✿ 18-19th august : hamburg ✿

deutschland!

for this one we decided to fly from manchester as it's the central point for us both and a hell of a lot cheaper than flying from london, including the transport to manchester in the first place! on the sunday night (17th) we both got the overnight megabus to manchester, arriving in the early hours at around 4am (we didn't want to risk coaches in the morning being delayed and it was far too short notice to book cheap trains) - marnie from glasgow and myself from london.

we walked across town to get to piccadilly station where we could get the train to the airport and we hoped we could get straight through security and find somewhere to lay down a few hours (we had 9 hours until our flight...) but it turns out easyjet don't let you get through security that early. marnie's phone decided to show her boarding pass up as 'nearby' and i have no idea why we found it so funny but we were cracking up for a good ten minutes over it. we got bored of waiting around and tried to go through security again, only to be told the same thing and asked the staff how long it'll be. they said they didn't know but there's some seats and greggs in the arrivals area so off we went to wait in the there, which was freezing but i managed to catch a couple of hours sleep, albeit rather patchy. i also paid £5 for a pair of tights from boots which ended up ripping the first time i wore them. thanks, boots.

eventually we made our way back to departures and attempted to get through security again and... it worked! there was another few hours to wait til our flight since it wasn't until around 2:30 in the afternoon but thankfully despite being the summer holidays it was quite quiet and we found a little area to lay down in again. i somehow managed to get another hour or so of sleep - i'm surprised i managed to get any, but the fact i'd been up since 6am for work the day before probably helped that!

we eventually boarded our flight and set off on time. it went without a problem, and we actually landed a few minutes early! we found our way around the s-bahn fairly easily and got to the central station without a problem, and stopped off at kfc for a bite to eat (why is european fast food so much nicer?!) before heading to our hostel. my map kept lying to me, it was telling us to cross the road then walk up and cross again and walk back down and it was very confusing, then we turned around and it was right behind us... good one, google maps! it was a pleasant surprise, actually. i've stayed in my fair share of hostels and usually they've been average or below. this one was beautiful! so modern and clean. the rooms were a decent size with a shower and toilet in the room, lovely wooden floors and walls that weren't falling apart. the beds had privacy screens and usb ports for charging things as well as a personal plug socket and reading light! if you're ever in hamburg and are stuck for somewhere cheap and central to stay we definitely recommend the generator hostel.

around 6/7pm we decided to have a little wander and made our way down to the harbour, but not before venturing through what can only be described as hamburg's ghetto (sex shops and off licences galore) in the search for an umbrella. we eventually found them and made our way to the train to get to the harbour. sadly it was very cold, windy and rainy so our wandering was cut short but we saw the queen mary 2 and found a cute street which would've been perfect during the day! next time we come to hamburg we'll be spending more time here so we can explore properly, for sure.

not wanting to risk missing the last train back to our part of town, we headed back and got ourselves ready for the next day. we spent a little while looking up stuff about the venue since this was all very rushed and last minute and we hadn't done much research before going to sleep to wake up in time for checking out in the morning.

//

check out was at 10am but we ended up being ready way before then and actually managed to make our way to the venue for around 10am instead. when we got there we actually had no idea where to go - it was literally just a giant park. we walked around a little bit and found an area that looked like some of the photos we'd seen but there was nothing set up so it couldn't have been that. i asked some people who were setting up some kind of market but they didn't know anything about a concert. it wasn't until then that i had the smart idea to check the actual address of the venue and there we had a street name! yay. google maps to the rescue, we weren't that far from it in the end, just a ten minute walk down the main road around the park. of course as we were approaching the main road what do we see drive past us? the tour bus. the same one we saw in portugal, so the people who told us it was the arctic monkeys in that bus? wrong. oh dear god. 

as it turns out, the artist entrance was right next to the main entrance. due to the fact we didn't actually have tickets for this show, we just decided to sit there all day instead of queue for a gig we might not even be getting into. a couple of hours passed, we ended up making friends with the security guard on the artist entrance who thought it was awesome that we'd come all the way from the uk, and at around 1pm we went to go find some food. we asked the security where was good to go, and he directed us to a main street around 5-10 minutes walk away and he told us that if the band arrived he'd let them know we were here, haha. 

