Jul 2006

Touching down in Berlin after a short flight from London I needed to be in peak health as I had a solid week of partying in front of me, but far from peak health I was. After spending the last 3 weeks partying and drinking like there's no tomorrow, the consequences were starting to show. My whole body was feeling like a Raggy-Doll, a wickedly flemy throat infection had set in after the bout of diarrhea had gone and touching down sleep deprived and hungover after an absolutely disturbing night at the Walkabout i wasn't in the bestest condition for the greatest street parade on EARTH!

So after arriving it was straight to the hostel to get some well needed rest and try and shake the hangover as I was meeting up with Charlie who had moved to Berlin a month ago. Now you'd think that being in a city for a month you'd know all the hot spots, maybe it's just me, so after a bit of aimlessly wondering round and some helpful hints from local cafe workers we came across Adagio. It has to be said it look well swanky from the outside, red carpet and all and the inside being no different with the interior fitted out to look like a castle, chandeliers and all. Once inside and strolling round it clicked what was wrong with this place. It was packed and looking out onto the dance floor they all look like a pack of dead fish, just standing there wobbling and it wasn't until such hits as Peter Andre and the like where blasted out that the predominately old crowd started to loosen up and once the chandeliers started strobing the party was onnnnn. The whole experience left me feeling like I was in some kind of Adams Family music video.

Well after the waitress kindly pointed us to another establishment we where on our way...to a place that was closed
So after much walking we made our way to our final destination, the 24/7 bar, where Sambuca shots where to be had and dancing a plenty.

Having seen most of Berlin when I was here last year, the days pretty much consisted of lying in the park listening to my MP3 player trying to shake of the night before.

The next night was the official opening party for the Love Parade on Friday night...The Love From Above featuring Paul Van Dyke. Now as most of you probably know, I ain't a trance lover so the music was a bit well....yawnnnnnnnn, but fuck me the setup was insane. A massive rig full of screens and TVs and plenty of lights and strobes from all four sides, an absolutely well wicked setup and programmed extraordinarily well and with everyone amped for the parade the next day the vibe was awesome.

The day of the parade there was no rest to be had; up at 10am as I had to pick up the passesfor a place on the Ministry of Sound Germany float, that's right I was on a float in the Love Parade the day before my birthday, holly fucken shit is the big man looking after me or what. It must be said though that the passes where only secured at 4pm the day before, so much stressing and praying was done to get them.
Only 40 where issued per float and two bartenders from London who actually come from Australia who just happen to be at the Love Parade where there is a float by the company they work for HAPPEN TO GET PASSES, who the hell would have thought.

So up at 10 to pick em up and get ready for what is going to be a long and unforgettable day. The lucky other person who got a pass is Tara who was working at the club but left a month ago and she still got on. Anywho, enough about passes...let the parade begin.

For those of you that don't know, the Love Parade in Berlin is the largest street festival in the world celebrating dance music and having not been on for the last two years and this year having 40 something floats it was always going to be a big one + plus that World Cup and all the people on the come down from World cup fever the crowd ended up coming to an estimated 1.2 MILLION PEOPLE, of which I happily accepted where there celebrating my birthday as well, even if it was the day after :p

Well I’m not gonna tell you about every little nitty gritty experience, as there are way too many and I cant even remember half of them but the experience of riding on a lorry packed full of speakers, dancers and a DJ pushing through the crowd is one that I really will never forget. I can now on some kind of level understand the rush that DJs must get from the crowd, it's just awesome. You're like gods dancing down to everyone, getting looks of sexual intent and plan old booze sharing, raising your hand and the crowd in front doing the same is a absolutely intense feeling and one that I am so grateful to have had.
There are people at this parade from all over, some in outlandish costumes, some sporting and alarmly proud of there camel toes that are half eating there costumes and all there for the shear love of one thing...dance music. Where else in the world would a government let a parade run for 1 million plus people that celebrates this kind of music. Top stuff Berlin!!
I was planning on going out after the parade but my body had just about had enough, so off it was too bed to rest up and awake to a new day...with swallon ankles. Hmmmm never a good sign, so off I drag my sorry state of a body to the park where I proceeded to pass out for a good four hours and awake to all of my possessions still being with me. Upon getting vertical again and walking like a gimb for the first 100 meters it was time to gear up for another night out in Berlin town, this time it was off too Sage club where the party had being going on since 10am and wasn't about to stop any time soon. So here we are at a club with countless rooms, half indoors half out and down the back a POOL! For all those clubber that are getting too heated on the dance floor. What a nifty idea.
Well truth be told, I wasn't feeling the best when entering this establishment but once inside the music was extremely top notch. Have no idea what genre it was kind of hard German trance or something but was very tasty, that was until I hit the wall around 4am and couldn't move my feet no more, luckly the U-Bahn was on the roll again and wisked me reluctantly back home.

