June 2005 in Review

Devon's Breakdown of June in 30 seconds or less:
June 2 - 5 - Hung out with dad, ended up driving 1600 km and getting a Swiss speeding ticket
June 9 - 16 - Courtenay visited, went to beautiful Cinque Terre along the Italian coast
June 24 - 26 - Rockin' out at Greenfield Festival in Interlaken

Quote for the month of June: 'Sometimes you lose, sometimes the others win.' - Philipp Karutz
Song for the month of June: Brian Adams - We're in Heaven
Picture for the month of June: Picture.jpg

Greenfield Festival 2005

Back at work today after an intense music festival this weekend in Interlaken.

Day 1 - Friday: I left work at about noon so we could catch the train over to Interlaken, which takes about 2 hours. It was unbelievably hot today, must have been a bit over 35 degrees, so the train was pretty uncomfortable. There were so many people on the train for the concert, the whole thing including the aisles was absolutely packed. The festival had about 25 000 people, and the scenery is amazing, check out the pictures. My number one reason for being at the festival was to see Queens of the Stone Age, so after setting up our tents we headed over to the Hauptbühne (main stage) to wait for them to play. Before that though was the Eagles of Death Metal, which actually turned out to be quite poppy and not metal at all. Strange. Anyways they were alright but I was getting super excited about seeing Queens. Then the weather started getting bad. Really bad, really fast. About 5 minutes before Queens were scheduled, it started to rain hard. Then the wind got really bad. Then the stage started coming to pieces. The back wall of the stage collapsed and the huge Greenfield banner ripped off and was flapping in the air.

The speakers and amps were falling over and soon the coordinator came out to a booing audience and told us Queens wouldn't be playing. I couldn't believe it. Didn't have much time to think about it though, because we had to run for cover, so we headed to the Zeltbühne (tent stage) to see what was going on there. Pennywise started after a while, which was good, but I don't know much of their stuff. Shane and Jason had really wanted to see The Mars Volta, who were scheduled after Pennywise, but the lead singer had abdominal problems and was forced to cancel the tour. So the new 'act to see' of the night became Die Toten Hosen, which is the biggest punk band in Germany, and probably one of the biggest bands in Germany, period. Die Toten Hosen means 'The Dead Pants', which is pretty strange. The atmosphere for this show turned out to be really electric, and all of the german speakers got really into every song. The set lasted forever, with three encores, and the lead singer even crowd surfed, climbed the sound stage, set off a flare and pretended to fall off the edge, which was about 10 metres high. The only words the whole time I understood were Bayern München and Jagermeister. After the show everyone was exhausted and muddy and sore, so we all headed back to the campground and crashed pretty quickly.

Day 2 - Saturday: Got up in the morning and it was sooooo hot and sunny, complete change of weather.

We hung around the campground until it was time to see the Fantomas, which were supposed to be pretty expermental, and noone really knew what to expect. The drum set was the biggest I've ever seen, and Evan, who is a pretty amazing drummer, explained that the drummer was a pretty famous studio drummer who gets called in when intense drummers are needed. The singer started off by saying 'Try to sing along now' and then started shrieking into the mic, I don't think he said one word in a song for the entire set. He looked really normal too, with a nice button up shirt and everything, but he was crazy on stage. The music was really heavy, and it was completely different than anything I've heard before, but it was interesting. We watched a bit of a couple of other bands not really worth remembering and headed back to the campground.

We sat around and drank and ate some more until it was time to go see Jimmy Eat World, who I've never listened to before. We got pretty hyped up though because we were excited about Green Day, and as a result people around us did too and it turned into a really cool set. After the set we quickly went around to the side so we could get into the front section for Green Day, and got ourselves in a pretty good condition up close. Green Day's show turned out really good. Some guy in a big pink bunny suit came out at first and was slamming back beers and doing the 'YMCA' dance, which was sort of random. Then the band came out and played a really good selection of songs. They were also really active with the crowd. At one point they asked to have a drummer, bassist and guitarist from the crowd to play a song on stage. Evan tried for drums, I boosted Simon in the air for bass and Jay tried for guitar. Unfortunately, nobody got up. The guitarist that did get chosen got to keep Billy Joel's guitar, which was pretty awesome. The set lasted about two hours, which was good. After we went back and hung around the tents again for awhile, then went to sleep.


