Where ya been, where ya going ?: Berlin, show day…

One thing i love about the shows and the tour is not just the show itself, not just seeing the people at the gig but arranging a pre show meet up bar for everyone to sit and have drinks and eat and catch up for a couple of hours before the show. Today was no different, a few weeks ago I’d booked a table for 8 people at the hard rock Cafe in Berlin. Ole had booked a table too for 8 too and there were a few others that were just going to turn up on the day. The table was booked for 3pm and we were all going to leave the hotel at 1:30 and head out to the Hard Rock together.

We had the morning free today and no one had any set plans. Beth had gone out to see a few more museums, Ole was out with his mum sightseeing, we bumped into Kim and Joe in the store across from the hotel and they were going to see the cathedral down the street.

Kami and i headed down the street where Kami bought a couple of T Shirts and some postcards. A couple of blocks further down was the Radisson Blue hotel which i had read about on a few websites and in a few guides. It has one of the largest indoor aquariums in the world and definitely the largest in a hotel lobby.

The aquarium was huge! it also had an elevator that went up the middle of it so you could see all the fish all the way up. It looked like there was a kid school day out as the elevator was full of school kids all jumping and running about inside with excitement.

After sitting in the hotel lobby for 20 minutes and watching the fish we headed outside and started walking towards the Brandenburg Gate. i called Kim and Joe and they were having a look around the cathedral just down the street. They were then going to head to the Holocaust memorial. Kami and i walked down past the cathedral to see if we could see them, we couldn't so we then decided to take one of the rickshaw cycle taxis down to the memorial to meet up with them.

We called Kim again when we arrived but they were at the Brandenburg Gate and didn't know if they would make it to the memorial, they were literally just around the corner form us! ah well. The memorial is a fascinating maze of huge dark grey concrete blocks, all different heights and sizes, the paths that go through the blocks both east to west and north to south get lower and higher as you walk along them, its a very eerie feeling walking around which i guess is what they wanted to create and they did a good job.

Ole was wandering around too and told us that the anti graffiti coating that was put on the concrete blocks was actually made by the same company that made the gas that was used ….. well i don't have to go into it, you know what it was used for but what a strange fact!

Kami and i walked back to the train station down past Brandenburg gate and took the train back to the hotel, chilled out for a while before going down to the lobby at around 1:15 to meet everyone else to head out to the pre show meet up.

Wendy was late again! however this time she had an excuse, she had been to the bank across the street and tried to use her ATM card to take out some Euros, unfortunately she hadn't let her bank in the US know she was in Germany and the ATM had eaten her card! (this was the second thing of three to go wrong after smashing her iphone glass last night) We all suggested she went back to the bank to explain and tried to get them to retrieve her card from the machine. The rest of us headed out to take the train.

30 minutes later i had a text from Wendy to say she had no luck getting her card and they had taken a taxi to the Hard Rock and had just arrived. Ole had booked a table for 8 people and i had done the same online a few weeks ago. Frank, Wendy, Anneli, and a few others were already there when we got there and they were a lot more to come! Id been e mailing a reader of my blog called Raphael over the last couple of months, he was due to attend the show with his father, however he wasn't able to make it so had come alone. I’d given him a little information on how and where to meet Roger and the band and he was staying in the same hotel. I was looking forward to meeting him face to face for the first time.

Jens, Tina, Phil, Laila, Kevin, Philippe, George, Elzira Nick Waterfall and his dad, and lots of others all knew about the meet up, some of the people hadn't seen each other for over ten years! Emil hadn't seen Joe since 2002 and didn't even recognize him when he first saw him!

After eating some lunch and drinking a couple of bottles of wine between us it must have been around 4:30 when the doors opened and everyone else flooded in. They had all been at Roger hotel and got things signed and pictures take.

This was probably one of the largest meet ups of us all seeing each other again since the meet up at JJ Moons at Wembley show in 2002!

Raphael IS Spartacus!! Was great to finally meet you! Chris and Roger, or is it Roger and Chris!

Beth and Jens Beth, Jens, Tine,Kevin,Kami and her meddle!

