“Summer of discontent” Red Union tour 2006

VENI, VIDI… AND THEN WE CAME BACK

or

A RANDOM LIST OF PEOPLE, CITIES, CLUBS AND HIGHWAYS

Welcome to our 2006 tour diary. For those of you who are reading this only to see if their name is mentioned somewhere, I’m gonna do a short “thank you” thing, so you can see that you got your lousy credits and you can go and do something more interesting. Naaaaaah, I’ve changed my mind. Read on, you bastards! First off, let us say that this has definitely been the greatest tour so far. 11 gigs in 11 days, and not a single breakdown. We had a few great shows, met a lot of really cool people, hadn’t a single problem and generaly enjoyed every second of it. So, a huuuuuge-ass thanx goes out to David, Alexis, Matias, Holm, Mark, and everyone else who made the whole thing possible. And one more thing before we get serious, sorry for all the wrong spelling of people’s names, or city names, or club names. We don’t speak German, nor French, and our English isn’t that great eather. So, no hard feelings, ok? Anyway, now that we’re done with formalities, we can actually begin our little adventure.

Day 0

Coming from where we come from (you know, that stinky thing between Hungary and Kosovo), international traveling is never easy. Even though we had no problems getting a visa this time, we stil had to deal with the issue of transportation. With little (or none) thought given on the matter,  the plan was to go by train to Hungary and there team up with two German dudes who are supposed  to drive  us around and make sure we’re treated like rock stars that we are. It was Tuesday, 18th of July. Taking a train is a cool way of traveling, and it went on quite smoothly. The only problem were the customs people, who simply had no idea how to fill out the papers for our instruments, and it took them half an hour to figure it out. After years of dealing with these people on many borders, there’s one thing I can say without a shred of doubt – THEY CAN’T DO THEIR FUCKIN’ JOB!!! I mean, they have a nice pay, and they certainly score on the side as well, so why not take just a little bit of time and read the damn manual or something?! It’s so frustrating. Anyway, we finaly got to Budapest, where we were greated by David and Alexis. David is an old aquaittance, all the way back from our first time in Europe, some three years ago. That time we played the Worst Show Ever in Dortmund, with only 6 people coming to see us. Well, David was one of them. Since then he has booked another show for us and helped a lot with booking for this tour. He keeps promising to tattoo the cover of our first LP on his arm, but we don’t believe it till we see it. For those of you who care, he’s also got a cute little record label called Conehead, so go check it out! Alexis is his football buddy with a few silly tattoos (don’t be mad, Alex. They look nice on you), and it was our first encounter with him. That completes our road crew. Oh, almost forgot, we got this amazing van to travel in, some new WV with air conditioning and navigation and all that other rock star stuff. We packed up our luggage (for the record: I fuckin’ hate packing and unpacking. That’s gotta be the worst part of the tour, you do it at least two times a day, even though you’re this big rock star and what not. It sucks), and set off for Szombately, the first stop on our path of glory. There was a short detour to stop by lake Balaton, where Dave and Alex bought us beer, which was nice of them (and they did a lot of that on this tour). Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to take a swim, but stil it felt like a holiday. Szombately is a nice little town in the north of Hungary. It’s also home of Derkov Boys, a street punk band that played in Novi Sad once and who’s singer Doshi was our host for two days. I say two days, cause the first one was a day off, so we’d  be able to recover from the voyage. We went to Doshi’s place, unpacked (!), and went to get a few beers before sleeping. It’s then that we got face to face with the Hungarian concept of “10 min. by foot”. It goes something like this: no matter where you go, if you ask someone how far it is, they will say “10 minutes by foot”. In reality, it’s always more like 30-40 minutes, if you ever get there. I swear, I haven’t walked as much in the previous two years (ever since I went to that marathon, but that’s another story) as I did in those two days. Next time I hear  somebody say “10 min”, I’m calling a cab! So, 40 minutes later we got to a pub where we had some quality time with our hosts. A little bit of beer, a little bit of political ramblings in sloppy English, and we called it a day. Alexis still hadn’t showed us his tattoos…

