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The Europe Tour 2000-2001 >
Oberhausen, Germany |
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I spent the whole plane trip to Oberhausen attempting to sleep. It didn't work. I had a whole row to myself, but still, nothing. Oh well. I got a great shot of the sunrise over the clouds as the plane passed above them, so look for that soon! Probably the only event on the plane worth mentioning was the announcement of the 30th birthday of the show freak, Nuchols. The attendant announced it over the speakers then presented him a gift of a little stuffed airplane. Everyone on the plane first laughed, then gave a sarcastic applause (he's not exactly thrilled to start another decade). After almost two hours on the plane, we landed in Oberhausen and boarded the busses to the hotel. Our bus was supposed to be first in line, but ended up arriving there second, because one bus took a shortcut. This meant that I ended up way back in line for check-in, and this wasn't exactly the fastest process. By the time I did get to check in, however, the line at the single small elevator was out the front door of the lobby (it was only a 3-story hotel, so I would probably just drag my stuff up the stairs). Imagine my relief when I found out I was on the ground floor, right across from the front desk and hotel bar. So I just grabbed my luggage, fought my way through the throngs of people in line, and made it straight to my room. I was rooming with a friend Monique this week, but since she lives in nearby Holland, she was going home for a few days. This meant I had my own room for a few days. And what did I do to celebrate? I went straight to bed! I slept for several hours before getting up to check out the huge mall across the street, mostly for some food. Here I ran into someone who warned me about the birthday celebration that night for Nuchols (remember the plane?) at the large Irish pub next to the mall. After the food, I attempted to find a phone card, so I could make some phone calls. This is where the lack of German skills proves a problem. Whereas in almost every country thus far (barring France) most people spoke at least a few words of English, Germany is an exeception. Almost no one speaks ANY English it seems. Now, of course, I shouldn't expect them to since I'm in their country (I'm sure they feel the same was in the US), but it seems that every other country in Europe has adopted a sense of the English language!! It's just a little frustrating when you're looking for something and can't explain what you want! After going back and forth with several people in several stores trying to mime "phone card" I finally ran into a woman in a phone store who spoke fluent English and got me a perfect card...one that I could use from my hotel room (a valuable commodity in Europe...no payphones 3 blocks away outside in the cold rain!). After I finally got my card, I returned to the hotel where I ran into some friends sitting in the hotel bar. I sat with them for a while and chatted before going back to the room to get a few things done. Later that night I finally ventured out to the pub and almost the entire group was there, minus Nuchols. He wasn't even there for his own birthday celebration. We debated whether anyone actually told him about his birthday party. Slight problem there. After about an hour I was about to leave when Nuchols finally waltzed in the door with a few others, and that pretty much rounded out any missing people! I decided that I would stay for one more and I really DID just have one more!). A little later, I ended up in some really stupid game with a group of people. The leader of the game called it a word association game, and said just to listen and play along and we'd catch on. Bascially he said a word, then someone else said one, and it went around, and he decided if your word fit. Well this game went on for well over half an hour amongst about 7 people, and it went kind of like this: "Beer"Okay, so imagine that going on for half an hour with only the leader and one or two others who figured it out knowing what was going on. The rest of us were going mental. The leader just kept saying "LISTEN! You'll figure it out." We kept listening, and kept trying to figure it out. We finally gave up and nearly beat the guy into submission until he finally gave in. He said, okay, listen to me and relate what I'm saying!!! He started looking around the room picking various objects... "Uh, table""UH!" someone yelled. The whole game revolved around whether you said "Uh" before your word. Now who in the hell would pick that up?!? It shows right up by reading it, but when just talking, no one would pick that up. And all along I thought I just didn't have the intelligence to relate these words. After that, I decided to head home to get back to bed. Tuesday, I was going to Cologne, Germany to check it out. It's supposed to be a beautiful place with an amazing cathedral and all kinds of things to do and see. I had agreed to meet the others (REnee and a guy named Jason) at 9:00am. I got a call at 9:05am saying "Are you coming???" I had told Renee the night before to give me a wake up call to make sure I was up (given my sleeping history the past week), but I guess she misunderstood. Anyway, I threw on some clothes, dragged myself to the lobby, and we left for the tram station across the street where we took a tram to the train station. The train station was almost as much fun as phone card shopping. We managed to get a ticket agent who spoke broken English and she described what we had to do to get to Cologne. Two different trains, two tickets, but only one could we buy at her desk, the one for the second leg of the journey. The ticket for the first leg had to be bought at an automated machine. We got to the automated machine, which didn't take bills. We scrounged up some change, then found that the machine was totally German-based (in Germany?), and we could not