Day 3 - Sunday: It was really, really, REALLY hot and sunny today, and even though I tried to be good about sunscreen I waited a little too long, and my shoulders and back got really burnt before noon. We decided to walk down to Brienzersee, the lake on the eastern side of Interlaken to get some relief from the sun. There was a ferry stop there and a beach and some grass and tons of people from the concert. The lake was freezing, but refreshing and nice to clean the mud off ourselves. We found a spot on the grass, bought some icecream and chilled out for a bit. Shane and I went diving off the huge white pillars next to the ferry's dock, because the water was deep there. I did my first standing gainer (backflip) and that was pretty cool. After a while we decided it's not worth it to sit on the grass instead of hanging out at the concert, so we headed back and caught the last half of Alter Bridge, which is all of Creed except the singer. It was pretty good, but nothing exceptional. Then came Flogging Molly, an Irish band. Man, were those Irish fans crazy. They just went crazy the whole time. And actually, the band was really, really good, one of the surprises of the weekend. After the set we ran into one of the guitarists and we chatted with him for a bit. We went back to the tents to eat and rest before Millencolin, which I knew nothing about but apparently Jay had seen them before and was a huge fan. The show was pretty good, but I felt really sick so I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped.

Luckily, I started to feel better before System of a Down came on, and everyone including me was insanely excited to see them. I knew it was going to be an amazing show, but we were all kindof worried we wouldn't be able to get into the front section, because they only let in a certain amount and not many people were leaving after Millencolin. All of us Canadians rushed over there after Millencolin and it was a mad push through, and unbelievably every single last one of us got in when none of us should have. Heh. The show started with a huge black sheet covering the stage and the singer started off with the melodic beginning to 'Soldier Side' off the new CD. Then they hit the main riff, and the rock didn't stop or take a breath after that. It was 90 minutes of pure energy from the crowd, and pure agony because of the people hitting and pressing against my sunburns, but it was all worth it. The band only stopped once, for about 15 seconds, to say 'This is our last stop in our European tour, we're going home tomorrow, and we're glad to be ending off here.' The rest was solid music. They played every song I wanted to hear, and they were really, really good live, just as I expected. Definately my highlight of the weekend, even with all the pain. Satisfied, after the concert, we slowly started packing up the campground to head to the train station. Shane and I went to the shower because we felt sooo dirty. Part way through some Swiss dude busted in the door and started talking to us in german, it sounded really important. Then he left the door swinging wide open, and we were standing there buck naked kindof shocked not knowing what just happened, and all the people passing by were looking at us. It was weird. After we finished packing, we started the trek to the train station, and my bag was so painful on my shoulder. As a joke, someone threw up their thumb to a car passing, and surprising, the guy stopped for about a dozen backpackers. He was driving a Ford Focus, and gave Shane and I a ride to the train station, which was great. We found a nice soft section of concrete behind a snack bar to go to sleep, since we had about three or four hours to wait for the train. It took three trains to get home, so our sleep was really broken up and then I just went home, dropped off my bag, and went to work. Needless to say, it's been a long day at work, but totally worth it for the crazy, crazy music filled weekend.


Check out http://www.greenfieldfestival.ch/ if you want more info on the festival.

Cinque Terre, Italy with Courtenay

Courtenay got on her flight back to Canada last night. Feels lonely here now.

Thursday, June 9: Court landed in Basel, and I picked her up in Basel and brought her back to my place. We hung out at my place and rested all day, and she was pretty excited about getting to meet Simon, who was due back from Croatia. Too bad Simon never came home. I got kind of worried, and made some phone calls and eventually found out that Ula had lost her passport in Zagreb, and Simon had stayed to help sort it out. So I just made some pasta for dinner, and we went to sleep, because our train was early the next morning.

