20 September 2008
We travelled to the airport for our flight which was at lunchtime! Met Andy at the airport and went to TGI Fridays so Andy could get some food. We were served by a rather mad waitress who gave us pens to write on the wall. I think I wrote something about Queen and Paul Rodgers! Simon turned up looking rather white and hungover just before we boarded the flight!
Arrived in Berlin and we all got the train together into the centre and all went to check in to various hotels! We arranged to meet up at 8pm at the Brandenburg Gate, including Charlie who had arrived from the UK. Simon didn’t turn up but the rest of us went to have dinner in a Bavarian restaurant not far from the gate.
I had a lovely Schnitzel, my favourite German food, and some steins of beer!! Pete Malandrone and some of the crew were also in the restaurant, we decided they must have been following us!
After dinner, we went to the Irish bar next door. The band playing in the bar played ‘Runaway’ and the singer looked a bit like Paul Rodgers!! And we spotted ‘Julie’, Spike’s technician in the bar!
21 September 2008
I travelled on the metro to the venue and got to the queue at 10.30 to find Jens, Vern, Julie, Jim, Charlie, Andrea and the Japanese guys! A very odd venue as it was next to a swimming pool and not really near anything else. A few of us went for a walk to burger king in the morning for some not very nice breakfast (but still better than McDonalds!). We also saw Viekko, the head of security wandering around during the morning!
At 1.30, the security came out and started putting barriers up a few 100 metres away from where we were queuing and there was chaos as everyone ran over there. We ended up standing in a crush next to the barriers for at least half an hour while the security set up the barriers and confirmed what we needed to do. After that, we managed to get everyone to space out a bit and sit down!
During the afternoon, we had lemon meringue pie kindly donated by Vern and Julie! The doors opened at 6.30pm and it was the longest run of any of the venues. The venue itself was actually a veladrome and we ran the full length round it, down some steps then UP some steps and across the floor to get to the front! I almost had an asthma attack and people were running past me left, right and centre but I still managed to get to the front of the catwalk!
The set list was:
The gig was better than Riga and the band looked more relaxed! They played part of Surfs Up, Schools Out at after the intro – it rocked and I went mental! Paul spotted me at the front during Fat Bottomed Girls and reached down to me but the gap between the stage and the barrier was too wide for him to reach me! I did our usual dance during Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Paul copied it!
We went out afterwards with Matt from Birmingham and Hendric from the Netherlands who Terry had met at the concert. Had some lovely cheese and bacon pancakes!! Yum!