Monday was meant for a day of rest and re-generation before my flight in the afternoon but thanks to a midday checkout it was up and straight to the airport where the 5 hour wait for my flight started.
Before you start thinking, oh he's super keen getting to the airport 5 hours early. No, I’m normally the last one to check in, this time I was to experience my first cancelled flight as our plane was stolen, not by terrorist but by a plane full of Spaniards whose plane broke down and so of course ours was given to them.

Well I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to be stranded in Berlin with, turns out half the plane where coming back from the Love Parade and with Easy Jet giving us a bar tab of 25 Euro each and putting us up in a swanky hotel, couldn’t have asked for a better flight really and the plane trip the next day was great and a bit surreal as we all knew each other and had been mates for years, very freaky experience.

It has to be said, more for my memory sake, that the taxi ride to the hotel less than 500 meters away was absolutely hilarious which really shouldn’t have been such an experience.
After queue after queue we were all waiting in another queue for one 8 seat mini bus to take a plane load of 200 people back to the hotel. Then out of the terminal building come two rather posh English girls from our flight who proclaim that they will get a taxi and put it on there company credit card, before even saying "card" I was waiting at the taxi, not been a skiver at all :p but for the simple fact by the time this mini van had got us all there is will be time to go back to the airport.
So off we go in the taxi before realising we don't have a bloody clue where this place is, how many Holiday Inn's are there...apparently 5 in Berlin! and the driver not knowing a single one.
So to our delight the mini van ferrying passengers to the hotel drives past and sounding rather like an ad I’ve seen somewhere we command the driver to "follow that blue van". Turns out he didn't have clue what we where saying and stops 10 meters away in front of a blue taxi Bahhhh. So with my trained eagle eyes I thought I had traced the blue van in the direction it was going and we began giving stern hand gestures to the driver who was already starting to frey with his load of already hysterically laughing passengers.
Turns out he was not the most speediest taxi driver in Germany and we aptly lost sight, so heading in the 'rough' direction we found ourselves in what has to be classed as rural Berlin and with no idea of where we needed to go. Anyways one of the posh girls can to the rescue ringing some kind of directory assistance and then the driver entering the info into his little GPS machine with a rather angry look, as he realised that it was just across the road from the airport and we had been driving for at least 10 minutes, not a happy chappy that’s for sure. Well after his little road rage stint trying to kill us all we made it and managed to check in all but last. Was literally across the road from the airport and with the accent of those posh English girls getting all flustered I just couldn’t stop laughing, which I think the driver was talking the wrong way. I was laughing at the situation…seriously!

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/1683921

With the first load of passengers expected to arrive round Midday Monday morning, the morning was just finishing everything off and getting ready to finally do some serious work. Couldn't really go too hard out as we had to drag our arses out of bed at 5am to feed everyone breakfast and I’m not the best at early starts and combining it with being in the kitchen ain't a good combo. The days now are pretty much for rest as we work at least 2 shifts a day and with the pool turning more manky by the hour , normally find ourselves retiring to a shady tree drinking piss before cooking up a feed.

Tuesday night was marked as the night for an absolute bender, as most of the passengers and vannies have arrived and ready to party hard. I was quite surprised by the choice of music the DJ's were playing, expecting some kind of RnB and cheesy pop, it was indeed hard house and euphoric classics not heard for years which everyone was really getting into.
The highlight of the night would have to be when Jo & Jacquie came in behind me and proceeded to grab my arms and legs and carted me off the dance floor and as I was off my tits looking up at a sea of green leaves and people peering down, was quite the mind bend. I did in the chaos loose my camera which I was a little bummed out about but was found by a fantastic search party who searched high and low, cheers guys!!

With a 5am start the next morning and managing to crawl into bed at around 4:30, myself and just about everyone else where in no state of mind to be cooking breakfast for 1200 people, even if they were just as shady and didn’t want to digest the fatty breakfast on offer. As I was late for the morning start the punishment was to cook dinner with the rest of the late crew for a bus load of passengers that where meant to roll up at midnight. So after cooking up some kind of deep fried fish dish, we waited and waited until it was announced that the bus had run out of fuel and would be arriving at 4am, Ahhh great! And with another 5am start and opening ceremony AND a security shift it was gonna be a long day.

