Essen to Eindhoven, or, How I Kicked Some German Ass at Kamelot!

Well, Essen, and the Kamelot concert… Hmmm... What to say… Well, let us go to my Journal:

Trained into Essen, and kicked it around the town a bit before the Kamelot concert.

It’s a sweet little/med sized German city… Had a bite to eat, good ‘ol long bratwurst in a tiny bun, and had sam take a picture of me eating it in the same pose as a pic I have from Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany… The last time I was in Europe.

Oh, and I found a 'Wildcat' piercing shop.  Wildcat is one of my preferred body-jewelry suppliers, and it was pretty sweet to see one of their retail/piercing shops...  Hilariously enough, anything I could have bought in that store, I could order from home (from them) for at least half the price (Go Wholesale!!!).


Anyhoo, the Kamelot concert kicked some serious ass! The opening bands weren’t too amazing, so we just drank and chain smoked ‘till Kamelot came on. Oh, and you had to put a deposit down on the plastic drink cups… Like, real cups, and you get your Euro back when you turn them back in… So fucked… However, refills were only 2Euro…


The concert fucking rocked. Like, I’ve been wanting to see them live for at least 7 years… Kamelot had an intense stage presence, the lighting was stellar, and at one point, during the song “on the coldest winter night” flakes of foam started falling from above like snow, and started blanketing the audience. Like, righteously magical! And of course, two encores (totally planned), but sweet nonetheless…

The crowd however, amazed me. THEY DIDN’T MOSH!!! It was the most mellow standing crowd I’ve ever been in. I mean, Ben Harpur would have had a crazier crowd back home. I was utterly blown away. So naturally, Sam and I went fucking nuts, moshing and jumping, hopping, bouncing, thrashing, and all-round rocking out… It was so rad that people around us either moved away or likewise started rocking out. This little girl beside me (who according to Sam, “wouldn’t stop staring at you!”) started rocking and moshing as well, and when she saw me kiss Samantha, started thrash-dancing just like Sam.  Cute.

After the last encore, the drummer threw the drumsticks out into the crowd… Naturally, I dove like a madman and grabbed onto it, along with at least four or five Germans. Well, at that point a lot more were grabbing for it, but I thrashed and bit-out like a rabid dog (I shit you not, even I thought I was being a wee bit psycho), which inevitably drove a few away. When the house lights came on, there were five of us, each clinging for dear life to the stick. Four Germans and I… Let the battle begin! 

We thrashed and jerked, I foamed at the mouth, flailing madly and flicking my forked tongue out at them, but alas, we were all determined… Two German guys and their girlfriends, and there I was saying shit like, “I came from Canada for this stick” or “I’ll kill you for it… I’m not joking” or “I’m not going anywhere... I can wait till July if I have to!” All with a slight drunken German accent for some reason :P (At this point, some dude leaned into Sam, who was standing behind watching all this, and said, “that’s a crazy boy you have there…”)

Then the jeering came.  

One of the German girls said, “Oh come on, there’s FOUR Germans and ONE Canadian!”

And spoketh I, “HAH! It worked for Juno Beach!”

“Huh?” She replied

To which I responded, “You know, D-Day, WWII, Normandy! Oops, shouldn’t go there…”

I swear to God t was the funniest thing I’ve ever said situationally! Either way, as the battle of wills continued, I managed to thrash off one of the German guys and both girls (yeah, I’m a dick).  Down to him and I, and as we had earlier discussed (the German boys and I) about the non-violent possibilities of resolution, such as “stone paper scissor” or breaking it in half (but there were too many parties involved at that point), we decided to have a security guard break it in half for us… You know, to be fair (Lest I grab the whole thing and run off... which I totally would have done…).  So the two of us, still holding the stick, went to a security guard, who broke it in half, and handed me the base-half.  The bigger half with the brand, band name, and signature of the drummer, Casey Grillo.  Score!   And thus was the tale of 4 Germans vs I.

After the concert, Sam and I grabbed our shit from the train station and tried to figure out where we were going to sleep for the night. As hotels and even hostels were too pricey, I had brought a tent. Super-tired, and with a huge blister from thrashing in my new Canadian army combat boots, we walked about four kilometers to what we thought would be a park (it was a green space on the map with little circles). Turns out that those little circles mean that the area was public garden space, and in reality it looks not like a park, but a bloody Gypsy shantie-town. Well, it was now like 2am, so we just pitched the tent on what could have been conceivably a horse-trail beside a playground and tennis court, adjacent to the roadside. Ooh, luxury! Needless to say, with only one sleeping-bag and a tiny blanket (no bed-roll), we got about 4 hours of sleep, then rose to meet the morning, and check out Essen some more.