even begin to figure out what was going on. We decided to risk being "stupid tourists" and got on the express train to Cologne, not the one we bought the ticket for. We also sat in first class. About 15 minutes into our ride, the ticket checker guy came through. We handed him our tickets, and he said "Well, this is first class, and not the right train, but it's okay." We got away with it. And since our tickets were round-trip, we would end up paying only $6 each for a round trip at 45 minutes each way (I think it was supposed to cost about $20 each). In German, Cologne is Koln, and the train stopped at a station called Koln Messe. We asked someone who looked official if this was the Cologne stop, he said "Yes," and although we thought that this was a bit strange of a place for a train station, being in the middle of apartments and with the cathedral visible miles off, we figured we would go ahead and go. Luckily, just before the doors closed, a guy who spoke perfect English (we're thinking he's from the US or nearby) poked his head out and said "No, you want the next stop" then rattled something off in German to the guy who had told us this was our stop. We of course thanked this man and got off at the next stop. What stood in front of us is really a sight to behold. The cathedral here is nothing short of breathtaking. First of all it is gigantic, taller than any other structure for miles. Secondly, it is incredibly detailed over every inch of it's facáde. Third, well, there is no third. After walking around and checking out the outside, we ventured inside, which although beautiful, does not compare to the outside. However, the numerous large stained-glass windows filled the place with colored light which was really neat. I took the equivilent of two rolls of film here alone. Afterwards, we tried to take pictures of the front of it, but I (even with the very wide angle on my camera) would have had to stand about a quarter-mile away to get it all in. Instead I took 3 separate pictures which I will paste together in the computer. Look for that soon also! After finishing the cathedral, we checked the tourist office to see what else there was to see. A bunch of old churches is about it. Not interested in seeing a bunch of old churches, we walked into the shopping area looking for some food. We tried Pizza Hut with its "all-you-can-eat buffet" but that only started for dinner, not for lunch. So we went and had amazing steak dinners at a small, non-descript steak place. After that, we could not thinnk of anything to do, so we returned to Oberhausen, where Renee and I went to the mall for a little while, while Jason went off to take some pictures. The rest of the night i didn't do much other than hanging out and trading photos with Renee. Wednesday, I woke up late and went to the mall for lunch before having to go to load-in. Load-in went extremely fast. Hours faster than ever before. In fact, we had the grid up and trimmed and everything tested within 7 hours. For our show and various situations, that is incredible. Thursday, I came into work to finish up load-in, focus, and whatnot. Everything was ready quite early and it looked like we'd get a pretty good break. That's when the building and the fire marshalls started their work. The fire marshalls wanted every conceivable space cleared for a fire exit, even the bckstage dimmer area had to be covered with rubber in case someone decided t run THROUGH our side curtains (there are no breaks in them, the person would have to lift them up and go under them) in a fire. The building people, who had told our props department they had to keep well over half the huge backstage clear for the zamboni, piled empty curtain boxes right in the middle of backstage. We told them they couldn't stay there (they were RIGHT in the middle of everything). they didn't want to move them, saying they had nowhere else to put hem. I said "You have a whole building!!!" So they moved them, about 30 feet away, right in the middle of my work area, so I couldn't even get to my crate. I freaked adn yelled and flailed arms, and finally they moved them down the hall (was it so har dto do that before?) Finally showtime came around and we opened to a fairly small audience. After the show I stayed to help someone with more lighting for auditions. This one I had quite a bit of fun with, being 70's based. When I got home, I sat in the hotel bar with some people for a while before heading to bed. Friday I didn't do much but the two shows, then returned home. After a little while chatting to my roommate, we were talked into going to the Irish pub for a while, even though I had planned not to go anywhere. I ended up having a pretty good time though. I left pretty early, walked my friend Isabelle home, and headed to bed, knowing that 3 shows the next day would come too soon. Saturday was pretty uneventful with its 3 shows. Sunday started off in a way I didn't want. I started up my console, and it crashed, losing everything since the last time I saved to disk, which unfortunately was opening night BEFORE programming that audition lighting. Grrr. Anyway, I restored it and did the two shows followed by loadout. Just like load-in, load-out was the fastest to date, by over half an hour. Four hours, forty minutes. Woo-hoo! We returned to the hotel to pack luggage into the bus, grab some munchies from the only 24-hour gas station in Europe (sarcasm, but really...), and move on. Unfortunately, our bus driver could not back the bus up with the small luggage trailer on the back, he went forward more than back and after about 10 minutes, we were right where we started, if not 10 feet the wrong way. Four of us jumped out of the bus into the rain and pulled the trailer off and wheeled it down to the street, almost getting run over when we couldn't stop it! Finally the bus got into the street, we reattached the trailer, and drove off bound for Gent, Belgium. |
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