Castle Party 2005

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Bolków Kastély Party 2005 s mindaz, ami mögötte van (ill. előtte történt), webnaplós leírás kalandjainkról…

WARNING: THIS WILL BE VERY LONG*
WRITTEN TOGETHER BY LOUISE AND TOUSLEDBIRDMADGIRL

The first time we saw the Crüxshadows was in the hot and greasy afternoon while having a Coke at the KFC situated right by Rock Cafe where they played. They were eating at the table right next to us, the whole band. They smiled at us, but we did not want to disturb them while eating (the poor guys didn’t even have the time to eat a proper food in a restaurant because they got stuck at the Czech border for a long time and came a few hours later than expected). It was a strange sight to see them in that place (especially as I work in KFC myself, says TousledBirdmadGirl.)…

This time we didn’t get to talk to them before the concert, as they were quite in a hurry to prepare everything. The concert itself was fabulous, as always…they opened with Annabell Lee, followed by the new single Foreverlast (such a kickass song!!!!), then Dragonfly, and all of these songs we love so dearly, like Tears, Eurydice, Edge Of The World, Helen, Deception… they closed with Marilyn, My Bitterness, and as always we were dancing on the stage. :) It was a wonderful party and we think everybody enjoyed it a lot, the band as well as us fans…

We remained sitting on the stage after the gig was over, and in a few minutes Rogue came up to us and he gave me his hand and asked us how we were, which was so sweet that he actually remembered us from last year. Then he got surrounded by fans, so we agreed to talk later. In the meanwhile, we finally talked to Rachel and George after such a long time. We really missed all of these people and it was wonderful to talk to them again! Rachel was very sweet with us, as well as George, and they treated us like their old friends. Same with Jessica. Unfortunately we couldn’t talk with her for too long, but she was totally lovely and sweet. :) She always is, and we love her to death. :)

When most of the people were gone, Rogue returned to us to say hello and treat us with his usual warm welcome hug. No idea how it exactly happened, but after some 30 minutes we caught ourselves getting involved in a highly sophisticated political discussion with Rogue, talking about the American elections, Clinton’s sex scandal, modern terrorism, patriotism, history, the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the European Union, George Bush, and people’s atttitude towards American politics… Think he was quite happy that he was given an opportunity to express his ideas and seemed to be very open-minded, able to understand our point of views. He looked straight into our eyes while talking, and touched our shoulders and hugged us a few times. Then he had to pack his stuff, so he invited us to continue our talk backstage… We were more than happy to give him a helping hand when he asked us to carry his belongings outside to the van… We also did a great job helping them finish up the leftover beer from the refrigerator, and then the two of us and the band moved on to the van, still chatting.

Apart from the interesting and substantial talk on politics, we were delighted to realize that Rogue had fond memories of our discussion from last summer, when we actually shared our ideas and dreams on the true essence of love. “Love is never hot, it is always warm”, he told us almost exactly a year ago…and so many things have changed in our lives since, yet we still cherish these words. It was getting quite late in the meantime, and the others already carried all the stuff to the van, so we decided to say goodbye…a cheerful goodbye, knowing that we would meet within 48 hours in Bolkow.

As a matter of fact, we did not have any plans set before the gig to go to the Bolkow Castle Party in Poland , but once we were given the opportunity to travel with this guy who informed us that he was also heading to Bolkow the following day, we decided to see the Cruxies again.
We spent the rest of the night and the vast majority of the morning at the afterparty at Rock Cafe and Neosfera. Nothing special, we had a great time, drinking a lot and dancing even more of course. It was a perfect ending of a perfect night.

On the following day, we had an appoinment with our Bolkow chaffeour from Germany in a tiny hotel in the middle of nowhere, so we only managed to sleep some 2 hours… but surprisingly enough (and in spite of the disgustingly hot weather), we were still doing quite OK.
After some three hours of struggle (which seemed to us eternity), we finally managed to leave the hotel and got on the road at last. It wasn’t before a small village called Mala Skala that it began to dawn on us that the guy (who is in mid-40’s and is rather strange, in fact not quite normal and who nearly killed us listening to his loooong, neverending and extremely boring monologues on his and his whole entire fucked-up philistine family’s life) had not the slightest clue that we were planning to go to Bolkow in Poland, but he was convinced that the three of us were just about to have the time of our lives in the above-mentioned shithole called Mala Skala where some little festival was going to take place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He seemed to be quite a bit puzzled when we finally enlightened him about the truth, and after messing around for hours at a petrol station in Mala Skala, he eventually agreed to drive us to Bolkow (to our huge relief).

