A Festival of Europe: Wave Gotik Treffen
Jun. 3rd, 2018 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tetsabSo I would have been meaning to go to this for, what 15(?) 20(?) years. Having done a number of Convergi as well as spring and fall Whitby it was pretty much the last frontier (could argue for M'era Luna but that hasn't actually been on my radar). The main issue with WGT is It's Just So Darn Far (also, I used to squirm badly at the idea of going anywhere where I can't speak the language but not particularly to my happiness most people in all the places I've gone in the past couple of years speak this language I have. Ack). On that count Germany is the second least awkward place for me to visit as I have at least taken one very small class years ago (I brought the course books with me and killed time the 1st day in Leipzig reviewing some chapters waiting for my roommate to get in). My only real victory was telling a total stranger that, yes, a seat next to me is indeed free but I did also order food (took a long bloody time to figure out that plain fruit juice is 'saft') and tell a piles of people that I'm an Ausländerin (if someone could confirm if I could get away with dropping the "in" at the end of that without prompting corrections or confusion that would be excellent as I kinda hate people gendering language).
I arrived in Leipzig by overnight Flixbus from Cologne. Sitting in the bus shelter waiting for it watching a thunderstorm was the last time I saw rain for the whole trip.
The bus got in to the main train station around 5am. It arrived 'round the back so I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get into the main station at that point, never mind if anything in it would be open, but it was and the always reliable McDonald's came through for food. I planted myself there for about an hour and half. For the next few hours I'd bounce between it (went back for the novelty of avocado burgers, which were about a million times better than the sorry thing they gave me for breakfast), the waiting area with the good wifi, and the park outside what was to be my hotel where I initially watched a troop of gardeners and later a heap of goths start queuing for their wristbands.
If you could turn your head to the right you'd see both Even More Goths in line and behind those you'd see the hotel I was staying in. That's where I'd head at 4 to meet my roommate, Mikael from Sweden, and get settled in before the English speaking pre-meet (hosted by Sadgoth & Eva) at the Der Ratskeller Leipzig at 6. Here I ate extremely tasty Käse Spätzle and had 2 (let's call them) pints of tasty Hefeweizen. Here I was sitting with Sara from the US but currently doing a year in the UK, Alice from the UK (both in their early 20s), Catherine and her boyfriend originally from the US but now living in Leipzig, and a guy from Norway whose name I missed. Eventually I was found by Maggie (as I was buying a spare ticket from her) and Viviana (who'll be visiting here in a couple of months). Afterwards it was over to the Moritzbastei for wristbands but then an early night after the great quality of sleep being on an all night bus affords you.
Next morning it's time for the festival proper though I actually take a couple of hours just to get oriented to the core of the city around the hotel to get a sense of food around and its prices in order to budget for an ATM withdrawal as I'm down to about €5 at this point, which is not going to cut it in cash-happy Germany. Funnily enough though this turned out to be for nothing other than a nice walk 'cause I actually wound up pretty much universally eating at the venues instead! I met Mikael back at the hotel so that we could go to the Victorian Picnic together as he's an old hand and I haven't the foggiest where I'm going (though all you actually have to do is get on the right tram and then follow the river of black). I didn't bring a camera with me but given it's probably the most photographed day of the festival the world can live with just the pics of others.
From there I puzzled my way to the Täubchenthal using a combination of the WGT app, Google Maps and common sense and arrived in enough time to hear about the last third of The Last Cry who'd gotten going at half 4. I was worried about the state of my stupid car accident foot (it's still not a fan of standing long) so when I saw an opportunity to grab one of the few seats on a couch I pounced on it and stayed perched there the bulk of the time (Mikael relieved me at one point to go nab some Handbrot, which then turned out to be the thing I ended up eating the most often at WGT!). The bands for the rest of the evening were Undertheskin at 6, the Beauty of Gemina at 7:20 (they got the award for best plain band performance from a group I'd never heard of), Merciful Nuns at 8:50, and then the band I was there for, Skeletal Family at 10:20 (they got the award for best performance I was looking forward to). The challenge of WGT is that there are so many bands you want to see that are impossible to so for this night the ones I most regret not being able to see were the Eden House, Raison D'Etre, Mercury's Antennae, Einar Selvik, Rome, Eivør, and the historically very interesting Crisis. This venue hosts When We Were Young, which bills itself as gothrock, postpunk, and deathrock which more than suits me fine (after all, I gave up on all those other bands, 3 of which were in the same venue, just to see Skeletal Family) but after kicking off with 3 pretty standard tracks in combination with the venue having kicked me off my precious couch (everyone got chased downstairs where there are no seats) I opted to prudently begin the trek home to bed.
