Another type of extreme sports
Berlin – London. Gmaps says 11 hours and around 1100 km. Of course it takes more than 11 hours. We’ve experienced that earlier and so we decided to depart on Wednesday 5 a.m., means one day before show so we can relax in London until next day. The crew so far: The band, Africa and Elvis. After loading in and catching Jens we wanted to grab Conny. “My id card is not valid anymore” Whaaaat? Damn! What now? A lot of calls were made to German border station to Netherlands. Can we get a temporary ID? Yes, no, maybe. After quite a time it comes out: no! We talk a lot, a lot of calls and then we decide: We drive to London and Conny gets his temporary ID at 8 or 9 am and will fly to London at evening. Wow what a start.
The next hours are dominated by a quite relaxed ride and sleeping passengers. After a few hours we arrive in Netherlands, later Belgium and finally in Calais at Euro tunnel. A quick ride so far. About 11 hours with many short breaks.
In Calais we had no reservation, because we didn’t know. Last year we didn’t have one too. The lady said 181 euro. Whaaaaaat????? Damn! Whyyyyyy? Well we paid and had a 30 minute ride through the tunnel. Meanwhile we were starting to talk real shit. The reasons were various: 1) we were tired 2) some of us had to pee 3) it’s our nature when touring 4) Elvis.
The less km to London the weirder the talks. In Britain Andreas took over since until then he was the only one with right side driving experience. At 7 p.m. we arrived in London Area. It took more than another hour to arrive at the hostel because it is in London Central. Damn! We arrived and checked in. 15 hours until then.
After that Andreas, Behrang and Africa tried to find a car park for our bus. Bad Idea. That took more than 2 hours! The car didn’t fit into the public NCPs. We parked it in a well camera secured street near Radisson. Still didn’t feel completely right. Another bad thing: We had to grab it until 8:30 am. After parking we got lost and it took around 1 hour of walking back. What a day!
After relaxing with beer and food we fell into bed and had a tired night. Andreas, Elvis and Conny picked up the car in the morning and found a car park near hostel. Fantastic 4 pounds/hour with maximum of 4 hours of stay permitted. AAAAAAhhhhhh! Later we all met at prêt-a-manger. Organic food can be really awesome! The next hours were waiting and relaxing, sleeping and drinking. Weather was really good! Sun, warm, clear sky. Yes! For the back ride we made a reservation for euro tunnel, 78 pounds. No comment.
Get In was actually at 4 pm but we had to depart at 2 because car park stay time was over! We had a short ride to ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts at the Mall and loaded off equipment into the club. Meanwhile the Persian Band Kiosk was doing sound check. Everyone was nice and friendly. We did sound check between 4 and 6 and then we were waiting until 8.
We had some talks, some photo shoots and then we got on stage. From the first song on people where applauding really loud! The people liked it! Yeah. There were lots of Persians, some English and even a few Germans. We had a lot of fun and it was a bit strange to make announcements in Farsi in-between. Teheran Girl and Wait were real highlights because some Iranians new these Songs and went crazy! After the show we had a lot of talks and people were amazed. We were happy, because it was not the usual audience for us.
We met a German couple that had seen the show @ Lido one week before. What a small world! London was their second Samavayo show ever! Great fans! We met friends and Family: Greets to Keyvan, Farin, Saide, Lysann, Ida, Hooman, Pouyan!
After hours of fun in the backstage with friends we started the parking in London action part III. Our plan: park the car in Highgate @ Behrang’s relatives => back to hostel by taxi => grab car in the morning! Why? Because the clubs people said it was no good idea to park the car like last night. Puh! It was past midnight already when we wanted to load stuff into the car and started searching the key for the car. Where is this damn key? “Did Marco take it into hostel?” “No he wouldn’t do that” “Don’t talk, keep searching” “Ok guys, Marco says he’s got the key”. Marco had been lying in bed already coz he was tired but 20 minutes later he arrived at ICA.
After arriving at hostel 5 of 8 got off. Andreas, Behrang and Elvis got to Highgate. Said hello to Behrang’s aunt and cousins (around 2 a.m.) took the taxi and got back to hostel. At hostel Behrang met Jens again. He was waiting ‘til 4 a.m. to get to Gatwick. He had to fly to Berlin at 6. So Behrang helped Jens to make time pass faster until he got to bed at 4.
7 a.m. waking up. Fast flow. Taxi. Highgate. Grab Car. We had to get the tunnel train at 11:19 so check in at 10:49. Conny woke up but had a flight to Frankfurt at 9.
It took more than 2 hours to be out of London! So what? We arrived at the tunnel at 11:10. We had luck because we didn’t have to wait full 2 hours. We got the train at 12:49. We ate and drank some at euro tunnel mini mall.
Back on the continent Elvis had his first ride with a bus when we arrived in Netherlands. After that we had a long turn until evening when we had another break eating some fast food.
It was Friday so the highway wasn’t empty at all or like on Wednesday. We had a really long ride and arrived in Berlin at 2 a.m. on Saturday! So it took 18 hours back!
Extreme 3 days. Thanks to Bar-ax, Pantea, Farrokh and a lot more! A great experience!
stats: 2200 km, 33 hours of driving in a total of 69 hours, more than 30 red bull
