Where the hills were alive with the sound of my coughing

Tuesday to Friday morning last week I was in Salzburg. It was good. We hit a couple of the Christmas markets in the dark, going to the Residenzplatz one evening and to Hellbrunn the next, where H bought me a star decoration for our tree, a musical carousel, hot apple juice that burned my tongue and made me eat a variety of pastries. The first one was my favourite, a light doughnut-like pastry with sugar and raisins, called a Something-Zimt-Golatsche. And if you think it’s not driving me insane not being able to remember all of its name, clearly you’re new here.

Incidentally, the carousel? I took it home in my crammed rucksack, wrapped in bubble wrap, flying about 630 miles across Europe at 30,000 feet above the ground and it did just fine. I took it wrapped in bubble wrap in my shoulder bag about 5 miles in the car to Suzy’s and back and consequently had to glue one of the horse’s legs back on.

I learned a couple more mountains while I was in Salzburg. I think I am able to identify the Untersberg now without needing to be where I was first told its name. Stauffen is the pointy one, which I might get next time and Watzmann is the huge one that you can see from outside the computer shop. And probably from some other places too.

I managed a bit of German here and there, but it’s difficult to dare to venture into the world of der, die, das, den, dem when everyone else around you is speaking great English. I’m pretty sure I didn’t start any diplomatic incidents though. Unless of course I offended the pastry guys by only saying goodbye to one of them with “Pfiat Di”, instead of all of them with “Pfiat Euch”. I always got into the right side of the car and I didn’t get wanded at airport security this time, so there was no opportunity for me to proudly proclaim “BH!” as the officer’s wand beeped over my underwire. Not that I’ve done that before or anything.

This two language business is totally confusing though and I’m finding more and more that I’m losing the ability to speak English. H’s daughter got some candy floss and I was asked what it was called – cotton candy? “No, that’s American; we call it candy floss” … Ten minutes later: “what do you call it again?” Me: *blank stare* *panic*. And I swore blind to H there wasn’t a verb for doing reconnaissance. But reconnoitre is a stupid word und darf mich ruhig am Arsch lecken.

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Linz Europe Harbour Festival, Day 3

It was the last day of the festival and we were now well into our groove: a bit of a lie-in, a quick update on the site and then down to the harbour on the bus, boarding through the middle doors so the driver didn’t see we didn’t have tickets. Off the bus and through the industrial bit of the harbour to the model aircraft flying ground, with Suzy collecting what stones and twigs she could in her open-toed sandals. As we walked down we met with one of the organisers I knew and she told us that Xavier Naidoo – a big German star – would be making a surprise appearance that day; he’d not been able to confirm his appearance until the last minute.

We grabbed a bite to eat on the ship and then went downstairs to watch Xavier rehearse a little with Hubert and Wolfgang Niedecken from BAP, who had stuck around for the last day. Once again, everybody was performing with everybody else.

The first group up was Stelzhamma, a more traditional group from Austria, with strings, brass, accordion and percussion. They played a short set before Willi Resetarits came on stage. He was at the very first Linz Europe Tour concert in Vienna in 2007. I met him briefly back then, determined to exchange a couple of German words with someone, but didn’t get to see him perform as that was the time when a storm ripped through the stage, causing the concert to be postponed to the day after Suzy and I had returned home.

I have no idea what Willi was singing about, but he was an engaging performer, at times standing right in front of the audience on the big speakers, at times sitting at a little table, as though singing to a small party in a little bar room. He is a Burgenland-Croat and Hubert and his band came on stage to sing a couple of Croatian songs. “Put the words on the floor,” he said, handing out lyric sheets, “then no-one will know you’re reading them.”
The video’s a bit shaky, but you get the idea:

After Willi came the Moldovan rockers Zdob si Zdub. In 2005 they represented Moldova at the Eurovision Song Contest, coming sixth in the final. They have incredible energy and were the first band with whom Hubert connected when looking for bands for his tour in eastern Europe. In fact they’ve even recorded a joint version of Hubert’s biggest hit Koa Hiatamadl, which of course they performed in Linz. It’s pretty cool seeing a Moldovan star singing the refrain of that song in front of an Austrian audience, who of course immediately join in. Zdob si Zdub also performed Everybody in the Casa Mare with Hubert’s three singers, Maria, Marlene and Elisabeth. This was already a firm favourite for me and Suzy, as we’d heard them play it a few times on the street music day. Sadly no-one seems to have Youtubed it for my repeated, if not endless viewing. There is this though:

Konstantin Wecker, a German musician, was the next to perform, bringing with him his Bösendorfer grand piano. I didn’t see how the stage hands got that on stage; I assume they just used magic. When not playing the grand he would stroll the stage singing, backed up by Jo Wecker on keyboards and a number of other musicians. There’s a snippet of melody of his that is still stuck in my head that’s been going round in my head, only to be thrown out occasionally by the song that he and Hubert performed together, “Einfach wieder schlendern”.