Friday, June 10: The train trip was pretty uneventful, other than missing one connection and losing my SIGG bottle on the train. The Cinque Terre are five small towns on the western coast of Italy. We arrived in Riomaggiore, the first town at around 5 o’clock, and found a phone to call Edi, the guy we were renting the room from. Edi was quite the character; he wore wooden sandals and baggy clothes, and was so laid back and chilled out, it was great. He showed us to our room, which had a big bed, its own bathroom with a shower, and a patio. Didn’t have a view of the sea, but its view was still nice.

Our messy room

View from our patio

We decided to stick to Riomaggiore and leave the rest for Saturday. The atmosphere in Rio was really nice, the locals were just wandering up and down the main street, hanging out and eating and drinking. We found a restaurant with a patio extending out into the street, and Courtenay treated me to dinner. We ordered up some bruschetta for our first real Italian food. Totally worth the trip right there. To make it more interesting, we noticed after ordering pizza that we weren’t being served by employees of the restaurant. Some locals were serving us. This guy would get up from his meal and take our order, then he went back to the kitchen and got our food. At first we thought he might just be on his break or something, but no, he was definitely just a local hanging out. After the meal, to clean our table he scrunched up the tablecloth and threw it into the street. All his friends started laughing like crazy and ran across the street to buy some liquor. We got up and found some gelato, which was also worth the trip, and then headed back home to rest for a big day of town hopping.

Saturday, June 11: In the morning we got up relatively early and started touring. We didn’t look around Riomaggiore too much, because we figured we’d see it a lot over the weekend, staying there and all. We started by walking the Via dell’ Amore, the road of love, which was funny because everyone else all romantic and holding hands and taking their time, and we were just bustling along taking pictures and looking at postcards.

Looking at the coastline

Further South

Via dell' Amore

Up the coast

Looking out

The walk was really nice though, and eventually we got to Manarola, the second town. It was pretty small, with basically one small street, and we walked up and down it, then found a little place to grab some lunch, and I got some pasta with scampi, which I didn’t know were huge shrimp until they came out. Courtenay got her favorite, lasagna. After filling up on food and my first Italian beer, we headed down to the beach, or lack thereof. In Manarola, instead of a beach, they have rocks. It’s actually much better than it sounds though, you can sun on the rocks, swim in between them, and go stand right next to crashing waves. It was pretty wavy, so we did the latter.

Manarola

Some boats in the street

Sunbathing rocks

On the rocks

Crashing waves

Hey you

Next stop was Corniglia, the only town in the Cinque Terre that isn’t on the water. This involved catching a bus ride from the craziest driver I’ve ever seen, which was cool and scary at the same time. The town felt really cramped, the streets were really tiny, and it looked like the only thing to do was shop.

Shopping in Corniglia

Vineyards

The view was really good though, and there was apparently a nude beach that we didn’t make it to. Overall though, I have to say it was the least exciting town. I guess I’m a water person.

Marilyn Monroe

Down onto the rocks

Awww cute

So we hiked down the hill instead of using the bus, and caught the next train to Vernazza, the town I was looking forward to the most. It lived up to the expectations. Vernazza felt like real small town Italy, but it also had a heartbeat. The streets were crowded, and we walked around and took it all in. Then we got down to the beach, which had nice sand and calm water. Vernazza is a natural harbor, so rocks break all the waves before they get to the beach.

Vernazza

Open square

Natural port and beach

We went and sat on the rocks between the harbor side and the seaside, and relaxed until it was time to find food for dinner. We tried the restaurant that climbed the cliff face right behind us, but it was all reserved, and it was siesta time anyway, so we bought some chips and relaxed on the beach until around 8 o’clock, when the places reopened for dinner.

Waves hitting the breakwater

More waves

Sun behind the clouds

Suntanning

We found a place near the beach in a kind of open square. The place felt like an expensive restaurant, but the prices were good. I got some pesto, and Court got a pizza. The food was excellent, and we were tired after a long day of sightseeing, so we headed back to Riomaggiore.