Saturday had a bit of false start as we headed to the other Victorian event -- 'The Village' -- only to learn near the doors they were turning folks away who weren't on code. Since Mikael was deathrock and I was lazy European backpacker in black it was right back to the city for us. We split off at this point as today was the rather rare Museum Tours in English day so I was headed to the Runde Ecke for 12:30 for the Stasi exhibit on 'negative decadent youth' (of which I'll write a whole entire post about next weekend 'cause it was freakin' awesome and I loved it) followed by the Egyptian Museum.
The professor leading the tour noted at the end of it that he's done it for WGT for 2 years and plans to keep doing it 'cause we're such an engaged audience paying strong attention to an hour and a half long talk and asking good questions. Daw. I'd been under the delusion that between the Stasi tour and the Egyptian one I'd make to to a chamber music performance but that wasn't possible and I just had to settle for Jo Quail doing an acoustic cello gig in the street instead. It was cute watching all the non-goths periodically stopping to watch for a bit before heading off. Afterwards I headed off for the 20 minute tram ride to the Heidnisches Dorf at Torhaus Dölitz. By the time I got there Paddy and the Rats and Kaunan were well over but I saw a bit of travelling performers Donner und Doria before the rest of the official set kicked in with Hekate and, the band I was there to see: QNTAL.
It's funny but as I headed there I had no idea what venue I was going to but once I got there it was dead obvious: the Pagan Village (Heidnisches... heathen-ish; hedonists...). Actually, hedonist doesn't seem to share any relation etymologically to heathen but I'll tell you point blank that I found it impossible to figure out anything to drink there (this is where how long it took me to figure out what 'saft' is came into play) that wasn't wine or beer. Ha. Also aptly for the pagans the stage here is outside so I planted myself in the grass well before Hekate took the stage and slowly found other blankets filling in the gaps until I was eventually pretty much sitting with a bunch of goths who all seemed to be connected to Bonn in some way. At this point I was basically adopted by them for the evening since we both had plans to head to see Wardruna after QNTAL so I shared their wine (this eventually began a beer payback arms race at the Agra, which was briefly interrupted by a hilarious confusion of 'lager' vs. 'radler') and danced to QNTAL under the waxing crescent moon (award for memory most likely to stick with me -- dancing to QNTAL as the moon rose up peeking out between the branches of the tree towering over the stage). I'd been looking forward to Wardruna and it was obvious from their first notes that they know how to put on a show (so they get the even better than I was expecting award). Afterwards only Alex, Daniel, Ganesha, and myself remained to go dancing at the Agra where I was bowled over to hear at one point in all the great music Sunglasses at Night. Ha. Due to the beer arms race I was late leaving and shocked to see when I finally did that it was 5:30am. Yikes! So much for my poor light sleeping roommate! Honourable mentions for bands not seen today go to Black Light Ascension, Monica Richards & Anthony Jones, Arcana, Joy/Disaster, and Frank the Baptist.
Sunday started off rather roughly due to the whole 5:30am thing and pretty much killed my chances of going to all the other exciting museums I hadn't made it to yet (you get free entry to many with your wristband) but I did at least manage to drag myself all the way to Wachau to the Kirchenruine just in time for the start of Arcana there.