after stuffing ourselves with the most delicious crepes ever and picking up a couple of supplies from a supermarket, we made our way back to the venue and got there a few minutes before the band arrived. a lady called astrid came up to us and asked if i was ponty/poynterlubz and had we come from the uk as she recognised us - she was so nice! we ended up talking to her and making friends, which was lovely. all this time we had no idea what was going on with our tickets, but we were stressing out for nothing. a few minutes after they'd arrived, i got a message to say we were all good for guestlist so off we went to join the queue! not before performing a victory dance, though...

left: cold! | middle: the most amazing nutella crepe | right: guestlist!

a short while had passed and i decided to ask some staff if there was a separate entrance for the box office/guestlist and it turns out it was at the other entrance - good job we asked! we made our way around and we were the only people in that queue. it started absolutely tipping it down so some members of security and staff came out with rain ponchos for 1€ and took our umbrellas for the cloakroom so we didn't have to sort that out on the way in. 

annoyingly, doors didn't have a set time to open so we weren't sure what time to expect it. marnie went to the toilet and suddenly they were letting people in so i had to shout her back over and then they tried to tell us the guestlist wasn't ready - there was a man standing there with it in his hands!! they didn't seem to realise what was going on and were being less than helpful, then they asked which list we were on and as soon as i said the band guestlist he was like '...oh, shit.' and then took my name and let us in, looking sheepish as he did so. yeah, that's what i thought. but nevertheless, we were in and managed to somehow weave our way to second/third row - and then we saw astrid! the crowd let us through and her husband very generously gave up his spot on the barrier for us! that was super lovely of him.

the stage was a very odd set up. why is it necessary to have so much grass in front of it..?! anyway. after a short (and rainy) wait, someone by the name of georg auf lieder took to the stage. i don't have a clue what he was saying, but it must have been funny because the whole crowd was giggling along to whatever it was. he was entertaining, and then the heavens opened once more and nico vega took to the stage. oh, my god. they were incredible. 

aja is adorable and such a good front woman! they got the whole crowd dancing despite the rain and it was such a fun atmosphere. it was super cute seeing the dragons rocking out to them side stage too!

once they finished it was only a short wait until imagine dragons took to the stage. of course the heavens opened yet again and instead of being sensible and keeping our ponchos on we decided to brave it - except throughout the gig it just got heavier and heavier and heavier until there was absolutely no point even bothering to try and get them on.

pretty sure that through the whole show they were just watching us get wetter and wetter and laughing at our expense! at one point during on top of the world the rain was actually relentless and ryan decided to do some weird slow clap thing at us and marnie flipped him off (in the most loving way possible of course) and he was laughing at us and we just went mental and had so much fun.

the day before dan had been nominated to do the ice bucket challenge for als so what do they do? bring out three buckets of ice and pour it over him. in the rain. the freezing cold hamburg rain.

they also covered a song called stolen dance by a german artist, milky chance. ever since that performance we haven't managed to get that damn song out of our heads but its just SO. GOOD.

once they'd finished we ran off to go to the toilet and try and somehow get a little bit drier than we were before heading round the back to see if we could meet them. we met astrid round there too so whilst we were waiting to see them we just stood and chatted which was nice! eventually they came out and ryan gave us hugs before loading stuff onto the bus ("i'm so happy you guys made it out here!"), wayne said hello and he was still eating pizza, which we were convinced was a jam sandwich for a while because it was folded in half ("what the hell are you munching on?" "uhh some pizza, folded in half!" wayne please)... platz gave us hugs and ben and dan said hello. it was so lovely to get to say hi to them and just chat with them! ryan was being the luggage loader and on the way back in to pick up some more cases he walked through a puddle. a muddy one. whilst wearing white shoes. (ben: "watch out for the puddle, wolf didn't") i took photos for a few people but we didn't bother with our own because we looked like crap from the rain and didn't really feel the need to. eventually they had to get on the bus so we said our goodbyes and that we'd see them in berlin tomorrow and they mentioned something about seeing us on the front row. (platz: "it's always good seeing you guys rock out at the front, you guys ROCK" to which i replied "we know" hahaha).

