in the early hours of the 27th we started our trip off with an uber taxi (free credit!) through london to get to blackfriars, because we're too cheap for the gatwick express from victoria. upon arriving at gatwick, we realised we were a hell of a lot earlier than we really needed to be, so we spoilt ourselves to a posh breakfast at café rouge. tea, coffee, and eggs benedict. neither of us had ever had eggs benedict before, but my god it was the best decision we could have made!
i was far too excited to eat this!
our flight was rather uneventful, i pretty much spent the duration of it in a weird conscious-but-passed-out state since we hadn't slept the night before and i'd been up since 6am before that for work. switzerland airport has this really cool train that takes you between terminals in the trippiest tunnel ever. once we got to zurich flughafen bahnhof (that's swiss/german for zurich airport train station, eyy) we saw a rather scary looking policeman and a very intimidating train departures board. to save us making mistakes and getting lost, we headed over to the ticket desk and spoke with a very friendly man who advised us to get a zvv card which would give us unlimited travel across zurich for 24 hours, which ended up being very useful!
left: the trippy tunnel! | right: room with a view
we made it to our hotel in one piece, and met yet more lovely swiss people! is everyone in this country so nice? it's such a pleasant change from london. once we'd settled into our room, we freshened up and went out to explore zurich in the sunshine. turns out we were staying just round the corner from the 'technopark' tram stop, which took about 10 minutes for us to get into the centre of zurich by the river. zurich is so pretty and so clean! we fell in love instantly.
we stumbled across vera moda and there was a sale on with some wicked bargains so we did a little bit of shopping, then had lunch in a little starbucks we found hidden away down some cute little streets. we had the most amazing cream cheese bagels and i discovered a cream cheese chocolate muffin?! i'm so sad they don't do those in the uk branches. our zvv cards included a free trip on the river boat so we had a lovely 40 minutes or so riding down the river and taking in the sights. when we got back to the hotel we had dinner in the swiss bistro downstairs which consisted of a swiss cheeseburger and chips - oh my god. food heaven. (except the chips had an excessive amount of salt, but the burgers made up for that!)
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the next morning we had a little bit of a lay in since it was forecast to be stormy and we had a little bit of a lazy day. when there was no sign of a storm, we decided to head out for a wander. we were looking for party supplies so i could pick up a birthday banner for the festival but most things in zurich apparently close at 4pm on saturdays so we didn't really have much choice. we found their chain of supermarkets and had a look but they had nothing suitable, so i bought things to fashion myself a makeshift banner instead. i guess it worked well enough!
on our way back to the hotel we stopped off at a little boat race event we seemed to have come across, and got ourselves a beer and sat with our feet in the river just feeding some ducks and taking in the atmosphere and the last of the sun. we also found a little play park, which we were probably too old for but that didn't stop us playing on the swings and going on the slide.
we ended up going back out in the evening to find food. loads of places online recommended going to the hauptbahnhof for their array of restaurants and food places, and we ended up getting lost in there for almost an hour trying to find this fish and chips place we saw on our first day - nordsee. we gave up, and ended up going to a little chinese place and ordering chow mein. of course. it was bloody good, though!
later that night the storm hit, whilst i was busy crafting away making my birthday banner. then midnight hit, and i celebrated my first minutes of being 22 by dancing around to taylor swift's 22 (of course) then jumping in the shower. fully clothed. swigging from a bottle of wine. rock and roll? we decided not to sleep since we had to be out of the hotel at 2:30am to get the train to st gallen for the festival. you'll soon see that not sleeping, or sleeping very little, is a common occurrence for us where this band are concerned.
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2:30am, we're ready and raring to get going. we walk up to the train station by us, zurich hardbrücke, and figure out which train we need to get. we're set to change at winterthur, so we find that train and then notice something off with the information. using precious 3G, google translate tells me that it means delay. of course it does, because this is us and nothing ever goes smoothly for us where the dragons are concerned. again, this is another common occurrence you'll notice. regardless, we make our way to the platform and sit and wait. and wait. and wait some more. every minute that passes, the train gets another minute delayed. it gets to the point where we realise we're not going to make our connecting train meaning we'll have an hour's wait for another train in this random part of switzerland at 3:30am. less than ideal. cue the stressing. finally the train pulled up to our platform (12 minutes late in the end) and we took a seat. the good thing about swiss trains is that they have screens telling you the status of other trains at the station you're arriving into. when we were pulling into winterthur, it told us the train we were originally meant to get was also delayed: good karma! so we rushed off the train, in my very broken german i managed to ask the first person i saw where our train would be departing from and we ran. we made it! st gallen, we were officially on our way. i want to say now that we set off so early because the doors to the festival opened at 6am, and in the uk if you're not there at least 3 hours before that, you're probably going to be at the back.