But what a terrible price we had to pay for this free travel…! Poor fellow annoyed us to hell, especially when he announced that he has been travelling around in Europe without passport and an ID which expired 4 years ago…so you can imagine how happy we were when they let us enter the country in the end. Needless to mention that we couldn’t be happier when we finally arrived to Bolkow in the evening and managed to spend a few hours without his company. We realized that these rare hours without him are so precious and relieving that we started to refer to them as an “emotional holiday” and began to make up plans how to get more of this kind of enjoyment (He seemed to enjoy our company much more than we did his, and insisted on taking a picture…………).

However, we still could not enjoy every minute of our stay as we didn’t have any Polish currency exchanged, so we were happy that we could stay at the camp and have something to eat, using up the last pennies on our bank accounts. It was truly the experience that inspires artists: just the two of us and the nature, a small backpack, two sleeping bags, no tent, no roof above our heads and no money to spend on superficial things like incredibly cool Dead Can Dance, Diary Of Dreams, Clan Of Xymox t-shirts and Cruxshadows dvd’s (fortunately we already had our second CXS t-shirt from Prague, lol).

Soon we decided to take a walk to check out the old familiar places, and we were lucky enough to bump into our dear friends Emke and Zsófi whom we still owe a huge pizza and an even bigger booze and getting drunk together for taking us wretched homeless people in their tents…of course it was raining that night, so we were more than happy to share the tent and stay protected from the rain. So this wasn’t a big deal, but unfortunately the following night brought much more complications…

The second night was when the Crüxshadows were playing. We spent the afternoon and the evening at the castle, hanging around watching and talking to beautiful people and feeling excited about the CXS concert. We also bumped into Jessica, who greeted us and said we would meet after the gig. Still in the afternoon we went to check the merchandise place and had a really nice chat with the t-shirt girl, who already knew us from Prague and seemed delighted delighted to see us again. She is a very lovely person and it was so great to talk to her.

Then again we were happy and thrilled to hear the first words of Annabell Lee, in spite of the bad sound and the huge crowd. The only adventage of these bigger places is that we finally witnessed Rogue climbing up the stage construction right during the second song (Foreverlast) and it really left us breathless! Firstly we thought it was a nice refreshment and it totally suited the atmosphere when it started to rain a bit during Tears and the band seemed to be comfortable with it as well. However, the organizers and security guards (R.I.P., hope soon!!!!!) didn’t share our opinion on this. We heard Eurydice and Deception and Rogue gave a wonderful performance, dancing and hugging with people and despite the rain and the constant warnings of the security guards he performed more climbing as well, which was delightful to watch. However, things got out of hand completely. We were just enjoying and jumping to the rhythm of Edge Of The World, while all of a sudden and without any warning or explanation the sound was interrupted, the lights went out and some different music started to play in the background!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nobody knew what was going on, and we didn’t get a proper explanation later either. Each member of the band just froze in the middle of their movement without knowing what to do and looked around totally confused. They just stood on the stage for long minutes, having no clue what should be done or whether they can continue the show. When it became clear the gig wouldn’t continue, they decided to refuse the warning of the organizers and made a great gesture towards the audience, and finished at least the interrupted song without any sound. Soon everybody understood what they were just about to do and the whole big crowd calmed down and became silent. So we could hear Rogue singing and dancing without a microphone or any music, just him and the dancers. They finished Edge Of The World and they really gave their best to be heard at least in the first few lines, which was not easy in the case of such a big audience. We were touched to tears. Such a beautiful gesture and all the respect and responsibility they showed towards the audience. Then the storm grew stronger and it was raining cats and dogs. We tried to take advantage of the big mess and confusion to sneak backstage. Unfortunately, we couldn’t use the same good old hole by the wall we got well acquinted with the previous years, which crossed our plans quite a bit. Then we had to part, because Louise managed to jump over the obstacle and hide herself from the sharp security eyes behind the stage, but then the guards started to keep an eye on our location, so TousledBirdmadGirl had to check out the other backstage entrance on the other side of the castle. Unfortunately in vain, as she could only spend a few minutes backstage before the guards noticed her and threw her out in quite a disgusting way (despite the quarrel for long minutes). From this respect, Louise was luckier. She ran to the stage and hid behind it, and talked to unknown strangers until Rogue finally showed up in the left corner of the stage with such sadness in his big brown eyes. Louise turned to him and asked: “What happened? Will you continue later?”. Rogue looked confused and opened his arms: “I don’t know. I don’t understand Polish. I have no idea what`s going on. I even tried my best German…” And then we were hugging quite long, until a big fat bald security guard (who was probably very happy that his shift was coming to an early end) grabbed the CXS flag on the wall and tried to remove it. Rogue, still not knowing what was going on, held the flag in his arms and the bastard simply and rather violently took it out of his hand, just like that. Could hardly believe such a thing can happen in real life. The baby look confused and out of place, tried to smile at us and went back to the stage to show his care, support and understanding…for the people who were standing there frozen and confused, for the people who came from hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from all over the world, just to see Cruxshadows and Camouflage (who were supposed to play right after CXS).

