Saturday, 14th of November
I had to wake up at 4AM. Jesus... I'm not sure if anyone is up at this hour. Apart from kids on PCP who are coming back from the clubs. As I mentioned few times I'm a lucky bastard who is loved by her friends enough to ask (and receive) a lift to the airport at such time of day.
We arrived at the airport shortly before 5AM just to discover that it's crowded as hell and the line to the security control had about 100 people in it. At some point the guards were not letting passengers through because there simply was no place.
Finally came my turn to go through the gates. I must say here that I find the whole idea of those controls stupid. Not even silly. Just stupid. I had to take my shoes off, I was checked with a hand metal detector because I might be smuggling some dangerous weapon in my bra. I also asked one of the officers if I have to take out my plastic bag with "fluids" (which included hair rubber and toothpaste) or can I leave it inside. I was told to leave it and don't care about it. Of course my bag after going through the X-Ray machine had to be turned inside out by another member of Border Guard because I was "hiding possibly dangerous fluids." What the heck that they saw my super sexy PJs, but hey... I had to pack that bag again -___-;;;
But back to the story. My lovely mother land bid me farewell with rain and windy weather. Yet as soon as we went few kilometres up there it was again - blue sky. Of course dark blue sky without any trace of sun since it was supposed to get up in 2h. As I was flying through the skies and reaching my destination a thought hit me that my family has no idea that I'm going away for the weekend and what if the plane crashes. And there plane is going down, position set to landing... when it suddenly goes up and makes another circle above Prestwick. "I just had to think about something going wrong with the landing..." Luckily the 2nd attempt went swell and within 20 minutes I was standing steady on the ground.
There is something funny when you get off a plane or a train in an unknown city or even better - unknown country. You have no idea where to go but still you pretend that you have been here dozens of times and this doesn't impress or scare ("cellphone not working!") you a bit. With tiny piece of information ("take bus X77") I went outside to find any bus stop. And I did. I was standing on the pavement, looking to my left where I expected the bus to come when I suddenly here a whoosh behind my back and see two cars going from the right. While my face remained unfazed, an inner cry raised in my soul "F**k. I forgot they drive the wrong way here."
To calm you all I can say I arrived at my destination safely, was picked up and greeted by my host (with words I cannot repeat but those included blasphemy). After unpacking and being fed we took off to see the city of Glasgow.
As we are talking about architecture. Glasgow is the home town of a guy named Mackintosh who was a superb and fascinating architect, and designed very nice and beautiful buildings in Glasgow. Also he is the centre character of the religion professed by A. and her dad. Next to the Cathedral there is an old cemetery where Mackintosh is buried but because of the extend of that place and the fact that it started to rain we weren't able to find his grave. Instead we went to The Willow Tearooms (designed by You-Know-Who) where we could rest and dry ourselves for a moment.
Luckily it stopped raining and we could go for another walk which included seeing Glasgow School of Art (previous brackets), visiting few shops, buying food for dinner and later - chatting with random people over a glass of apple juice.
"And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
Sunday, 15th of November
Tegan & Sara concert today! We had a master plan: to go early to Edinburgh, see the city, get some food and so on. Of course before my dear friend woke up I already discharged battery in her Mac. And to all the sarcastic commentators who say I get up in the middle of the night - I woke up after 9AM.
In the end we moved our lovely persons to the railway station just 10-15 minutes before 12 PM. We enter that charming little building only to see that there's no train at 12. And we were sure that such train exists.
"Where is the timetable?" I asked looking nervously around.
"Over there" said A. pointing to the electronic screen with dozens of arrivals, departures, times of such. Pretty much alike to those you can see at airports.
"I was talking about the good old paper ones."
"There are none."
So we stand there as two morons trying to find out where our train disappeared when one of us sees "Edinburgh 11:57." And it was 11:55. "Quick! Let's run and get the tickets!" my friend shouted. You see the thing is that every train to Edinburgh departed at "full hour." Or half past it. But hey... we ran to the machine, bought those soulless tickets and... nothing.
"Kiddo, you know what..." thinking finally turns on in my head.
"Yes?"
"I think that it was the time of arrival."
The same process also kicks in my friend's brain "Damn..."
In the end we had extra 30 minutes so we went to Sainbury's to buy something for the trip. And here took place my greatest shock when it comes to this trip. They have cut and packed apples there. They also have packages of, let's say, 3 strawberries, 2 small pieces of pineapple, mango and few grapes ô_Ó I knew that people in the far West are lazy and they buy partially prepared products but this is ridiculous. Though I have to admit I like the idea of buying such snacks and I wouldn't mind such products here.
And now - off to Eddie! And when I say Eddie I really mean this - a dream-come-true for every teenager.
Though I personally prefer Jesus Action Figure:
What can I say more about this charming city? That I really fell in love with it (I still say it's much more prettier than Glasgow). I especially like the architecture and the "dirty ugly walls." It was also fun to look for a church which really was a church and not some shrine-turned-into-a-cafeteria. Unfortunately we didn't have time and money (we're as cheap as Scots) to visit the Museum of Whisky and drive in one of those carts through the factory but at least I have a reason to go to Scotland again.
