THE SPAGHETTI & SCHNITZEL TOUR (as my mom called it) Part 1

Ok, so here’s a description of the tour (I’ll try not to be too long)…

Monday, July 2 – Triplet arrives in Italy
Tuesday, July 3 – Reform the Resistance arrives in Italy, then both bands come to the Hursts’ house (my house) and a great commotion invades the place.
Thursday, July 5 – We travel to Saxstock, Germany (aprox. 12 hr drive). Everything is going fine until we run out of gas in the middle of nowhere on the highway, about 2 or 3 hours away from our destination. I try to get someone to stop, but no one does. The guys venture off into the trees on the side of the highway and find a house where people give them some diesel. Unfortunately, because we’re at the beginning of a hill and we have a trailer hooked on the back of the van, the van doesn’t start. Then a cop stops and, with what sounds like an angry tone, tries to explain something to us in German (which we obviously don’t understand) and leaves. The only thing we do get is that we have to stay in the van and have the triangle out. Some other things happen that I won’t list to avoid making this so long, and then the guys decide that we should push the van up the hill so that we can then just roll down the other side and get to the next gas station. They push and push and we finally get to the top of the hill. It’s pitch black outside by now and cold, we try to start the van and it won’t even turn over. Fortunately, a mechanic comes (we think that the policeman called him, so he actually wasn’t mad at us but helped us!) and recharges our dead battery. When we finally get to the little town in where our first festival is, we can’t figure out where we need to go, it’s 1 am, nobody is around, the phone numbers I have aren’t working, and the fields around the town have no lights. Fortunately, João just guessed where to go and we found it. Friedemann (the festival organizer) then brings us to the house we’ll stay in, which is a small vacation home in the middle of a field, with goats nearby. The guys aren’t too happy about it, but hey, at least we have beds to sleep in after such a long journey.
What was really awesome about this whole day was that I didn't stress out or get worried about anything! Usually I get stressed out pretty easily when I have a lot of responsibility, but this time I was alright =) (I'm pretty sure that a big part of my being relaxed is thanks to the guys who made the whole experience a lot lighter and funnier). It was also cool that the guys let me do the decision making and that they respected me as tour manager even though I am just 18.
Friday, July 6 – Triplet plays at Saxstock Festival. It's an awesome concert even though they make a few mistakes. And Jasmin's voice was great even if she still had the mouth infection!
Saturday, July 7 – Reform the Resistance plays at Saxstock Festival. During the concert the snare drum keeps moving forward and at some point Ryan hits his finger on the side of it. He keeps playing though there's blood spattering all over and Ben jumps on stage, duct tapes the sliced finger and the concert keeps going! (I never even noticed any of it from where I was standing at the merch table)
Saxstock is a nice, small festival, which has been going on for 2 years. The people there were extremely nice to us and we loved our time there. The atmosphere was very cozy and happy and it felt like we were part of a big family. We made many friends. There are some pictures on their website.
Sunday, July 8 – Salvation Army Club gig in Chemnitz, Germany
The place we played at was a small, underground club with a low, round stone ceiling. The guys loved it (even though they couldn't jump much cuz otherwise they'd hit their heads haha). Not many people came, but most of them had already seen the bands at Saxstock. At the end of the concert, we said goodbye to everyone. Daniel, one of the organizers of the Saxstock Festival, came up to me and was so sweet. He told me how he was impressed at how I put all of myself into this and how touched he was that I even went up at the last Triplet song when Jas called all the girls to the front and that I was one of the only girls that danced. He said that it really showed that I cared about this tour.
Monday, July 9 – For our free day, we were all going to go to Dresden, so I got up early to get ready, but found a bunch of stuff on the table. I wasn’t really happy about it since I had asked the Portuguese guys to clean up after themselves when they had their 3 am cereal snack, but I decided not to bother them and to let them sleep a bit longer. After I cleaned everything up, I got stuff ready for lunch (cuz I figured that it would be nice to have a hot meal for once) and then went to wake the guys up cuz I needed at least one of them to help me prepare the meal. I had to go into their room to wake them up about 7 times and then, finally, 45 minutes later, they started getting up and said that they could just make some sandwiches for lunch. Being very tired and very frustrated is not a good combination for me. In fact, I went in my room to Jas (who had decided to stay behind and rest) and burst out into tears. In the end, I stayed behind with Jas while the guys went to Dresden.
It was soo nice to just be us girls for a day! (This tour taught me that hanging out with guys a lot and living with guys are two very different things haha). Jas and I had a lot of fun. We slept a lot, talked a lot, laughed a lot, had nice showers and I made a very good dinner. Was very relaxing. We also made a short and very funny video of our girl’s day, but Ben has it on his computer. Later on, Daniela passed by for a visit and we had a candle lit tea and cookies time accompanied by music. Daniela was one of the girls who helped with food during Saxstock. She is a little, shy and sweet 30 year old girl who doesn’t speak any English, so it was interesting “speaking” to her using the few German words we knew and using our hands. I loved it. Yeah, it’s kind of frustrating not being able to say exactly what you want to say, but it’s interesting trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t know your language.
Later on, the guys got back and they gave me flowers and told me how they were sorry and that they didn’t mean to disrespect me and that I was doing a great job and that they appreciated it, etc....Aren’t they sweet? =)