we arrive at st gallen, and after some wandering and being too scared to ask people, we find out where the shuttle bus to the festival site leaves from and hop on it. we got dropped off a fair walk away from the festival site because the driver got confused, but it was pretty much a straight line and there were loads of people leaving the festival so it wasn't too creepy/empty. eventually we come across the gates, make our way down and present our tickets to the staff. but oh no, it's not that simple. apparently, you're meant to have exchanged your ticket for a wristband. can we not do that there? nope. that's done back in st gallen. cue more stress. it's 5:45am, we're tired and all our ideas of sitting down and napping at the barrier all day have been shattered. nothing on the ticket states that they must be exchanged for wristbands, nothing on the website (at least the english version) states that day ticket holders must exchange their tickets for wristbands either. the only thing on there was for weekend ticket holders. there was nothing that could be done though, so off we went to get the bus back up to st gallen station, where we'd been directed to get our wristbands. thankfully the bus is free, and only takes about 15 minutes each way. we ask someone where to go about these wristbands, and get told that it's at the ticket/information office which opens at 6. that's fine, 40 minutes to wait. we've done worse. no. of course, it's a sunday and it opens at 6:30 instead. so we sit and wait and sit and wait. the rain starts, and there's dregs of people walking past clearly en route or coming back from the festival. finally the ticket/info office opens, and we get told it's the wrong place. no. no no you cannot be doing this to us right now. we've just sat around waiting for nothing. the wristband exchange point is where we got the shuttle bus from, outside the station. in the rain. it opened at 6am. so off we went, got our wristbands and went to wait for the shuttle bus. 'every half hour' the staff told us - except sundays, which they failed to mention. bloody sundays! we were stood under the shelter for 20 minutes before we found out the first shuttle bus wasn't until 7:30. we met a lovely fellow called philip though, who was working on the production team at the festival. we went and had a starbucks to warm up a little bit, and made our way over to the bus when the time came. by this point we'd given up all hopes of getting barrier, thinking there'd be hoards of people already there. i mean, the gates had been open so long already by this point. philip was telling us that its a very laid back festival, and that we'd have no problem. he was impressed/shocked/scared? at the fact we were heading there so early. in hindsight, we should have listened to him, but instinct kicked in and we just admitted defeat.
arriving at the festival, with our wristbands this time, we got straight through and made our way in. as we rounded the corner to the main stage, we held our breath. and held it some more. then we were next to the main stage, and there was nobody there. not a single soul. we just burst out laughing, then went to find some form of waterproof/poncho because it was absolutely bucketing down. philip wasn't kidding when he told us it was a really laid back festival!
it was nice though, made a change from the usual. we had a wander around the festival site and marnie became a target (someone screamed in her face, someone else popped a little milk carton/tub thing at her...) and after a while we'd already seen everything there was to see so we just moseyed on down to the stage when we saw a few people lingering around. and so began our 10 hour vigil in the rain. we didn't really need to stay there but there wasn't much else for us to do, plus we wanted to keep our usual spot in front of the wolfden. we had a dance to the cobana big band, i went and got some chips during the next band (min king?) then there was a band called reignwolf. they drew in quite a crowd, and i can see why! they were awesome.
they came right down to the front in the rain! 'if you're in the rain, then we are too' - cute.
bastille were next, and we'd gotten to know some girls beside us who had come just for them and it was nice to talk to people who understood what its like! bastille were great, i was really looking forward to them. i didn't get into it that much at first but i think that was partly down to being miserable from the weather and the fact we hadn't slept because a few songs in it got really good. dan came down into the crowd for a song (armed with waterproof and hunter wellies!) which was nice, i like it when bands do stuff like that to involve everyone.
at this point it had been seven months since we'd last seen them and as soon as their intro music started we lost our shit. it was all new to us because the last we'd seen had been the night visions tour. this was all the into the night tour stuff. new intro, new set list, new drums(!), and new interludes. ryan said happy birthday to me as they walked on stage, they played the river (which is marnie's favourite song, and the first time we've ever heard it live) and they played who we are, which is one of my favourites and again the first time we've heard that one live. ('they say we're crazy' - literally us). it was so sweet seeing them all recognise us after such a long time. ben mouthed happy birthday to me mid-song at one point, and at the end of the gig dan wished me a happy birthday down the microphone and platz pointed over at us. there was an absolutely magical moment where the sun started shining during 'on top of the world' after it had been raining for 12 hours solid.
check out 4:16 on this video - that's my birthday shout out!
it was such a memorable show, and the biggest one we've seen the dragons at thus far. being the last act of the whole festival was amazing too, there was such a good energy and they got to play a full length set! i'm pretty sure we were the only two without any jackets on, too.
after their set everyone started making their way out, and of course what was already super muddy had turned into what can only be described as a literal mud bath. people were rolling around in it, we got surprise-hugged by someone covered head to toe in mud, then someone thought it would be clever to kick it at us? not cool, man. still, as disgusting and horrible as it was, it was hilarious. until we realised we had to sit, caked in mud, on a train back to zurich for an hour and a half. thankfully there was a man at st gallen station with a powerwasher who was hosing us all down (although don't get that done to your legs, it's agonising!) so we weren't in too bad of a state on the train.
we pretty much crashed as soon as we got the hotel, we had to be up earlier than we would have liked to have been to check out of our room.
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in the morning we packed our suitcases and said goodbye to our home for the last few days and headed out on a search for a starbucks, where we sat for a few hours until going to get our train to the airport. of course, something had to go wrong here. our flight was delayed by an hour - not the end of the world, thankfully, but still rather annoying and inconvenient! we arrived safely back to london though, and the plane ride was spent playing around on line cam and playing frozen free fall.
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and that's that for our trip to see the boys in switzerland! it really was a lovely break away from everything and it was a perfect birthday weekend for me.
love,
the wolfpack
xo
AMAZING I WISH I COULD GO TO A SINGLE CONCERT OF IMAGINE DRAGONS WHICH I CANT CUZ THEY NEVER CAME TO THE COUNTRY I LIVE IN
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