 Day 1

Doshi and his mother had to go to work, so we had the whole house to ourselves. Soon after we woke up we got together with the nice people who booked a show for us in Budapest a year or two ago, Podravka, his girlfriend (wife?) Reka and her 13 year old skinhead son, who were on a holiday nearby (by the way, it’s really weird how glad you are to see a familiar face while on tour, don’t you think? Just thought I should say that…). We were pretty much slacking around the apartment till Doshi got back from work and took us for a “10 minute walk” to a restaurant.  Hungarian cuisine is well known for it’s gulas stew, so it was a logical choice for all of us (except for Alex, who is a vegeterian. He had some water with salt or something). What can I say? I believe we‘ve reached a consensus on “The greatest gulas ever” issue. The rest of the afternoon was kinda slow and unadventurous. We saw some ducks and walked a while (what else?), but I think we were just too stuffed to do anything worth writing about. So, skip a few hours, and here we are taking a “10 min. walk” to the club. It’s some sort of a bikers’ club, with bikers and everything, called “Viper”. A cozy little wooden  cottage, but some interior details were a bit threatening, like a big map of  “64 counties” hanging on the wall (for those of you who don’t know, it’s an ultra-nationalist phantasm of a Great Hungary, which includes Croatia, Romania, parts of Serbia, Austria, Bulgaria and Satan knows what else), or framed lyrics to the national anthem - on stage! Stil, we decide that it’s not nice to protest. After all, bikers ARE known to be somewhat eccentric creatures. Sound check brings a few mild problems. Nenad screws up his guitar pedal (fixed by Dasko a little while later and miraculously lasted the entire tour), Ljuba loses his tuner (then finds it, then loses it again the next day, finds it, and so on…), and I screw up my hi-hat stand (bought a new one in Wienna, spending half of my pocket money). Dasko didn’t screw anything up only because he had no equipment, except for his vocal chords, which were kept in line by A LOT of tea (that’s “CHAY”, David!). Somehow we finished checking the sound, or whatever it is you do on sound checks, I’m stil not sure after all these years ‘cause they usually seem like a complete waste of time. Then a little bit of rock star routine – mingling, playing cool and talking shit about opening bands. This time it were Derkov Boys, which had a cool show, and another local band who’s name we forgot (sorry!). I don’t like talking about our shows and the level of our performance, it’s just kinda uncomfortable, so you won’t find any marks of that sort in here. If you’d like to know how it was like for the people in front of the stage, you should ask some of them or come see us the next time we play nearby (please do!). But I can say that it felt nice being on stage in Szombately, despite all that technical stuff. A solid number of people, most of them really young  and willing to stand in front of the camera, so I suppose it was here that Dasko’s soon-to-be-revealed concept of anarcho-sexism was conceived.

ps: Finally got to see Alexis’ tattoos!  

 Day 2

We’re starting to get used to that feeling of waking up and wondering: “Where ta hell am I?” It’s a lovely little sensation and usually it lasts for a few weeks when you come back home. Anyway, I was thrilled to find out that there were no 10 minute walks planned for the morning. We wanted to get to Wienna earlier so we left in a kind of haste. A big thanx to Doshi and (…) for putting up with us for two days. We know it wasn’t easy. First thing we usually do after arriving to a city is finding a decent restaurant. We found one with fairly reasonable prices, soon realizing that it’s a gathering place for fans of FC Rapid (completely right-wing, David informed us). There was a board with photos of folks hangin’ out in this pub/restaurant, a few of them featuring a group of nazi skinheads sieg heiling and stuff. We sure know how to pick our places! It was a nice meal, though. Nenad, David and I left the rest of the crew digesting their lunch, and went for some unplanned sightseeing, to get that damn hi-hat stand. We had a looooong tram ride (seeing another nazi dude with a dog!) and got more Wienna than we really needed.  This was our second time here. Both shows in Wienna were booked by the same guy, Walter, but this time it was in a different club called Movimento. I must say that we had a lot better time here on our first tour. More people had showed up then (this was the only show where less people came than before. Dunno why), and we had an amazing opening band (Rentokill – ciao!). On this occasion we played with two crusty bands, which is really not my cup of tea. These were Nelson Montfort Orchestra and Peter Pancreas, both from France. I don’t know enough about this type of music to be able to give any objective opinions, but I’ll tell ya, I had no idea that anarcho/crusty people have such a liberal approach to personal hygiene! Well, whatever makes you tick… David and Alex were almost fighting about who stays in and sells the merch (and listens to the bands), and who goes out and “enjoyes the silence”, so to speak. Ljuba tried to establish a tradition by losing his guitar cable, others were luckier this time. The best part of playing in Wienna is that we get to hang around in Walter’s beautiful flat, spending time with his family and trying to stay out of the way of his pet animal Taki, which is the biggest dog I have seen in my entire life. I swear, if “bulldog” didn’t already stand for something else, this is how I would describe this puppy. Good thing it’s got a nice temper, otherwise I could hardly sleep.

