Frank Turner's Latvian Tour Diary! Day 3...
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Frank Turner
If you're not quite up to speed on where we are, click here for the previous day's Latvian adventures. For now though, it's day 3 of Frank Turner Does Latvia...
SATURDAY
Our story resumes the morning after the Veto party, and, as you might guess from previous parts to this story (and from this photo), we were feeling pretty sexy. On getting dressed for breakfast I also discovered that, in my nocturnal stupor, I had remembered to pack some loo roll in my pocket. Sometimes I surprise myself, I mean, just imagine if I'd forgotten it! Anyhoo...
The plan for the day was to lounge a little, have some breakfast and generally recover from the night before, and then head over to a town in the East of the country called Cesis, which is where our friend Andzs and many of his crew are originally from. The first part of this plan was achieved with aplomb - breakfast consisted of pizza (we'll call this 'pizza #1') at a joint called Cili Pica that I'd been to on previous Latvian excursions. We even managed to spot some awesome grafitti en route, proving that street criticism is alive and well in the Baltics.
We stocked up on food and then met up with a bunch of other reprobates from the night before and all piled into a van driven by the ever-patient Julia, who'd been elected to drive both there and back without much consultation, it seemed. She decided to revenge this decision by driving like an absolute fucking maniac on some of the worst roads in Europe, which was, erm, eventful. Overtaking is so much more fun if your error margins (with regard to oncoming traffic) are practically non-existent. We were also treated to Jannis' band rehearsing in the back of the van with some acoustics as we drove, a rehearsal that carried on unbroken through piss-stops and near-death experiences alike.
We arrived in Cesis and loaded into the venue, which happened to be the other half of a building we played three years previously with Million Dead. Soundcheck consisted of me and Ben running through a bunch of Weezer covers until ordered to stop by a panicked (and clearly philistine) sound man. Afterwards we headed over to another place to get some food and drink (the venue didn't have a bar, unfortunately). I got what we shall refer to as 'pizza #2' (it's hard being vegetarian in Lartvia, OK?), which was nice, but nearly as nice as the drinks. Ben and I decided that white russians were the order of the day. I'd been a little worried that this might be a slightly controversial drink to order in Latvia, politically speaking, but it turned out the barman just didn't know what it was. After some wrangling about ingredients and translation from Andzs, we succeeded, to smiles all round.
Back at the show, Jannis was kicking things off in style and there was a good crowd in. Next up was Waldo, a Latvian singer-songwriter, who was ace. Ben and I warmed up backstage (see right) for our second and final show together in the trip. The gig itself went well. There's not much in the way of photographic evidence due to Ben losing the camera on a table in the dressing room for most of the duration. Nevertheless I can assure you that we rocked, and I even managed to distract people from Ben's search for the camera by finding a rubber chicken in my ever-eventful pockets. As much fun as we had, I couldn't really hear myself onstage and so blew my voice out, a process helped by the fact that I was clearly coming down with something (probably ebola).
After the show, we arsed around a little in Cesis, but it had started snowing, I wasn't feeling 100%, most of the bars were closed (it was pretty late) and most importantly our sober driver, Julia, wanted to get on with the 2 hour drive back to Riga. So, after posing for a promised photo in the snow for our old friends Fighting With Wire, we set out for home. I attempted to stay up and chat with Julia to help keep her awake but failed miserably and passed out.
Our last event for the day happened when we got back to Andzs' flat in the capital. I decided I wanted some water, and in Latvia tap-water is generally a bad idea. So I headed to the shop across the road, confidently armed with my ability to say in basic Latvian, "Can I have some still mineral water please?" I uttered my sentence with the confidence of a classical orator, and just for good measure pointed at the bottle I wanted behind the counter, just so the little old Latvian lady could have no cause for confusion. She nodded grimly and headed into the depths of her shop, to return with the massive cannister you see left. Unable to say "No no, the small one will do" in Latvian (or anything else for that matter, aside from various swearwords) I buckled and coughed up, which left me lugging the heavy fucker up five flights of stairs, before heading to bed.
The 4th and final installment with be coming very soon, so keep an eye out for it!