Well it was time for the festivities to begin, and to start it all off was the opening ceremony held out front of the town hall. I knew the Spanish liked to party hard, but fuck me it was just madness with everyone packed into a plaza drinking sangria and popping Champaign and going nuts. Wanting to get right into the thick of it we pushed our way through the streets to the back on the plaza and just as we had found out primo position the crowd surges begin.
Having pretty much lost everyone as soon as we entered with only a few of our group insight before being whisked away in a surge. It was like currents in the ocean, all of a sudden you move 10 meters forward then once regaining your foot hold you’re off again and before you know it your right in the think of it, front and centre. We were swaying at 45 degree angles with out arms pinned to our sides and trying not to fall onto the bed of broken glass and crushing feet. During this time I was trying desperately to hold on to my beloved bottle of sangria until inevitably it got wedged between two burly guys and watched as it was taken away in the current. With my attention now off trying to retain my alcoholic beverage, I started thinking that this could be the ideal place for pickpockets. With this brain fart I did the token pocket tap only too find that I had become a victim, ahhh bugger.
It wasn’t such a bad lose though as I had taken everything out and just left 50 Euro in it and had luckily left my camera with Jacquie who never managed to get right into the thick of it, so managed to retain my camera AGAIN!

Having to cut the festivities short as I had my first security shift that night, I wasn’t the happiest camper around, but turned out to be a fantastic night.
Being on security just meant that you where a friendly face who can speak English and to help people out. My first location was outside the main gate to the bar where the Spanish police where stopping people bringing in drinks which was fantastic for me as I managed to get absolutely shit faced off people offering me there unfinished drinks, although I thinking that’s where I also picked up my nasty cold.
Next it was off to the DJ box which happened to be right at the peak of the night. This is where I realised how much power a shirt saying “Security” can have, girls seem to flock to the authority that the shirt portrays, although I didn’t really have much at all except for a torch to scare people out of the trees.

Having all of the next day off to recoup the energy levels, another big night was in order and as I had my first bull run the following morning I had a bit of a conundrum as too weather to get plastered or too be in my prime to tackle the bulls. A comprise had to be mad and the plan was to hit the sack early-ish. So starting rather early I filled my newly acquired water vessel with a vodka Malibu mix which was surprisingly tasty all be it extremely alcoholic and set off to find the tent numbers which were acquired the night before.
Now my memory is not my greatest asset and being able to remember numbers definitely not my fortay, so what originally started out as two numbers has grown into 6 variations and so the only option was to search all of them for the tents I was looking for.
After about half an hour all up of searching and awaking random people the right tents were found and by far one of the most embarrassing moments endured.

It happened on the morning of the Bull Run and not having any idea of the time, was interrupted by a tour leading doing her routine wake up call at 5:30am to get on the bus. It did get worse however as we decided to continue in our bliss and upon exiting the tent were greeted to a round of applause by half her bus and when asked which bus number I was on, I proclaimed I was with ground crew. Needless to say it spread quickly through the tour leaders and during breakfast I was aptly reminded of the goings on. Thank god most of them were leaving that afternoon.

So a fantastic night, but not really the ideal starting conditions for a life or death bull race, so after donning the whites it was off to the bus equipped with my sangria to Pamplona.
So this was it, after finding our position in front of the town hall on the course, my drunken haze quickly disappeared as the adrenalin started to pump through my veins. After taking in tip from past runners we felt pretty prepared and were anxiously waiting the first cannon to sound which signalled the release of the first pack of bulls.
After the first cannon sounded we ran just past Dead Man’s Corner to wait for the first pack to go past, which they did at quite a steady pace but the first pack aren’t the ones to worry about, it’s the second pack which has all the angry fuckers in it. Upon the sound of the second cannon in which the next pack of bulls are released we started bolting down the street trying to get to the arena before they passed us. At this point I could hardly breath as the adrenalin was absolutely intense and we had no idea where the bulls actually where, all I knew is that I didn’t want to get stuck in the small entrance tunnel to the arena as there is no where to hide and with the police beating people who were trying to jump the barriers there was only one choice and that was too go through the tunnel. Turns out they weren’t too far behind at all, as after about 5 seconds of entering a massive roar went up as the pack of bulls entered the arena, but now it was time for the real fun to start.

