yesterday, we had the third rendition of the try to bring the north western german tradition kohlfahrt (literally: cabbage tour; a description in english can be found here) to switzerland. (actually i missed the two previous renditions…)

i’d guess that for everyone except the people living in north west germany, it must seem utterly strange to see a group of people going around with a hand cart, playing a strange game involving two balls rolling around, and drinking hard and soft booze all the time. whatever. we had fun.

actually, this was probably the first kohlfahrt featuring a view on the alps! (at the first rendition, one couldn’t see the alps from the place where it took place, and even though the second was at the same place than this time, the weather was too bad apparently…) here are two shots of our view on the alps:

finally a view on the beautiful sunset we were able to watch:

i took these photos on my train ride on the 23.12.2007, somewhere between switzerland and northern germany. unfortunately, it was neither white in zürich nor in northern germany…

this one is not about me, but about drunken fellows travelling by train which are talkative. way too talkative. annoyingly talkative.
on my trip to oldenburg, one week ago, a pretty drunken guy, maybe around 70 or 80 years old, equipped with a walker and lots of booze, began asking me at münster’s main station whether he’s on the right platform for the next train to osnabrück. well, yes, he was, and so he decided it’s a good idea to stay with me and talking to me. in the train, he managed to chase someone out of his seat so we could sit there and annoyed lots of people by talking loud, which provoked some angry reactions, though they died quickly as they probably noticed that there’s no way to change the situation… well, then i spend the next fourty minutes listening to his tales and bad jokes. the couple in the seats next to us seemed to really enjoy this, often they had visible problems not to start laughing out loudly. so at least someone in that train was enjoying the whole situation. at one point the situation was pretty bizarre, when he started telling me that he could kill someone using his harmonica, by bashing it hard enough into someones brain, and then continuing that he once killed a few rabbits. while i was expecting to hear some gory details, he explained that he gave them something with mildew to eat. then, later, he started telling how easy it is to build a hand grenade with a bottle of korn, which could kill lots of people in the train. sounds great if you hear this from a completely drunken guy equipped with lots of booze… at some point, when he realized we were going to osnabrück, he suddenly noticed that he wanted to go to münster and he just came from osnabrück. what the heck, so he decided to take the train another time, to return to münster. well, finally, in osnabrück, i got rid of him… i was really glad he was simply drunken and talkative, but not aggressive…
then, yesterday, when travelling back to zürich, i had another such experience. in the ice from hannover to zürich, i was sitting at the very end of the train. everything was fine, until i went to the restroom, noticing that someone had just smoked inside there, it was stinking like hell, and when i got out my clothes were stinking, too. i suspected the guy who was inside before me, he was sitting a few seats away from me and seemed to be talking alot to the other people around him. well, first i thought that he probably knows them, and ignored the issue. later, i saw him drinking booze, and a bit more later, people around him started leaving the train when they reached their destination (or decided to change the coach, who knows…). at some point, most of the people were gone at the end of the coach where i was sitting, and at some point he looked at me and decided i’m the next one he could talk to. well, there goes the last two hours of my train ride, which i wanted to spend listening to music and watching the night through the window… in these two hours, i learned a lot on how drunk he was, about his profession, about his hobbies, about his train ride, about his salary, about his name, about his life, about his interest in martial arts – he boasted that he’s a shaolin master, and that he could easily kill people but he’d never do this, because he is such a nice guy. great, that was what i really wanted to hear. thank you. he decided many times to go smoking again, to the restroom (smoking is actually forbidden in the whole train)… well. the last hour i spend alone with him, the few people which were left left us in basel (maybe they left the train, or at least the coach). during that hour, he decided that he could smoke inside the compartment, too. well. i thought “fuck you.” and just hoped that the last thirty minutes would fly away as fast as possible… finally, zürich was announced and, contrary to my usual style of waiting until the train really arrives, i jumped up, grabbed my stuff, said goodbye and went a few coaches forward…
well. i don’t really care when people are drunk, but if they are, it would be really nice if they could simply sleep or be silent, and stop annoying other people…

i think it’s time to take a look at the list of concerts i attended this year and to list the best ones. at these two links, you can find a pretty complete list of the concerts i attended. i decided to divide the top list into two categories: prog and metal.

prog

for the third place, i cannot decide between three concerts, all which took place in pratteln in the z-7, namely, first, the spock’s beard gig on the 16.05.2007, second, the anathema & moondawn gig on the 31.05.2007, and, third, the fish gig on the 27.11.2007. all three gigs have been very good. most memorable was probably spock’s beard keyboardist, playing with both hands and feet, while his poor technician had to hold the keyboard construction together so it wouldn’t fall apart.