Frank Turner
Frank Turner Official Site
Frank Turner Myspace
Buy Frank Turner CDs | Buy Frank Turner mp3s | Buy Frank Turner Tickets | Buy Frank Turner Merch
If you're not quite up to speed on where we are, click here for the previous day's Latvian adventures. For now though, it's day 3 of Frank Turner Does Latvia...
SATURDAY
Our story resumes the morning after the Veto party, and, as you might guess from previous parts to this story (and from this photo), we were feeling pretty sexy. On getting dressed for breakfast I also discovered that, in my nocturnal stupor, I had remembered to pack some loo roll in my pocket. Sometimes I surprise myself, I mean, just imagine if I'd forgotten it! Anyhoo...The plan for the day was to lounge a little, have some breakfast and generally recover from the night before, and then head over to a town in the East of the country called Cesis, which is where our friend Andzs and many of his crew are originally from. The first part of this plan was achieved with aplomb - breakfast consisted of pizza (we'll call this 'pizza #1') at a joint called Cili Pica that I'd been to on previous Latvian excursions. We even managed to spot some awesome grafitti en route, proving that street criticism is alive and well in the Baltics.
We stocked up on food and then met up with a bunch of other reprobates from the night before and all piled into a van driven by the ever-patient Julia, who'd been elected to drive both there and back without much consultation, it seemed. She decided to revenge this decision by driving like an absolute fucking maniac on some of the worst roads in Europe, which was, erm, eventful. Overtaking is so much more fun if your error margins (with regard to oncoming traffic) are practically non-existent. We were also treated to Jannis' band rehearsing in the back of the van with some acoustics as we drove, a rehearsal that carried on unbroken through piss-stops and near-death experiences alike.
We arrived in Cesis and loaded into the venue, which happened to be the other half of a building we played three years previously with Million Dead. Soundcheck consisted of me and Ben running through a bunch of Weezer covers until ordered to stop by a panicked (and clearly philistine) sound man. Afterwards we headed over to another place to get some food and drink (the venue didn't have a bar, unfortunately). I got what we shall refer to as 'pizza #2' (it's hard being vegetarian in Lartvia, OK?), which was nice, but nearly as nice as the drinks. Ben and I decided that white russians were the order of the day. I'd been a little worried that this might be a slightly controversial drink to order in Latvia, politically speaking, but it turned out the barman just didn't know what it was. After some wrangling about ingredients and translation from Andzs, we succeeded, to smiles all round.Back at the show, Jannis was kicking things off in style and there was a good crowd in. Next up was Waldo, a Latvian singer-songwriter, who was ace. Ben and I warmed up backstage (see right) for our second and final show together in the trip. The gig itself went well. There's not much in the way of photographic evidence due to Ben losing the camera on a table in the dressing room for most of the duration. Nevertheless I can assure you that we rocked, and I even managed to distract people from Ben's search for the camera by finding a rubber chicken in my ever-eventful pockets. As much fun as we had, I couldn't really hear myself onstage and so blew my voice out, a process helped by the fact that I was clearly coming down with something (probably ebola).
After the show, we arsed around a little in Cesis, but it had started snowing, I wasn't feeling 100%, most of the bars were closed (it was pretty late) and most importantly our sober driver, Julia, wanted to get on with the 2 hour drive back to Riga. So, after posing for a promised photo in the snow for our old friends Fighting With Wire, we set out for home. I attempted to stay up and chat with Julia to help keep her awake but failed miserably and passed out.Our last event for the day happened when we got back to Andzs' flat in the capital. I decided I wanted some water, and in Latvia tap-water is generally a bad idea. So I headed to the shop across the road, confidently armed with my ability to say in basic Latvian, "Can I have some still mineral water please?" I uttered my sentence with the confidence of a classical orator, and just for good measure pointed at the bottle I wanted behind the counter, just so the little old Latvian lady could have no cause for confusion. She nodded grimly and headed into the depths of her shop, to return with the massive cannister you see left. Unable to say "No no, the small one will do" in Latvian (or anything else for that matter, aside from various swearwords) I buckled and coughed up, which left me lugging the heavy fucker up five flights of stairs, before heading to bed.
The 4th and final installment with be coming very soon, so keep an eye out for it!
Frank Turner
Frank Turner Official Site
Frank Turner Myspace
Buy Frank Turner CDs | Buy Frank Turner mp3s | Buy Frank Turner Tickets | Buy Frank Turner Merch
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