Fuck. I want to move to Germany. Like, even a smallish city like Essen had a million goth and rock shops. Most notably would have been ‘Bullet’ which was basically like a goth superstore: huge, cheap, and with an awesome head-shop (bought me-self a little 4Euro bong!), and my personal favorite, “The Land of Black and Death” (Perhaps the best retail name EVER!). You know, you just don’t get stores named like that back home…


Oh, and we kept finding little pieces of hardware and machinery laying on the ground. I thought it was funny because Nick, one of Sam’s German friends said that the area that Essen and Dusseldorf are in is referred to as the “Engine of Germany”. I had to take a pic…

Oh and a picture of the “tire-swing” in Essen. Hmm, well, at least the name doesn’t lie….

After a bit of exploration, we trained back into the Netherlands to head to Eindhoven to hopefully find scalpers for the Emilie Autumn concert (as there were complications with the tickets we thought we had bought, but actually hadn’t…). Eindhoven was nice, and even had a carousel in the main square, but as it was evening, not much was open, so we just grabbed a couple beers at one of the open-air cafes, and headed over to the concert hall. As we were both tired and filthy (concert the night before then camping!), and as there was no one who even remotely resembled a scalper, we decided to head back to Enschede (besides, Emilie Autumn is American… We’ll be able to see her at home, unlike the incredibly German Kamelot).

Saturday: Went to the big-ass market in the square here in Enschede… Reminded me a lot of the “floating-market” from Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” but without the esoterics… It was sweet, and I’ll be sure to post a vid of one of them soon… However, as it’s “Queens Week” the market was super-huge, with live music and full of Germans. Anyhoo, the crazy part of Saturday was the evening… For when we went into the square where the church is, there was a huge stage set up, and a massive festival going on for Grolsch! Just because they are changing their bottle-tops! A two week festival, called ‘Welcome to the Green-Light District’ (as Grolsch bottles are green)! The best part however, was that the stage was projecting a massive laser onto the cathedral steeple… A massive laser of beer! Beer on a church! Only in Europe…

Sunday was nice and lazy… Decided I needed a bike ASAP, so I scoured www.marktplaats.nl (basically a Netherlands Craigslist/Ebay), made a call or two, and went into Delden (a neighboring town) to buy myself a bike (as I was getting tired of having to walk or double Sam on her bike if we wanted to go anywhere). Got me-self a bike for 25Euro! Waaay cheaper than from the only used-bike store in town, where the cheapest bike he had was a piece of shit for 195Euro… Interestingly enough, the guy at that bike store dreams of moving to Lethbridge, Alberta. Yeah, I know… What the fuck?! Apparently he goes to Calgary and Medicine Hat for a few weeks of the year to “recharge his batteries”… Hmmm… I’m not even going to comment on that.



On Sunday evening, Sam and I caught a movie at the local theater… Travel-journal time:

When the evening came, Sam and I biked over to the local movie theater (15min bike ride), and caught ‘Doomsday.’ Now, a note on movie theaters here: First off, the Netherlands is the only place in mainland Europe that plays movies in their original English, but with Nederlands subtitles, so we watched it in English! Secondly, they serve booze at the concession… Well, we brought vodka with us, but when it ran out, we bought some Smirnoff Ice! At the theater! Thirdly, the theater has these awesome double seats… Like, every aisle has a couple seats that have no armrest between them, so, like cuddle-seats! And they’re huge plush seats with tons of leg-room (as the freaky-deaky Dutch are all super tall)… Kind of like super-comfortable couches. And finally, there’s a forced intermission at the one hour mark, like, a 10 minute smoke break, with an announcement for when it’s about to start up again! Think about it… A theater with amazing double seats, that serves alcohol, and has smoke breaks! Fucking stellar!

On Monday I didn’t even leave Sam’s (our!) place. We just stayed in, relaxed, smoked some (legal) hash, and drank wine. Oh, and she made the most amazing vegetarian stir-fry… I almost didn’t even mind that it had no meat…


Today (Tuesday) was another chill day… Right now Sam is off at her friend Mhairi’s, and I’m about to join them for that Grolsch festival (the Green Light District)… I bought some tools earlier (as I’m going through tool-withdrawal), fixed my bike up a little, after we went to the smaller Tuesday market and bought uber-cheap food for the week. It’s been one hell of an amazing week…

You know… I’ve always dreamed of coming back to Europe… However, the funny thing is that with everything I had ever pictured or envisioned I think that here, on this trip, with Sam, I’m having a better time than I ever thought I could…