Getting to Arcana was a bit of a feat 'cause it's outside of Leipzig and so outside of the free wristband transit but I, and most of the folks waiting for the bus it seems, did not know this and so there was a mad scramble for change and a bit of a panic attack on the bus as they jam-packed everyone in. I'd already overheard at the bus stop that the church was full and they weren't letting anyone else in but that the setting is beautiful and you can listen in the cemetery outside so that's exactly what I did and it was worth the trip. Since the bus back wasn't due in more time than it would have taken me to walk back to the Leipzig tram stop that's exactly what I did and it was Very Nice. That said, after doing that there wasn't any time to do anything else other than head straight to the Schauspielhaus for the VocaMe early music ensemble (who are pretty much half the members of QNTAL), Jo Quail no longer unplugged, even more QNTAL (but this time in a seated venue), and the award for surprise standout performance of the whole festival: Rosa Crvx. Rosa Crux, it turns out, is actually the hardest band to represent the of excellence as every video of them is pale and disappointing in comparison to what they did live. In a ~670 seat venue they managed to produce a wall of sound with a solid performance aspect (giant waving flags, naked people, dust and clay, video accompaniment, and a wall of church bells) that was also technically precise (it has to be as their drummer is a suite of mechanical skeletons) they're overall highly ritualistic, even while drawing in a sporadic bagpipe player. Here's a video that will at least give you a sense of their stage setup but nowhere near a good sense of their *sound*. They were scheduled to start at 22:20 and probably did a bit later than that but they weren't done until quarter past 12. This ended my delusion of seeing the Jesus and Mary Chain at Agra but they were so great I was happy to (mostly) end my night on them. Mostly 'cause I tried to go to Darkflower to see Scary Lady Sarah and William Faith DJ but got confused by a combination of the DJ from Oomph!, the venue setup (I'd known there was another... floor.. room[?] but wasn't feeling up to trying to yell in German quoting Neubauten ["Zweites Geschoss"?] only to not understand any answer), and being loopy from the too late night the night before and abandoned ship for bed again. As usual, honourable mentions for bands lost today were Tiamat (sore thumb award for the rest of the schedule), Actors, the KVB, and Heidevolk (actually, maybe could have stuck them with Tiamat. Ha).
Last day (noooooooooo) started off with a young artists performance at the Bach Musikschule (though rather than playing Bach the harpist, violinist and pianist were actually playing quite contemporary music I ended up describing to Mikael as Rachmaninoff with sporadic dissonance, which also suited me fine ^_^). The artists seemed very bemused at the extremely through rounds of applause they got from the audience in attendance. Next up, after days of it not working out due to all the other things going on, I finally made it with Mikael to the marketplace at the Agra.
Almost as long as I'd been waiting to go to Treffen (actually pretty much since Siren closed) I was looking out for two specific things to buy: 1) an electric blue brocade corset; 2) silver buckle winklepickers (yes, yes I'm well aware I could get such things online but the point of looking in places like this is to Try The Darn Things On first). No such luck but at the prompting of Mikael I did get what turned out to be an extremely useful for later that night free fan from the incongruously named Punk Rave. Gothicat drew an imbalance of attention even if I'm not actually a t-shirt person and I most regretted not having time to dig through the CDs before I had to leave for Japan Suicide at Haus Leipzig. On the way I happily bumped into Bonn goths Alex and Ganesha again at the tram spot but they were heading back to pagan land. The rest of the acts at Haus Leipzig were Silent Runners, Modern English, Trisomie 21, and the Chameleons (or Chameleons Vox as the Mark Burgess only version is now called). Modern English thankfully had the sense not to play their big stupid hit and wreck a solid performance of good Joy Division-esque music but got the biggest douchebags of the festival award from me [just from me: other reviewers liked them very much] for all the irritating blah blah blah between tracks (trying to cajole dancing, epic eyeroll statement about how it's not about clothes after underscoring the clothes they'd decided to wear, etc. etc. all, of course, in English). This meant Chameleons got the breath of fresh air award for actually being courteous, naturally inspiring the crowd to dance (and sing), coming out for an encore as the crowd sang out the riff from Second Skin, and attempting some German. Just before Trisomie 21 took the stage former Bonn goth Daniel appeared for the Chameleons and drew the rest of the former Bonn crew there so it was nice to be able to say goodbye to my random festival friends even as it was hard not to go out with them but with a bus I'd be getting up for at 5:30am before just one day in Prague I knew that partying late would have to be for another Treffen. Happily these goodbyes and the Chameleons were a great note to end it all on.