the second place goes to the blackfield & pure reason revolution concert, which took place on the 24.02.2007 in pratteln (z-7). i think this was the first concert where i really liked the opener, so much that i bought one of their albums. actually, i had to order it by mail, as the ones they had with them were sold out at the end of their concert (hence, i wasn’t the only one who liked it alot). the main act itself, blackfield, a collaboration between the porcupine tree frontman steven wilson and the israeli rock star aviv geffen, was also really good.

the first place goes to the porcupine tree & anathema concert, which took place on the 12.11.2007 in zürich (volkshaus). despite several people in the audience didn’t like anathema too much (“too boring”), i was pleased to see them again. for me, their music expresses simply too many emotions to be boring, eating up energy until bursting into the listener’s ear. the main act, porcupine tree, one of my favorite bands, was as good as i expected them to be. even though they played a lot from the current album, fear of a blank planet, which i don’t like as much as some of the older ones, they also played many classics. unfortunately, they didn’t played arriving somewhere but not here, which i would really loved to listen to. but, besides that, i still think this is the best prog concert i attended this year.

metal

again, as before, i cannot decide on someone for the third place, but i have two canidates in mind. the first one is the dream theater & symphony x concert, which took place on the 31.10.2007 in winterthur (eulachhallen). the second canidate is the apocalyptica & sturm und drang concert, which took place on the 09.11.2007 in zürich (volkshaus). all these bands are really good, and the shows they delivered were so, too, featuring many small details, as neat decoration. but both of these concerts also have their sides. namely, symphony x played way too short (but then, i’ll see them again next february as headliner), the location was strange (the wardrobe was outside), and dream theater could have played longer, too (i heard the rumor that the local organizer fucked this up by not registering the concert with the authorities, which in turn resulted in the police ordering the concert to be ended earlier). at the apocalyptica concert, i didn’t like the opener sturm und drang too much; they played really good and professional, but it simply wasn’t the kind of music which i really like.

the second place is filled by the amorphis, swallow the sun & insomnium concert, which took place at the 18.11.2007 in pratteln (z-7). (videos from the concert can be found here.) this concert featured three very good finnish bands, one of them, namely swallow the sun, being one of my favorite ones. their shows were good, the selection of songs was, too (i would have loved to hear some more swallow the sun songs, but then, i would probably have only been really pleased if they would have simply played all songs from their three albums, which is slightly unrealistic to expect from a co-headliner). i was headbanging a lot, met some friends, had a lot of fun.

the first place goes to the moonsorrow & swallow the sun concert, which took place at the 09.04.2007 (easter monday) in pratteln (z-7). actually, there was a third band playing as an opener, whose name i forgot. this concert was one of the most incluencal concert for me this year, not only as it introduced me to two bands, namely moonsorrow and swallow the sun, which i now count as two of my most favorite bands. besides that, the atmosphere was simply perfect, and so was the audience. i still remember headbanging with eric (a guy i met on this concert and on another one a bit later, who’s also an opeth fan), even though headbanging right next to the mosh pit can be pretty painful…