 Day 3

We had to get an early start to get to the Koupak fest in Czech Republic, which ment that there was no time for sightseeing, neither in Wienna, nor in Prague. Too bad. Instead of that we spent 5-6 hours trying to find Strasice, the village where the festival was held. We entered Czech republic on some small and lonely border pass. The border officer was so thrilled to see anybody coming that I thought he was gonna offer us coffee or something. We had some worries about whether we’re gonna enter or not, because the new EU members keep changing their visa regulations day by day, but we were lucky to get this guy. He let us in without a single problem, and even wished us good luck at “Czech-tech” (a techno festival, I think).  Arriving at 5 in the afternoon, we had a long wait till we get on the stage. That much time spent on drinking was bound to get us into a lot of trouble, so instead we went to the hotel (yes, we got a hotel) for an afternoon nap. We came back a few hours later and got to watch a lot of Czech bands. There was a lot of them, so no names this time. Despite all the precautions, we somehow  managed to get drunk after all. The sound was great, maybe the best one on the whole tour, but David claims that our show lacked energy. I don’t know, I got the impression that no one actually knew the band (not even the organizers), so maybe we lacked motivation or whatever. Another lesson learned – give it your best, regardless of people’s response. There was also some other stuff, like organizers wanting to throw two bands into a one-band accommodation, which kinda ruined the whole impression. David and Alex were pretty pissed off, but I just thought: “Hey, tomorrow we share the stage with the Queers, and it will all soon be forgotten.”

 Day 4

Another day, another borderline episode. Cops at the German-Czech check point made us wait a whole hour before letting us go. They must have been a bit confused seeing 3 Serbs, 2 Germans and one guy with a Croatian passport (Nenad, mr. I-don’t-need-a-visa. Lucky bastard!) in the same car. They also told us how it’s impossible that we entered Czech Republic, and how they would have never let us in if we came from the German side and they’re thinking not to let us into Germany. David and Alex are also in the police computer for some football stuff and some political stuff, so it’s no surprise we were kinda worried. By this time, the heat wave all across Europe became almost unbearable. On our way to the Back To Future festival in Glaubitz some nearby wheat fields caught fire, and it was quite a spectacular sight. The festival itself is great. Hardly the biggest one in Germany, but stil a shitload of cool bands in two days. We just missed 2nd District, which sucked, but got to see the Queers. They are one of our childhood faves, and we were more than thrilled to see them. Surprisingly, not a lot of people saw their show, but we had a blast! Mark from Bandworm was there, and he informed us that the record pressing plant from Czech Republic didn’t finish both CD and vinyl of our new album, which we were supposed to have for the tour. He said that maybe we’ll have it in Düsseldorf. SHIT!!! Sandro, our driver from previous tours, was also there. We found out that he has met the woman of his life, quit smoking and plans to get married. Sandro, we wish you all the best! We were to play at 02:30, and there were no other bands at the “tent” stage between the Queers and us. That was a pretty long break and we managed to get drunk, sober up, then get drunk again, sleep on the stage, and sober up just in time for the show. It was a slow start, with only 100 or so people at the first song, but soon the tent was full and we had the greatest show of the tour. We got drunk once again, and happily went to sleep.

Ps: Ljuba lost his cable again.

To be continued >>>

...Tune in later this week to read more about adventures of RU on the road...

(SOON!)