Forged in Fire

Well, maybe not but it was a damn hot week down in Holland and Belgium. Absolutely worth the effort though since the two Anvil concerts were fantastic and how can Kind Diamond fail???

At least we had a few days at home sorting out everything from Headbangers Open Air, chill down a bit since that one was extremely hot as well. Also do some gardenwork and clean up the Void Mansion a bit. We also managed to get my birthday present out from the garage and on to the selected location in the garden. I know you shouldn't talk about weight around females (because it is a she) but she was damn heavy. Me, Peter and David worked hard to get it around the house. The few people passing by on the street looked at us like they'd seen a ghost or so...

There's still a few more things to sort out in the corner around the gargoyle, put a few things back in place and so but it sure looks cool!!! No comments from the neighbors yet though! 

Anyway, we went to Holland and Belgium for a few concerts after Headbangers Open Air. Since all shows were in the cities and rather close to the stations we decided to skip the car and travel by train this time. It's always a bit nervous beforehand, the uncertainty if we were going to make it to the location and so. But everything went fine and it was really good to relax on a train rather than sitting in a car. 

The route stretched from Schiphol to Haarlem to Sint-Niklaas to Lokeren, back to Sint-Niklaas, off to Tilburg before returning to Schiphol. It felt even better when Anvil told us they'd been stuck in traffic for over 3 hours driving from Wacken to Haarlem because they pained the lines on the road by hand in Germany closing three of four lanes in the freeway....

 
The Anvil show in Haarlem was really much fun. It was a very long time ago I last saw Anvil play in a club. Don't think I've ever seen them headline in a club either so 90 minutes worth of music sure was a treat! More about that on Metal Kaoz later though!

Then off to Lokeren and the Lokerse Fest. That was more of a town party than a Festival but since they had the good taste in booking Anvil together with Fear Factory, Danzig and Sabaton and a few more it was worth a visit. It was extremely hot to stand on the asphalt infront of the stage though. But again, a good day with good concerts.

Then we actually had a day off in Sint-Niklaas... What you do in Sint-Niklaas you ask? No clue, we couldn't find anything interesting (Free Recordstore had 10 Heavy Metal records in total) so we took the chance and catch up on some sleep and have the AC in the Hotelroom work hard.

But it is a quite cute town and we found a very nice place for dinner... Ironically it was called Copenhagen Tavern or something like that. Danish we can eat almost any time we like. But ok, it's not that much difference and I was certainly NOT up for more fried stuff with mayo at this point. The food was great and we took the opportunity to try some Belgian Beers... Peter stuck with his new favorite though... Mc Chouffe, the dark brother of sinister La Chouffe (who got Peter good on their first meet *s*).

So we had some time to relax as well. We actually took some more time to check out the church in Haarlem, simply because it was so massive. It kind of looked like they'd put one giant church on top of another giant church. Of course the city of Haarlem had realized the greatness of it too and charged an entrance fee to let us in... On particular impressive thing was the organ. The info-sheet said it had over 5000 (YES!!!) pipes and was about 30m high. It would be so awesome to get the chance to play something like that... Just imagine how cool a really doomy song would sound on a machine like that!

After Sint-Niklaas we took the train to Tilburg for the King Diamond show. Luckily the temperature had eased up a bit by this time. Still not enough to make the venue a place to breathe in though so it was a bit painful on occasion to look at the show... But more on that later as well!

First day back in the office after vacation today. Of course I could have taken a few more days of vacation but it's still rather calm which is a good start... That gives me a few days to regroup, start up and set a plan for the coming weeks. I think the pace will be the same as before the summer so it was really good to get a few extra days of vacation to relax now..

Cheers
E

NP: DRAGONSCLAW - Judgement Day