And now all our respect goes to Rogue who spent at least an hour in the pouring rain, under an umbrella, talking to fans, trying to console them, singing Here comes the rain again together with the crowd. We were waiting in the corner under a tree (soaking wet, chilled to bone, without an umbrella or anything warmer to wear) until he finally headed back to the backstage area. Luckily, we still managed to exchange a few words under his umbrella when he finally came and we talked. When we briefly mentioned that we were thrown out by the security guards although we are both quite peaceful creatures, he seriously looked right at us with his huge warm eyes filled with a harrowing mixture of sympathy and sadness and silently said: “But you know, the problem is that unfortunately not all the people in the world think the way you do…” And then he gently said: “Give me a hug…” And he had to run backstage, saying that “we do not know where we will go or what we will do this evening, but I’m sure there will be some yelling coz now I have a problem with this festival”…

From then on we didn’t make any attempts to get backstage to have the promised talk with Jessica, since we didn’t want to disturb them in such circumstances or have more problems with the security guards. We left the castle and drank a bottle of vodka hiding from the rain, which was getting heavier and heavier. In the meantime the lights went out everywhere and the whole village remained without electricity. We went running to hide in the nearest pub (since we were freezing to the bone), where we bumped into our Czech friends. With them we went riding to their pension and spent the rest of the night there. We drank a lot and did crazy things, which was good as we didn’t have to think much about the painful end of the evening.

After we woke up a lovely surprise was waiting for us, as we got an sms from out dear Dutch friend Gaby (silent_water also on VF), where she told us she is now in Bolkow with Grendel and wanted to meet us! So we immediatelly headed to the hotel (the same one where the CXS stayed) and met her, her bf and Grendel there. It was short though, as they left for the soundcheck, but we met again later that evening.

We got back to the camp in quite a screwed up condition and slept a few hours. We woke up and we weren’t quite in the mood for anything, worrying that we have to wait another year to see the CXS again. Soon wegot better, though, when we saw George, Rachel, Sarah and the t-shirt girl at the castle in the evening. They greeted us spontaneously and we talked for a few minutes. It seemed like they were doing better and had a nice sleep. Later that evening we also met Rachel and the sweet t-shirt girl again, and we talked while queuing for some food. They were excited about Wolfsheim playing that night, and they were wildly dancing in the first row.
We also watched Wolfsheim and it was a lovely event indeed. They played some of our fave songs and they seemed to enjoy it all.

Afterwards we spent somre time in a pub with our lovely new friends, and danced like crazy at the afterparty. So after all, it was a nice ending of the whole festival…
The next day we left with our Czech friends, after some mess, which is needless to mention now. The journey was good and we had fun on the way. They were so great to drive us directly in front of our doors, which we were endlessly grateful for.

We were quite dead on the way back, happy we survived Bolkow.