Around 5:00pm we all headed towards the subway to take the train to the venue, it was a 20 minute ride and as there were so many of us it was inevitable some of us would get split up, we “lost” Kim and Joe which was now a normal occurrence and after Mark and i walking the streets and platforms for 30 minutes we found out they were on a train to the venue ahead of us!

Tonight's venue was an outdoor stadium, but not just ANY outdoor stadium, it was the Berlin Olympic stadium built for the 1936 summer Olympics. During Rogers show when the 3D columns are projected during the second half of the show, this is the venue that those columns were copied from!

The stadium was pretty impressive from the inside.

Everyone was in different seats at tonight's show, however, Mark, Beth,Kim, Joe, Kami and myself were all in the 9th row dead centre on the aisle, Ole and Stuart were a couple of rows in front of us and Matt and Phil were a few rows behind.

I met up with a few friends inside the venue, Matt Johns and his friend had flown over from the UK to see the show, i also had a chat with my friend Thomas Mueller who i hadn't seen for a while. Its just shame we all don't get more time to chat before the shows! pat Lennon came out to see Mark and Beth as they hadn't met since the shows in Australia last year. Wendy and Chris had hospitality passes for tonight and Dave K was giving them a stage tour for the first time.

Dave teaching Wendy how to play the guitar, she plays it about as well as she sings! NOT good!

Wendy and Chris were sat in where Hitler sat! i kid you not! Although the stadium has had a new roof and being refurbished the exact same box and seats where Hitler sat in the stadium were now occupied by Wendy and Chris! They did have a great view of the venue and the gig but were not with any friends as they were elevated up off the floor to the left away from the floor area.

The show itself while great was a little subdued, the crowd remained seated for most of the time, only standing during Run Like Hell, Comfy Numb and towards the end of the show. At intermission Kim,went to get some drinks and came back with some soda in a very substantial plastic cup! The cups had a return value of 2 Euros on them! i saw a couple on the floor and picked them up and put them under my seat, hey it was 4 Euros! I also got a text from Wendy at intermission telling me she had fallen and sprained her ankle, she had been so pre occupied with looking at the pig behind the stage while she was walking down the concrete steps that she had totally missed the last step and gone over on her ankle! Dave K tried to get her some ice backstage but apparently its not something they have there!

Good job she didn't miss ALL the steps! Wendy’s foot backstage!

Second half of the show seemed to be over before it even began! This was the first time Kami, Mark, Beth, Joe and Kim had seen the show in Europe and they were more than impressed with the tweaks that Roger had done. Whilst it wasn't my best show, i enjoyed it because of the company i was in and the people around me. To be really honest i thought the performance was one of the worst ones I'd seen! the band just didn't seem together tonight, everyone seemed a little off and a bit looser than usual but that was just my opinion. I noticed it right form the opening of In The Flesh!

Ole, Kami and I Kim, Stuart, Ole and Kami Kami, myself and Kim at the show

We hung back in the venue a while to let the masses leave and it was then that i started to notice just how many of those 2 Euro plastic cups were lying around on the floor! they were everywhere,not one to miss the opportunity i started to get a stack of cups going in my hands, running along the aisles between the seats picking one up here, one up there. It wasn't long before i had over twenty in my arms and by the time i got back to the bar area to “cash them in” i had 27 cups, 54 Euros!!

me and my cups! i could see cups on the floor even when walking out of the venue

As we exited the venue it was a lot clearer to see the columns around the venue and how they were indeed the ones that the graphics were taken from in the show.

Everyone headed towards the train station while Kami and i headed over to another entrance where Wendy and Chris were sitting on a bench waiting for us. This was the first time i saw Wendy’s ankle, OUCH! it didn't look good at all. The of us hobbled to the train station to meet up with Mark and Beth, propping Wendy up on the way and then cooling her ankle with a cold bottle of coke as we waited for the train on the platform.

We took the first train that came along, only to find that 20 minutes later it stopped abruptly at a station, the lights went out and there was an announcement over the loudspeaker, i guess it was the end of the line for this train We “hopped” off and waited another 25 minutes for the next train which took us right back to Alexanderplatz where we walked back to the hotel, had a couple of drinks in the bar and then all headed to our rooms.

The geek squad at it again!