Dinner

Only problem was the train we were waiting for was really late. There was one that went from the last town, Monterosso that skipped over all the towns except Riomaggiore. I figured we would take a train to Monterosso and then catch the one to Riomaggiore. It didn’t work though because we went the wrong way once we got to Monterosso and we missed the train. We ended up catching the same one we were originally waiting for the Vernazza. By this time we were exhausted, so we went straight back to our place.

Night shot

Sunday, June 12: We decided to start in Monterosso, as it was the only town we hadn’t really seen. It’s the resort town of the Cinque Terre, with a massive beach complete with umbrellas to rent. There is a big statue called Il Gigante of a man holding up a cliff that looks as if it were carved out of the cliff ages ago. It’s actually made of concrete and is about a hundred years old.

Il Gigante

Coastline of Monterosso

Sitting around

We walked past that and along a path past some pretty nice looking estates in the new town. Before we got too far, we stopped and headed back to the beach and grabbed some fast food and gelato on the way. We found some open space on the beach, which was scarce, and threw our towels down. The sun was perfect, so we lay there and soaked up the sun for a few hours. I went swimming in the sea, which was great, I miss being in the water so much.

Big rock on the beach

The waves were big enough to body surf, but the bottom was too rocky for it to be worth it. I convinced Court to come in the water too for a bit. Later on we started working our way towards the old town to find some food. We took a detour and climbed a random path up the hill and ended up at a church that seemed deserted and later on a cemetery.

WWII Bunker

San Francesco D'Assisi

Then we made our way down over the other side of the hill into the old town, and walked around. This town seemed the biggest and most spread out, and didn’t center on one main street.

Second beach

Back to the other towns

Old ruined stairs

Monterosso

We wandered around on a mission to find some bruschetta, but when we finally found some it wasn’t comparable to the stuff from the first night. After wandering around the streets some more, we decided to grab a train back to Riomaggiore for the night.

Side street

Monday, June 13: We got up, packed, and walked along the seaside path to get to Edi’s office on the main street in Riomaggiore. Edi let us store our bags in his place until we were ready to leave, so we walked around, found a post office to get stamps, and I went shopping. I got some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, grappa, which is distilled wine, and some limoncino, which is sweet liquor used as a digestive after dinner. Then we went back to the restaurant from the first night for some more of that excellent bruschetta. Like I said, totally worth it. To kill time before the train, we went down to the water and sat on the rocks and watched the water. There were even some crabs scuttling around. It was a nice relaxing end to our vacation in Italy.

Riomaggiore

Ready to go home

We caught our train out of Riomaggiore, and it wasn’t too late by Italian standards. I got to use my French talking to a guy from Morocco that had been working in Italy for five years, which was cool. Our train arrived in Milan pretty late, but it didn’t matter, because the connection was 30 minutes late. We had some time, so we walked out of the train station and took a look around. Milan seems like a cold industrial place, which is pretty much what I’ve heard. I grabbed a beer at the station, and the guy at the restaurant let Courtenay use their bathroom, which they couldn’t even find at first, because it was a maze to find. We got on our train, and as soon as we hit the Swiss border, a conductor came around and apologized sincerely for the delay, and told us the SBB would refund our seat reservations, so that wasn’t too bad. What was bad was that the train was one of these Swiss high-speed mountain trains, so it could take inclined turns at high speeds. It made both Court and I feel sick. At the stop in Locarno, Chris got on the train, who had been visiting his girlfriend in Locarno. We ended up getting back to Baden late, and Courtenay met Simon and Jay and we went to bed.

For the rest of her trip, we just relaxed and spent time together. We shopped, walked around the town, ate next to the river and met Jay, Simon, Travis and Nate for lunch. I bought myself a bunch of new clothes at H&M, I think they look pretty good. The most active sightseeing we did was climbing up to Baden’s castle. Last night we grabbed the train to Basel, and I saw her off at the airport. I’m pretty upset she’s gone now, but we did have a wonderful week.