I will absolutely do this again (just not next year!) as I missed so much: most of the museums, most of the after parties, the Sixtina, the list goes on(!) -- next time these elements become the focus and we'll see how I do then. :)
(Last post of this series hopefully next weekend focusing on the Stasi exhibit and a bit of that last day in Prague, which pairs nicely what with all the communist resentment. Ha).
I arrived in Leipzig by overnight Flixbus from Cologne. Sitting in the bus shelter waiting for it watching a thunderstorm was the last time I saw rain for the whole trip.
The bus got in to the main train station around 5am. It arrived 'round the back so I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get into the main station at that point, never mind if anything in it would be open, but it was and the always reliable McDonald's came through for food. I planted myself there for about an hour and half. For the next few hours I'd bounce between it (went back for the novelty of avocado burgers, which were about a million times better than the sorry thing they gave me for breakfast), the waiting area with the good wifi, and the park outside what was to be my hotel where I initially watched a troop of gardeners and later a heap of goths start queuing for their wristbands.
If you could turn your head to the right you'd see both Even More Goths in line and behind those you'd see the hotel I was staying in. That's where I'd head at 4 to meet my roommate, Mikael from Sweden, and get settled in before the English speaking pre-meet (hosted by Sadgoth & Eva) at the Der Ratskeller Leipzig at 6. Here I ate extremely tasty Käse Spätzle and had 2 (let's call them) pints of tasty Hefeweizen. Here I was sitting with Sara from the US but currently doing a year in the UK, Alice from the UK (both in their early 20s), Catherine and her boyfriend originally from the US but now living in Leipzig, and a guy from Norway whose name I missed. Eventually I was found by Maggie (as I was buying a spare ticket from her) and Viviana (who'll be visiting here in a couple of months). Afterwards it was over to the Moritzbastei for wristbands but then an early night after the great quality of sleep being on an all night bus affords you.
Next morning it's time for the festival proper though I actually take a couple of hours just to get oriented to the core of the city around the hotel to get a sense of food around and its prices in order to budget for an ATM withdrawal as I'm down to about €5 at this point, which is not going to cut it in cash-happy Germany. Funnily enough though this turned out to be for nothing other than a nice walk 'cause I actually wound up pretty much universally eating at the venues instead! I met Mikael back at the hotel so that we could go to the Victorian Picnic together as he's an old hand and I haven't the foggiest where I'm going (though all you actually have to do is get on the right tram and then follow the river of black). I didn't bring a camera with me but given it's probably the most photographed day of the festival the world can live with just the pics of others.
From there I puzzled my way to the Täubchenthal using a combination of the WGT app, Google Maps and common sense and arrived in enough time to hear about the last third of The Last Cry who'd gotten going at half 4. I was worried about the state of my stupid car accident foot (it's still not a fan of standing long) so when I saw an opportunity to grab one of the few seats on a couch I pounced on it and stayed perched there the bulk of the time (Mikael relieved me at one point to go nab some Handbrot, which then turned out to be the thing I ended up eating the most often at WGT!). The bands for the rest of the evening were Undertheskin at 6, the Beauty of Gemina at 7:20 (they got the award for best plain band performance from a group I'd never heard of), Merciful Nuns at 8:50, and then the band I was there for, Skeletal Family at 10:20 (they got the award for best performance I was looking forward to). The challenge of WGT is that there are so many bands you want to see that are impossible to so for this night the ones I most regret not being able to see were the Eden House, Raison D'Etre, Mercury's Antennae, Einar Selvik, Rome, Eivør, and the historically very interesting Crisis. This venue hosts When We Were Young, which bills itself as gothrock, postpunk, and deathrock which more than suits me fine (after all, I gave up on all those other bands, 3 of which were in the same venue, just to see Skeletal Family) but after kicking off with 3 pretty standard tracks in combination with the venue having kicked me off my precious couch (everyone got chased downstairs where there are no seats) I opted to prudently begin the trek home to bed.