Another fact about Edinburgh: it has a mountain. In the middle of the city. And on the other hill they have a castle:
Evening came. The concerts was supposed to begin in 2-3h. The problem was that I needed earplugs (just in case if the sound man did a crappy job), the bigger problem was that they... don't have pharmacies in Scotland. Really - they don't. They have Boots which is rather a "Health and Beauty Shop". And since it is a chain of stores it has limited opening hours and there are no "duty pharmacies" which are opened no matter what day or hour. They simply either live until the next opening or die.
So around 5-6 PM we noticed that we have no earplugs, we didn't know where Boots or any pharmacy was. We went and went through the city, one street, another one and still nothing. A.'s iPhone couldn't catch any Wi-Fi signal so I decided to call someone in Poland, I told him at what street I was and asked him to find me the nearest pharmacy. I love the Global Village. Few minutes later friend called back and told me the info I needed. The shop was just around the corner and surprise - it was Boots. Closed Boots.
Unhappy we decided to go and stand in the line to HMV Picture House. We're walking, of course on the wrong side of the street, when suddenly our destination appears. It's still an hour before they would be letting people in but the line was 50m long already. But as we were walking it struck my friend to who's concert she's going. I heard her breathing heavily, turned to her and she said with a blank face "I'm gonna get raped by teenage American emo lesbians." This still makes me cry. I have never seen her freaking out so much XD It was so obvious she was trying to find a way to run as far as possible. I couldn't resist to tease her and look for a pretty girl in the crowd for her. I was even close to going to one and asking her out but the threatening gaze "you're on my territory, behave or you're sleeping at the railways station" stopped me. I chickened - I admit that.
And now we reach the main part of the post - the concert.
Support - not my music if I have to use euphemism. However I admit that dude deserves a prize for stage personality and having contact with the audience. But music... Yech...
Let's skip the part about T&S' support and go straight to the main point of the show - twins. Unfortunately (for me) there were many teenage fans of girls who were more die hard fans than me, so 5th or 6th row was as far as we could get. Going further would mean receiving vicious glares from other girls (like I care) but also more tightness what with my newly enlightened friend ("Lesbians are going to rape me" look) was not the best idea.
The concert was superb! Even with my love towards Loreena McKennitt and Tori Amos I must say that T&S are my #2 when it comes to live gigs. For those who are wondering who took #1 - Fever Ray in Berghain. Karin and former power plant in East Berlin <3 For those who would like to see how the event looked, I suggest going here. This is also a link to my favourite part of the show. Maybe it's not the best quality but you can hear how the sisters talk with each other which is even more entertaining than the music itself.
I would like also to say my highest praises towards the man responsible for the sound. Because in the end I didn't need those earplugs. The sound was clear. No basses killing my organs, no high volume destroying my ears.
I'm a terrible reviewer when it comes to concerts. I never know what to say. That the music was fun? I liked the interpretation of this and this song which is so different/alike to the one on album? Because I feel the music in a different way than most of people and in my opinion you just have to be there :p
It's also different when I'm reviewing rock/indie concerts and electronic ones. Because with the first you cannot really do a show as a "theatre show." During those all the band can do is playing their songs and having a great contact with their audience which the girls totally have. Most of the songs were sang along with their fans and one could really feel that people wanted to be there. That it wasn't another snobbish event one just has to show up to tell one's friends later.
During the concert we had a small issue with some drunk girl. She was pretty much completely shit faced and I'm not sure if that was her crappy dancing or that she had problems with remaining in vertical pose. When she was standing next to me she was swinging her arm and hand (though totally not coordinated with each other) back and forth. People around her really had to keep their "danger sensors" on if they didn't want to get hit by her. Of course after few minutes she and her girl started to squeeze to the front. And technically they did but as soon as they reached barriers the drunkard started shouting her phone number, proclaimed her love or something like that. Soon after that bodyguard #1 appeared on the other side of the barriers and told her to shut up. This friendly advise was unfortunately ignored. So as they couldn't reach any agreement soon security member #2 appeared but from the audience side and took (literally) the girl with him. She tried to set free with punching her arms and legs in any direction she could which ended unluckily for my friend because she got hit in the head. She doesn't have my gig experience and she simply doesn't know when to jump away. But the funniest part of the whole action was that the girl's date was standing there for the whole 5-10 minutes waiting for the song to end (I'm not sure if she didn't listen to the next one also) before she even thought about checking what happened to her date.
Other random things from the concert: teenagers standing next to you and taking pictures of themselves during the whole event with a flash-light are annoying. I've seen bras being thrown to the stage but usually those were concerts of Faith No More, Pearl Jam, you know... girls in the audience, boys on the stage, so throwing a bra to a girlish band is still surprising for me.
After an hour and half of jumping, singing A. got a little bit bored and since we had to ditch anyway soon (we had the last train to Glasgow) she went earlier to get our coats. Which was a very good idea because the gig ended few minutes later and if we would have to wait with this whole crowd we would definitely be late for the train. But we even caught the earlier one, probably because of our happy and weeeee-I'm-dancing-and-jumping-in-the-streets behaviour.
"And there was evening and there was morning, second day."
Ah... I hit the romantic tune in the end. So I shall stop here and just say:
To be continued...
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