The Linz trip: in the right direction

26 July 2009

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.