Last Monday I went to the Helloween, Gammaray and Axxis concert in Tilburg.
And I think that the Gods of Metal were angry with my friend, because the way he had planned it we would arrive exactly on time, but in the end we didn't.
First the train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven (which we were told to take) was a few minutes late (not a big problem you'd think, it was only 3 minutes), but that caused us to miss our connection in Eindhoven, which we were 2 minutes late for.
Then the next train to Tilburg arrived 20 minutes later (also 3 minutes late, but not really a big deal at this point). We boarded the train and sat down and were waiting to leave. But then they announced that 'due to some technical problems we will experience delay of a yet unknown time'. Then 4 minutes later they announced 'due to problems with the railway, this train will not be departing today'. So... we missed one train and then another broke down. By this time we were worried if we would ever get there at all.
another 20 minutes after we were supposed to leave the 2nd time finally another train that would go to Tilburg came. This train did leave and we got to Tilburg.
We ran the rest of the way and found out were were 30 minutes late, which we thought wasn't a big deal, because Axxis would play first for about 30 minutes and then there'd be 30 minutes of break-time while the crew made sure that Gammaray's instruments were in working order.
When we got to there though we found that Gammaray was already playing, and this was the band we really went there for in the first place. So we were kinda pissed off about that, we were worried that they'd play first and
then Axxis. But strangely enough, standing right next to us was a friend of my friend. He told us that Gammaray had just started playing and we came in during the first song. And also that they had apparently opened the doors and started the concert 30 minutes early, which he only got to see because he had arrived crazily early. He also told us to our great relief that Axxis had sucked, we weren't roaring to see them anyway, I only knew 2 songs and my friend didn't like them much either.
During Gammaray's show we were just standing and watching, listening, enjoying, when suddenly we were pushed aside by this girl that was standing behind us with her friends. She had been taking pictures over our shoulders with her phone for a while now and she decided that we (especially my friend) were too tall to stand behind so, drunk as she was, she took her place right between us and she took a lot of space. She didn't just listen and take pictures, she was kinda drunkenly dancing, kind of. We were kind of laughing on the inside because of her behavior and kind of thinking 'what the hell?'.
Well, we were too preoccupied with the concert to really care that someone was almost bothering us, so we just watched and after the show we kind of laughed about what happened and we talked a little with his friend about what was happening and why they were playing and such.
Then the Helloween show started and we were all ready to rock. But right before they started 2 guys were looking for a spot and decided that
right in front of us was as good as any other spot, which I guess was true. We were again thinking 'what the...?' and were getting a little bummed because they pushed us back almost forcibly. Then it turned out that they were with the lady that had pushed us aside during the Gammaray show and they didn't like standing behind my friend because he's pretty tall and they weren't so tall.
So of course that drunken lady showed up again too and she took her space, and her friends gave her that space. She was also on the phone a lot with a friend of her, letting him hear the show through it, can't imagine he heard much though.
During Helloween show there was a dude standing a few steps in front of us and he was so drunk he could barely keep standing. So a few times he almost fell down on top of someone and one time one of those people got seriously pissed and pushed him back pretty hard. 10 rows of people, at least, were pushed back and probably most had no idea what was going on, but the drunk knew least of all I got the impression.
Helloween, like many (metal) bands had their drum solo halfway through, but these dudes decided they wanted to do a little more, I guess.
Right before the drum solo, the stage went dark and they apparently set up an arc with a curtain (like puppet shows). The drummer started his solo and after a few seconds the curtains opened and 3 of the band members were standing behind it on their knees in giant shoes, dressed like gnomes. They had high pitch voices and were complaining that they hated drum solos, so they challenged him to playing Smoke on the Water (which the guitarist then played and the drummer had to mimic). Doing this pretty well, they asked him if he could play 'this' and the guitarist started roaring away on his guitar, when the other guitarist (not behind the curtain dressed like a gnome) started objecting what was going on because he did like drum solos. So he took out his toy gun and shot the gnomes, giving the drummer his chance to play like crazy.
At the end of the show, during the 'encore' the members of Gammaray joined Helloween and they played a medley of the coolest songs Helloween has together. Which was absolutely awesome!
After the show we had to get home, so we went back to the train station, just barely missing the train we thought we had to take. By this time we'd lost track of that other dude and his girlfriend, thinking they did get on that train. So we waited for then next one we thought we needed.
But when the train before that arrived we saw that dude and his girlfriend get on, so we followed them because we knew that they had to go to Amsterdam too.
Turns out though that they read their planning wrong, he read the wrong time on the sheet they had. So we arrived at Den Bosch with no way of getting to Amsterdam or anywhere else.
My friend then saw a train which was headed to Eindhoven, where we remembered seeing a train that would go to Utrecht from which we could take a train to Amsterdam.
Unfortunately when we got there we found out that this train only runs on Fridays and Saturdays. So now we were stuck in Eindhoven and the last train had just left, but it went towards Venlo, which is the opposite direction of where we had to go.
So we were stuck, and then one of the employees of NS came and closed the station, so we would be stuck outside. We only had one option left, take a taxi home (staying outside and sleeping there was not really an option for us). A taxi from Eindhoven to Amsterdam would cost us €200. So we split it 4 ways and each payed €50. We drove past Den Bosch, so we found out that it would have been better to have stayed there.
Then we got to Amsterdam and each went our own way. I was home at 2:30 AM, so I emailed my co-workers that I wouldn't be able to make it to work the next day (didn't really feel like sleeping only 3 hours) and then slept for 11 hours straight.
It was an unforgettable show, not just because it ruled, but also because, of course, it was really expensive.
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