At about quarter past eight the big “Europa” backdrop was taken down and replaced with Hubert’s Bad Goisern dragon. Hubert’s set was planned as the last of the evening and I was a little surprised by it starting so early – not realising that it was going to turn into a set of mega proportions. Having played one of the traditional instrumental openers the band played “Heast as nit”, another very popular song of Hubert’s, usually reserved for encores. But today, they’d play it at the start, because – why not?

Later in the set both Willi and Konstantin came back on stage to each join Hubert and his band for a song: Willi playing the harmonica for the “Fön” blues and Konstantin on the keyboard to accompany Hubert for the traditional Austrian folk song “Abend spåt”, the latter being a song that the audience wouldn’t have heard Hubert play since the 2004 “Trad” tour.

A few songs later and Hubert finally announced the evening’s special guest. A huge roar went up from the crowd as he announced, “Xavier Naidoo!”, who came on stage … wearing his rucksack. I know not why. They performed “Siagst as” , the duet from Hubert’s “S’Nix” album. I’ve seen Hubert and his band perform it alone before and so it was pretty cool to finally see it with Xavier too.

Siagst as – Part 1

Siagst as – Part 2

Xavier’s own set followed, integrating support from Hubert and his band and Wolfgang Niedecken and an hour later Hubert came back for the second part of his set with his band. It was nearly eleven o’clock by now and Hubert remarked that although they went past the curfew a little last night and were about to now too, stuff it, the penalty was fixed so they might as well keep playing. Woohoo!

I’ve already blogged the story of my being up on stage with the rest of the crew as Hubert thanked the various members of his team at the end of his set. After we’d all filed off stage again one final song was performed, with all the musicians who had appeared that day on stage for “Schluss, Aus, Vorbei”. Over, end, past – and the Linz Europe Harbour Festival – and with it the Linz Europe Tour 2007-2009 – finally drew to a close just before midnight on Sunday, 5th July.

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Linz Europe Harbour Festival, Day 2

It was Saturday and the festival started at 2.30pm, rather than 5pm – lots more music to fit in today! Like the day before we had mostly hot sunshine with some rain and while the sun shone I tried to stand in people’s shadows to give my sunburned shoulder a bit of relief. The trouble being of course that in the middle of the day, people’s shadows aren’t all that long. Damn you, science!

We arrived at the harbour in time to see Loredana Groza doing her soundcheck before she later opened proceedings. She’s very popular in Romania, where she’s known as their Madonna. She has a great voice and wears all kinds of fantastic costumes, adding or subtracting a piece here and there – a wraparound skirt, or a jacket – to suit the song.

Hubert came back on stage during her set and together they performed Hasta Siempre:

Next up were our Ukrainian friends, Haydamaky with their Carpathian ska. They don’t just sound cool, they look cool and I loved photographing Ivan the accordion player. While the day before I’d not managed to get anything sorted to stand on at the front, so that I could see/photograph better, today the lovely Hannes, Hubert’s backliner, constructed me a little hill from two wooden palettes and one of the band’s flight cases. Perfect, I had something to perch on at the front.

Press photographers and cameramen were in and out of the pit at the front, getting a tap on the shoulder from security if they outstayed their welcome. However I was in there the whole time, as was another photographer. A guy in a hat, with a couple of Canons slung around his neck. Gradually we’d started to acknowledge each other – a nod of the head became a smile, a smile became a little wave. Then at some point he was next to me as I was crouched by my hill changing something on my camera. I indicated the structure and offered use of it to him, “Du kannst das auch verwenden”. He looked blank and said, “English? Mein Deutsch ist schlecht.” Ok, English I can do! “I’m English! Where are you from?” “Sydney” was his reply. Well, for heaven’s sake. So the two photographers working full time in the pit at this Austrian festival were English and Australian.

Hubert’s set with his band followed Haydamaky’s and they came back on stage to play “Poika” with him:

There’s a song of Hubert’s I love called “i bi ån” (pron.: ee bee on). “I bi ån” means you’re fine, you’re a-ok and have everything you need. The song is like one big party – and when you’ve had some help translating the lyrics you also discover that it’s also quite concerned with, well getting it on. It’s a great song for collaboration with other artists and when Hubert was sailing up and down the European rivers in 2007 and 2008, his guest musicians and bands would often join him for this song. This time Loredana came back on stage “to smoke it”, as Hubert puts it:
(and that behatted head you see at the bottom of the video? That’s Mr Australia.)

The Bavarian group Haindling were up next, and though the rain had started to come down, the audience stayed, many now donning the glamorous plastic ponchos given out by the radio station partner Ö1. As I headed back from the ship having had a bite to eat, I could hear the elephantine sound for which the band is known, somehow produced from all their brass instruments. Later in the set, as a greeting from Germany to Austria, the Linz audience was coaxed into an ironic “schunkeln” – linking arms and swaying in time to the music. It was Suzy’s first Schunkeln and we were both so proud.

The last band – and Suzy and I were both so exhausted by now – was the Cologne group BAP, whom I’d seen perform with Hubert last August in their hometown. In fact it was at the concert that I took the photo that ended up being used for the harbour festival posters. Now here we were back together again. They played a rocking set and then finally Hubert and his band joined them on stage for a couple of songs to bring the evening to a close.

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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:

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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.