driver, who was apparently oblivious to our need to get the hell to own our hotel at last.

Eventually we got to Hotel Steigenberger and checked in with the dopiest, slowest receptionist there ever was. We threw everything we’d been dragging around all day onto the floor of our room and not much later threw ourselves into our respective beds.

A few minutes later, I heard Suzy laugh in the darkness. “Was that an awake laugh or an asleep laugh?” I asked. Silence. Suddenly she flailed violently with her bedclothes before calm returned to the room and we fell asleep.

We were finally in the right place.

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The Linz trip: Hallstatt

Safely on board the bus with the band and a number of the forthcoming harbour festival’s guest musicians we travelled through the beautiful Austrian countryside to the next street concert location: Hallstatt. As we passed through Goisern, Hubert’s hometown, the girls sang a few apt local traditional gstanzls – just in case he’d missed where we were.

Hallstatt is a pretty town, nestled into the mountains around a lake. Due to it’s unusual layout there’s next to no parking and no through traffic a lot of the time. There are car parks above the town, which are reached through a tunnel carved into the mountain. A tunnel that isn’t bad to navigate in a car, but which is a whole different kettle of fish when you’re in a big coach. Gradually we passengers realised that we weren’t just in a dark tunnel, we were in a dark tunnel where the rockface was inches away from grazing the windows on either side. How the driver got through I’ll never know, but he did and earned a round of applause from us all. Which startled him and caused him to drive into the lake. Or not, whatever.

Dropped out at one of these car parks we made our way down 120 steep stone steps. I’d done them once before when I came to the town and so knew they were coming. My poor knees – thank God I’d left my rucksack on the coach and taken only my camera with me. We walked to the Marktplatz and the band set up for another street concert, the tech van having come in another way with all the equipment. Once again Karandila opened proceedings and the square was pretty full with an appreciative audience. Ukrainian band Haydamaky played this time too – another Eastern European explosion of rock, brass and joie de vivre. It was a great setting for something so unusual, this invasion of musicians in the square, enveloped by the traditional Austrian houses tucked into the mountainside. There were a number of kids in the crowd and one little boy with blue car-shaped crocs on his feet was busy running around and dancing. Hubert followed behind him amused, bent double to his level playing his accordion until the boy suddenly realised that this crazy musician was right behind him, freaked out and sat down. But it was only a moment or two before he was up and running again.

The set lasted about an hour before the crew started to pack up, Hubert signing a few autographs here and there. We chatted a little to my friends from Munich before suddenly noticing that there were no musicians left in the square. Time to go! We hurried through the streets and back up the 120 steps. So exhausting that I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath and reassure my legs that, no, they were unlikely to fall off however much it felt that way. We were soon at the top of the steps and back in the car park.

“Please be kidding,” I said to the ominously empty space where we were expecting the coach to be standing. They’d gone without us.

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The Linz trip: the first ten hours

So, Linz. On Thursday 2nd we got up at seriously? o’clock and flew from Stansted to Salzburg. I’ve done the trip a few times and was able to point out various landmarks to Suzy. Then when we landed I was able to show her the Gaisberg and Untersberg mountains. Which isn’t a great skill when you consider that the Gaisberg has a big antenna on it and the Untersberg is The Big One You See From The Runway. But if you don’t consider that, then I’m very clever and deserve a round of applause.

We headed to Salzburg station, where we had a train to catch to Gmunden. We bought our tickets and there stood our train at platform 12, ready to leave in about 0.2 seconds. Cue another “train run” as first experienced on our last trip. I don’t do running and attempting to run while wearing my huge rucksack, just involves a whole lot of noise and sweat, but very little forward motion. But we made it and finally collapsed into a train carriage with a nice little lady onto whom we did our best not to drop our luggage and sweat.

A bit over an hour later we reached Gmunden and although there were signs of an earlier rain shower the day was now beautifully hot and sunny. We took a taxi to the Stadtplatz, where we had some food and enjoyed the lake while we waited for the musicians to turn up. There were a few posters up in the square advertising the street concert that was to take place, using the photo I’d taken for the homepage.

Soon enough the bus full of 40 musicians from across Europe arrived in the square and began unloading and setting up for the street concert. A crowd was forming and quickly grew as the Bulgarian gypsy brass band Karandila came playing through the square to where Hubert introduced the bands and Bavarian rising star Claudia Koreck, German jazz legend Klaus Doldinger, Moldovan stars Zdob si Zdub and Hubert and his band played their own sets as well as jamming together.

It was great and went down very well with everyone who had gathered. It was my first time seeing Karandila, Claudia Koreck and Zdob si Zdub live, although I’d seen bits and pieces of their performances on DVD. Despite not understanding the lyrics I couldn’t help but be infected by the rhythms, music and fantastic atmosphere. The musicians played for an hour before everyone and everything was loaded onto the coach. We climbed aboard too, glad to now be safely with the band and have transport stress behind us for the rest of the day.

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7 Days: Day 7 – Jobs for the weekend

There are plants to stake, growing tips to pinch out, weeds to dig up, blackfly to be shown who’s boss, stumpy sweetcorn to goad, plant supports to make… At least I don’t need to heave the watering can around tonight, thanks to the lovely helpful rain that’s falling.

Also on the list of things to be done is taking Mum to Wagamama for her first visit. The boys will be at the Royal Air Tattoo, turning nut brown and getting cricks in their necks. And we shall be eating noodles.

7 Days: Day 6 – Lunchtime

Again the merits of working at home come to the fore: Nobody looks at you sideways if your lunch involves putting together a whole tray full of goodies with which you can construct some yummy things to eat … while you sit on the floor in the den watching repeats of Will & Grace.

7 Days: Day 5 – Harvest in hand

Q: What might happen when you pull off a beetroot leaf that has been visited by mangold fly?

A: You might end up accidentally harvesting your little beetroot, pulling him unceremoniously from the ground, where he was growing quite happily until you came along, thank you very much.