today i was on the last concert for this year – at least, the last one planned ahead more than a few days. this was probably also my last visit to the z-7 for this year.
this time, three bands were playing, the main act being ensiferum (which is latin and means as much as sword bearing), a finnish (what else) viking/folk metal band. well, as it is quite common for viking/folk metal bands nowadays, a huge crowd of kids was there. i saw the first ones at zurich main station, it was quite obvious that the drunken (or starting to get drunk) teenagers as the same track dressed in black were heading for the same destination. i haven’t felt so old for a long time…
the concert started with the swedish power metallers insania. as i already wrote once, i don’t like that kind of music too much, but it was ok. in particular, the singer made funny grimaces (though i’m not sure if it was intentional that they were funny). after that, a taiwanese symphonic black metal band called chthonic entered the stage, featuring an erhu (“chinese violin”). i liked that one pretty much, and i could stand the screaming way more than napalm death‘s or cradle of filth‘s screaming, which i pretty much hate, even though it was pretty similar (in my opinion).
finally, ensiferum entered the stage. well, one member (markus) sat down on a chair, and some guy announced that he isn’t feeling well, that they just fetched him from hospital and that they’ll bring him back right after the concert. that’s devotion! the result was that their gig lasted only a bit more than one hour, until markus let announce (one of the tech guys was regularly filling in water for him and handling him the cup, and passed on messages from him to the other band members) that he wasn’t feeling good and so the last song was announced. (the last song’s beginning was accompanied by chthonic‘s erhu player.) after that, they gave an encore, without markus though, and maybe even a second, but i decided to catch the train instead.
well. on the way back i was pretty much annoyed by the fact that apparently most of the night bus passengers have no clue how the thing works. they don’t manage to change bank notes into coins (there’s a machine for that), they don’t manage to buy the right tickets (there are instructions all over the place), they don’t manage to use the right bus entry (you have to enter in the front, and not try to enter at the other doors, and waiting for 30 seconds until figuring out that you can’t get in there), they don’t manage to prepare the regular ticket and the night surcharge to show it to the driver (instead, they start to search their pockets for another 30 seconds). i understand that some people don’t speak or read german and thus have trouble following the instruction, but i think this didn’t applied to most of them. well, but that explains why the night bus is always late, and the amount of time it is late increases at every stop (at least, as long as people are entering). but at least i could watch all this while sitting inside the bus, so i could listen to good music (kari, of course, as also during the train ride; a big contrast to the concert :) )…

friday morning, i shot an overview over the city. the photo is taken from the eth polyterrasse and prominently displays the üetliberg.

today i was on an ärzte concert. actually, the concert took place around five minutes by foot from my apartment, which was pretty nice for the way back :)
die ärzte is a fun punk band from berlin (from berlin!), which is almost as old as me, and still alive after five year long break-up around 1990. well. i’ve already seen them twice, in 2001 in osnabrück and in 2004 in oldenburg, and i also own most of their albums. though i stopped listening to them in the last few years, i still wanted to see them again as i found out that they would play in zürich today, so i went.
the concert started with a support band, which unfortunately was played with way too low volume. i think they were quite good, but it sounded like background music in a pub while too many people are talking, and not like a band at a concert. that was really strange. but it turned out that die ärzte played with the “right loudness.” what was nice was the smoking ban, even though many simply ignored it. i really feel a lot better after concerts (and also on the next morning) if the air is not soaked with smoke…
during the support act, bela and farin appeared on the stage several times. for one song, they played all in panties with their trousers down (except the drummer and the bassist), which was somehow funny. the support played maybe for 30 minutes, and after that followed a around 30 to 45 minutes break. at 20:30, die ärzte entered the stage and rocked the house for the next 2:15 hours. even though i’ve never heard some of the songs before (probably from their newest album(s?) which i’ve never heard), i knew most songs and even remembered the lyrics. they played many classics, like der graf, schunder song, westerland (with wannsee replaced by zürisee), 2000 mädchen, rebell, …
the audience was really enthusiastic, and i had to back up a lot (from maybe 20-30 meters from the stage to something around 100 meters) to escape most of the mosh pit. probably i’m getting old, at least i prefer to stand a bit and enjoy the music without being thrown and pushed around all the time.
to sum it up, it was nice to see bela, rod and farin again. even if it’s just for the sake of reminiscence.

as promised, i uploaded a few photos from my trip to the üetliberg which was more than one week ago. you can find them at blackness.

tomorrow, our institute will have a party to celebrate the move into the new building. for that, i produced a few cakes:

today, i attended fish‘s concert in the z-7. fish was one of the founding members of marillion, a british prog band which happens to be two years older than me, but left them in 1988, after marillion released the clutching at straws album in 1987. in the beginning of fish‘s gig, an intro video was shown, displaying all the 20 years from 1987 to 2007 with a famous scene from that year, with a subtitle relating it to fish in some humouros way. except 2000, when a picture of george w. showed up with the subtitle “what the fuck?!”, and 2004, when another picture of george w. showed up with “again? you assholes!” ;-)
well. the concert was really great; fish was in a great mood and told funny stories between the songs. i basically only knew the albums 13th star and clutching at straws before, but they played a couple of songs from these two, or at least i thought i recognized a few…
i originally planned to buy 13th star at the merchandize booth, but they only had a special edition there which had a way too high price for me… well. besides that, i was pretty tired and exhausted, had problems keeping standing, but survived till the end, had to run for the train, which almost killed me (running uphill while it’s freezing and when you’re exhausted and pretty dehydrated is not a good idea), but i caught the train and even managed to walk the way from the main station to my place in zürich (without running though). and now it’s time to grab some sleep.
good night.