Once the running bulls had exited the arena the gates where shut and the smaller bulls released into the arena where everyone who has ran through the streets is gathered and is trying to get away from these angry guys, as one guy was killed the day before the adrenalin was peaking out and was so intense my legs where starting to turn to jelly, so I decided to jump to the sidelines & watch the countless people being flicked about. It went on for about 20 minutes before everyone left the arena to go and party in the street…however we had garbage duty that morning  Not quite the best way to relieve all that adrenalin.

With most of the tours leaving on the Saturday afternoon the camp was starting to empty and out security shift on Saturday night was pretty sedate, except for the capture and arrest of the “Nipple Sucker” and a few mattress throwing incidents.

The next couple of days we just packed everything up and said our goodbyes before out 21 hour bus ride back to London on the Monday night.

All in all it was a good trip, have met some fantastic people along the way even if I did pick up a case of diarrhea and a hell nasty throat infection and cold.
Would I do it again? Probably not with the company I did it with, way to many power trips and just no real organization with doing things at least 3 times the norm, but definitely the way to do the festival.

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/1659693

Well after having a couple of hours in London it was time to make my way to sunny Spain where I've managed to pick up a job for a backpacking company setting up tents etc. ready for the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona with the main attraction being the running of the bulls.

After a short flight to Bilbo we were put on a bus for the 3 hour trip to the campsite, I really didn't want to sit on a bus again after just spending a week on one! Not too mention the 20 hour bus trip back to London to look forward too.

After arriving at the campsite there was no time to pick your arse, straight into it, pulling out tables & cleaning everything that would be transformed into the mother of all camping kitchens.

This week has being some kind of time warp. The first half went by really slow, but not in a bad way & the second half has being screaming by. I think it's down to the cruisy days we've being having.

Basically a day is like this, well at least for the first week. Up at 8am, either cook in the kitchen for everyone or put up some tents, have brekky round 10am and then work for a few more hours before lounging round the pool round midday and dinner at 8pm after that it's time to get plastered. I could definitely take this lifestyle as a permanent thing I reckon.

There's about 50 of us working as a team to put up tents and get the campsite ready for the tourists who start to arrive tomorrow. They're all a pretty cool gang, although there's a couple of people on power trips but that's too be expected and a shit load of Kiwis, more than Aussies for a change.

Pretty much the first 4 days we were putting tents up, about 500 of the little buggers!, and just getting to know each other and trying to remember some names, I have trouble remembering a couple little lone 50 of them and it ain't made much easier when the beer bong made it first appearance on Monday night, pretty much wiping my brain clean. Monday was also the day we made a trip to the supermarket where we all just basically stocked up on alcohol, pretty much leaving the place dry of any intoxicating spirit.
On Thursday I was put in charge of the Aussie BBQ which went down in smoke and glory. I've never seen a BBQ produce some much bloody smoke, it didn't help that there was a total fire ban that we forgot about which meant the snags had to be moved inside to the grill, not very Aussie now is it

As we had made light work of the tents we were rewarded with a trip up to the local bar in Mendigorria & a trip to Sans Sebastian the following day.
Sans Sebastian was on the Friday and what a wicked costal city it is. Two bays with some nice beaches adorned by beautiful Spanish girls and little side streets through out the city to get lost in. The funniest thing was that Kel and I where walking round for a far while trying to find a traditional Spanish restaurant that didn't speak English but ended up at a restaurant where once we finished our meals relised that it was actually French! I guess the "La" should have given it away.

Friday night also played host to the Ground Crew talent quest, in which we took the second place crown. Our talent being drawing with someone else’s arms while they are hidden behind your back, very hard to explain but I guess quite visually appealing.

Saturday was more tent erecting and that night where taken into Pamplona to check out the course and to plan out route plus check the city out. I don't thing I relised before, but most of the track doesn't have fences you can jump over, it's just building either side and too get out of the way you need too clamber up drain pipes or the like. But not one to be deterred easily I'm still ready to give it a go and after seeing the bulls today I'm still ready to throw myself down the gauntlet.

Well the first lot of passengers arrive tomorrow and everything is going to be different round the campsite, shit load more people and more of a party vibe so can't wait and with around 2500 people arriving in the next 3 days it's gonna get full on.

Let the madness begin!!!

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/1659693