Saturday had a bit of false start as we headed to the other Victorian event -- 'The Village' -- only to learn near the doors they were turning folks away who weren't on code. Since Mikael was deathrock and I was lazy European backpacker in black it was right back to the city for us. We split off at this point as today was the rather rare Museum Tours in English day so I was headed to the Runde Ecke for 12:30 for the Stasi exhibit on 'negative decadent youth' (of which I'll write a whole entire post about next weekend 'cause it was freakin' awesome and I loved it) followed by the Egyptian Museum.
The professor leading the tour noted at the end of it that he's done it for WGT for 2 years and plans to keep doing it 'cause we're such an engaged audience paying strong attention to an hour and a half long talk and asking good questions. Daw. I'd been under the delusion that between the Stasi tour and the Egyptian one I'd make to to a chamber music performance but that wasn't possible and I just had to settle for Jo Quail doing an acoustic cello gig in the street instead. It was cute watching all the non-goths periodically stopping to watch for a bit before heading off. Afterwards I headed off for the 20 minute tram ride to the Heidnisches Dorf at Torhaus Dölitz. By the time I got there Paddy and the Rats and Kaunan were well over but I saw a bit of travelling performers Donner und Doria before the rest of the official set kicked in with Hekate and, the band I was there to see: QNTAL.
It's funny but as I headed there I had no idea what venue I was going to but once I got there it was dead obvious: the Pagan Village (Heidnisches... heathen-ish; hedonists...). Actually, hedonist doesn't seem to share any relation etymologically to heathen but I'll tell you point blank that I found it impossible to figure out anything to drink there (this is where how long it took me to figure out what 'saft' is came into play) that wasn't wine or beer. Ha. Also aptly for the pagans the stage here is outside so I planted myself in the grass well before Hekate took the stage and slowly found other blankets filling in the gaps until I was eventually pretty much sitting with a bunch of goths who all seemed to be connected to Bonn in some way. At this point I was basically adopted by them for the evening since we both had plans to head to see Wardruna after QNTAL so I shared their wine (this eventually began a beer payback arms race at the Agra, which was briefly interrupted by a hilarious confusion of 'lager' vs. 'radler') and danced to QNTAL under the waxing crescent moon (award for memory most likely to stick with me -- dancing to QNTAL as the moon rose up peeking out between the branches of the tree towering over the stage). I'd been looking forward to Wardruna and it was obvious from their first notes that they know how to put on a show (so they get the even better than I was expecting award). Afterwards only Alex, Daniel, Ganesha, and myself remained to go dancing at the Agra where I was bowled over to hear at one point in all the great music Sunglasses at Night. Ha. Due to the beer arms race I was late leaving and shocked to see when I finally did that it was 5:30am. Yikes! So much for my poor light sleeping roommate! Honourable mentions for bands not seen today go to Black Light Ascension, Monica Richards & Anthony Jones, Arcana, Joy/Disaster, and Frank the Baptist.
Sunday started off rather roughly due to the whole 5:30am thing and pretty much killed my chances of going to all the other exciting museums I hadn't made it to yet (you get free entry to many with your wristband) but I did at least manage to drag myself all the way to Wachau to the Kirchenruine just in time for the start of Arcana there.
