HW: Hawkfest - one to celebrate

[Keith Henderson]

Hi All (Hoi zäme)...

Just a few thoughts.  I totally agree with nearly all of what Jill has already said.  I took lots of photos and notes, and plan to do a full review (for AI as well as here) whenever I have the time and am not paying actual hard cash for online service (as I am now).  It really was a wonderful event...I enjoyed myself much more than the last one four years ago, even though that one featured so many great bands, perhaps more than this time.  So it was really a personal reason for me...I just wasn't in a very friendly sociable mood last time, whereas this time I was almost, um, 'chatty' I guess is the word.  And seeing all the same faces again was really nice, and a few ones that I hadn't met before.  I saw a few Frenchmen and Dutchman as well as the Germans, Aussies, and us Amis (incl. the expat Britons).

I'm not much on weddings normally, being perpetually unattached I don't quite fathom the institution as well as the ceremony, but it was undoubtedly the coolest wedding I've ever been to.  The costumes were really out there, some of them...just about everything and anything you could imagine.  My personal favourite was the panda bear outfit.  The event was an interesting mixture of traditional stuff (the bridesmaids' dresses, formality of the ceremony structure, and cake and reception protocols and such) but there was this weird overtone of 1,000 strange (or degenerate) uncles hanging about that gave it a unique flavor.  It was great that Dave and Kris had the informal reception in the big courtyard open to everyone and anyone (i.e., us 'lot' of weirdos) before going off to have their own more private gathering.  And some of us lucky ones even got in to the ceremony inside (a very tight place with only about 100 or so capacity), where they exchanged the actual 'Trauringe'
 (To be nice, I won't even put the 'n' in parantheses as I usually do, to make my little personal joke about what I think of marriage...only the Germans will understand what I mean here...)

The TOSH set thereafter was the real party though, proverbial icing on the cake as it were.  Sure, Dibbsy's voice was a little rough by the end, but he had done three entire sets over the weekend by then (incl. Spacehead and HW proper) so not without proper cause.  It was really nice that Huwy stayed around to play el. guitar through nearly the entire TOSH set, and esp. since he played pretty decently throughout.  Well, the acoustic set got on a bit, considering that we'd already been waiting an hour for something to happen, but once HoS kicked in, it was full on blanga for the next 70 minutes straight.  And it was all essentially an encore for the previous night, so what a big bonus.  Dave played only three songs or so in total, so he left Keef to carrz on a lot through whole stretches of the set, and he did quite well too, esp. on rhythm/wah guitar.  Richard sat out drumming through all of Sunday, playing his own synth rig and putting in some backing vocals here and
 there.  I think there were five synth rigs, in addition to four (or maybe five) el. guitar setups, so that's why it took so damn long for TOSH to get underway.

So the rain was bad...and the mud was worse...and the fermenting broth of straw and spilled beer was too much to take.  My shoes will never smell the same.  On Saturday, I gave up the shoes (I didn't know about Wellies before...seems like a good idea, but they wouldn't fit into my Rucksack) and went with barefeet and flipflops and just let the mud squeeze between my toes.  Actually felt pretty therapeutic at times, considering how sore my feet have been.  By Sunday though, the place was not only liveable, but with the cool fresh air, it was very nice.  It's never even remotely possible that it could be under 20C for a high in the month of June in a place like Ohio.  Or even Minneapolis.  On Monday, we all got our stuff packed up (even the Edinburgh lot with their metropolis of buildings) and got out on the road before, yet again, the storms arrived.  Sitting in the airport, just three miles away, so I just walked out across the Donington Raceway fields and on down the A453
 to the terminal, I laughed at the heavy rain and said to myself, 'Ha, this time you're too late!'  I saw that it delayed Jill's flight a little bit, and mine three hours later was also delayed slightly, but my pack and tent were all nicely dried out still, so no worries, mate.

So now here I am in Sachsen-Anhalt, in a town called Wittenberg.  I came here because it was the first city at the top of the map I bought in Berlin yesterday, which includes everything from here south to the border with Czech Rep.  And because I could see an indicator suggesting there was a campsite here, and there was, lucky for me.  So I'm camping 20 m from the banks of the Elbe over on the other side of the river.  Not much of a river here, no heavy boat traffic like on the Main or Neckar or esp. Rhein.  But it's pleasant enough even without the boats to watch.  Wittenberg is also known as the Lutherstadt, because 500 years ago some dude named Luther did something important in the history of the world.  Or so they say.  The way is went is something like this (the details are a bit sketchy perhaps)...he was challenged by, but then defeated, the world champion Samurai Warrior Kobiyashi by eating 50 giant sausage dogs in only 20 minutes.  Washed down, of course, by many
 liters of real ale.  And then afterwards the victorious Martin Luther produced in one single sitting his infamous 95 Feces, which somehow he nailed to the outhouse door for all the stunned onlookers to see for themselves.  I think his record stands to this day, if I'm not mistaken.

Ooooh, I'm surely going to hell when I die now.

OK, enough of that frivolity.

I'm on to Dresden and points south next (Prague and maybe Leipzig and Weimar), eventually making my way back west towards Kassel and then Burg Herzberg in mid July.  My shoes should start to lose their nasty odour by then.

One note:  I actually found two stores in Nottingham that actually did sell the Solio solar-iPod/cellphone/camera-battery chargers.  One of which was the airport electronics/travel gadget store, just as Paul had suggested, but also in the one right downtown in that Victoria Centre mall.  It was 60 quid though, and I couldn't make myself shell out that much just now, as I had just spent some money on the plug-in charger model, and I'm hoping to find one later on (Prague?) for significantly less, considering the miserable exchange rate I suffered in Blighty.  Anyway, they are available in some stores, so if you want to go green to your next festival, you might check them out...they're pretty small and compact at least.  Don't know how well they work or how long it takes to charge stuff up.  Especially when the skies are cloudy, but...

That's all for now...not as short as I planned, but I've still got a few minutes on the clock.

Ciao...Keith



 
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