Getting to Arcana was a bit of a feat 'cause it's outside of Leipzig and so outside of the free wristband transit but I, and most of the folks waiting for the bus it seems, did not know this and so there was a mad scramble for change and a bit of a panic attack on the bus as they jam-packed everyone in. I'd already overheard at the bus stop that the church was full and they weren't letting anyone else in but that the setting is beautiful and you can listen in the cemetery outside so that's exactly what I did and it was worth the trip. Since the bus back wasn't due in more time than it would have taken me to walk back to the Leipzig tram stop that's exactly what I did and it was Very Nice. That said, after doing that there wasn't any time to do anything else other than head straight to the Schauspielhaus for the VocaMe early music ensemble (who are pretty much half the members of QNTAL), Jo Quail no longer unplugged, even more QNTAL (but this time in a seated venue), and the award for surprise standout performance of the whole festival: Rosa Crvx. Rosa Crux, it turns out, is actually the hardest band to represent the of excellence as every video of them is pale and disappointing in comparison to what they did live. In a ~670 seat venue they managed to produce a wall of sound with a solid performance aspect (giant waving flags, naked people, dust and clay, video accompaniment, and a wall of church bells) that was also technically precise (it has to be as their drummer is a suite of mechanical skeletons) they're overall highly ritualistic, even while drawing in a sporadic bagpipe player. Here's a video that will at least give you a sense of their stage setup but nowhere near a good sense of their *sound*. They were scheduled to start at 22:20 and probably did a bit later than that but they weren't done until quarter past 12. This ended my delusion of seeing the Jesus and Mary Chain at Agra but they were so great I was happy to (mostly) end my night on them. Mostly 'cause I tried to go to Darkflower to see Scary Lady Sarah and William Faith DJ but got confused by a combination of the DJ from Oomph!, the venue setup (I'd known there was another... floor.. room[?] but wasn't feeling up to trying to yell in German quoting Neubauten ["Zweites Geschoss"?] only to not understand any answer), and being loopy from the too late night the night before and abandoned ship for bed again. As usual, honourable mentions for bands lost today were Tiamat (sore thumb award for the rest of the schedule), Actors, the KVB, and Heidevolk (actually, maybe could have stuck them with Tiamat. Ha).
Last day (noooooooooo) started off with a young artists performance at the Bach Musikschule (though rather than playing Bach the harpist, violinist and pianist were actually playing quite contemporary music I ended up describing to Mikael as Rachmaninoff with sporadic dissonance, which also suited me fine ^_^). The artists seemed very bemused at the extremely through rounds of applause they got from the audience in attendance. Next up, after days of it not working out due to all the other things going on, I finally made it with Mikael to the marketplace at the Agra.
Almost as long as I'd been waiting to go to Treffen (actually pretty much since Siren closed) I was looking out for two specific things to buy: 1) an electric blue brocade corset; 2) silver buckle winklepickers (yes, yes I'm well aware I could get such things online but the point of looking in places like this is to Try The Darn Things On first). No such luck but at the prompting of Mikael I did get what turned out to be an extremely useful for later that night free fan from the incongruously named Punk Rave. Gothicat drew an imbalance of attention even if I'm not actually a t-shirt person and I most regretted not having time to dig through the CDs before I had to leave for Japan Suicide at Haus Leipzig. On the way I happily bumped into Bonn goths Alex and Ganesha again at the tram spot but they were heading back to pagan land. The rest of the acts at Haus Leipzig were Silent Runners, Modern English, Trisomie 21, and the Chameleons (or Chameleons Vox as the Mark Burgess only version is now called). Modern English thankfully had the sense not to play their big stupid hit and wreck a solid performance of good Joy Division-esque music but got the biggest douchebags of the festival award from me [just from me: other reviewers liked them very much] for all the irritating blah blah blah between tracks (trying to cajole dancing, epic eyeroll statement about how it's not about clothes after underscoring the clothes they'd decided to wear, etc. etc. all, of course, in English). This meant Chameleons got the breath of fresh air award for actually being courteous, naturally inspiring the crowd to dance (and sing), coming out for an encore as the crowd sang out the riff from Second Skin, and attempting some German. Just before Trisomie 21 took the stage former Bonn goth Daniel appeared for the Chameleons and drew the rest of the former Bonn crew there so it was nice to be able to say goodbye to my random festival friends even as it was hard not to go out with them but with a bus I'd be getting up for at 5:30am before just one day in Prague I knew that partying late would have to be for another Treffen. Happily these goodbyes and the Chameleons were a great note to end it all on.
I will absolutely do this again (just not next year!) as I missed so much: most of the museums, most of the after parties, the Sixtina, the list goes on(!) -- next time these elements become the focus and we'll see how I do then. :)
(Last post of this series hopefully next weekend focusing on the Stasi exhibit and a bit of that last day in Prague, which pairs nicely what with all the communist resentment. Ha).
no subject
Date: 2018-06-04 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-05 02:37 am (UTC)For the record I will merrily accompany anyone in need or want to future Treffens. :)