after that we had to try and find our way back to the central station to pick up our luggage and kill some time before our 6am bus to berlin. google maps was telling us we could walk down to the street we got food on earlier and catch a bus but it didn't seem to account for the roadworks... eventually the bus we needed came along but it was going the opposite way, though the driver was nice and took us up the road to a station where we actually could get the bus from. turns out we had to wait for 15 minutes on a street full of shops selling nothing but headstones and gravestones... comforting. there was a strange man and a strange lady and thank god our bus came before too long. within half an hour we were back in the safety of the central station (freezing cold, but at least we were comfortable and not in any more danger!) where we got changed into dry clothes and sat in mcdonalds for a few hours before heading to find the bus station...

tune in next time for our berlin adventure!

love,
the wolfpack
xo

✿ 11th july : t in the park ✿

delays. missed connections. traffic - that pretty much sums up our journey to t in the park.

originally, the dragons were announced to be playing at t on the sunday (13th) so we decided we could go to optimus alive in portugal (10th) and fly back to the uk on the 11th and make our way to glasgow to stay at marnie's for the weekend and actually have a day off to chill out. that isn't allowed though, we're not allowed to have a day off. their set got moved to the friday (11th) instead, but of course we'd already booked our flight. scheduled to land into manchester at 4pm on the friday and then get the train up to glasgow? that wasn't going to work anymore. so we had to find an alternative. did you know, there's only 3 direct flights from lisbon to edinburgh a week? well, you do now. and so do we. we looked up so many different flight combinations and routes, before eventually finding a suitable one over on lastminute.com - flying into london heathrow then connecting to the edinburgh flight, arriving at 2:15pm - plenty of time!

so friday rolls around, we catch maybe an hour of sleep in our hotel in portugal before we get up to check out and grab a taxi to the airport. we're there in plenty of time again, and suddenly delays. we were meant to have started boarding the plane when they announced that there would be more information shortly. they never announced any information, so we were all just kind of sat around not knowing what was going on. we found out it was a problem with the plane, i asked what would happen if we missed our connecting flight and was given nothing but a shrug in response. thanks for that, tap portugal staff. we just had to sit and play the waiting game, which sucked. eventually, about 40 minutes after we were meant to have been boarded already, they start boarding us - or so we thought. once we'd scanned our boarding cards we were lead down to one of those airport shuttle buses and driven halfway around the airport to a new plane. eventually we took off, around an hour later than scheduled. nobody could give us any information about what to do with missed connections, and there was a group of ladies on our flight who were catching a connection for canada! to make matters worse we were at the very back of the plane and once we landed at heathrow with 50 minutes until our next flight, we were told we can't exit from the rear doors, we have to go through the front. minutes were ticking by and every minute is precious when you've got a connecting flight to catch! finally free from the confines of the flying tin can, we ran through the airport. of course nothing could work in our favour, we had to make our way from terminal 2 to terminal 5 and to do that we had to catch another airport shuttle bus and let me tell you, it was the slowest bus i have ever been on in my life. and there was a very rude lady who didn't seem to understand our problem and was insisting that her passengers had priority even though they had two hours until their flight. we had 20 minutes.

finally arriving at terminal 5, we're told we won't make the flight as we have to go through security and boarding will be closed in the next couple of minutes. absolutely fantastic. to top it off, we're directed to the british airways customer service desk and told we might have to pay for our new flight since the tickets are technically separate and tap portugal should have arranged for us to be put on a new flight, which they hadn't. i ended up crying in front of the lady at the customer service desk and i don't know if that helped matters, but either way we were put on the next flight - the last two seats available! finally a stroke of good luck. this meant we'd only be landing less than hour later than originally scheduled in the first place. yay! we made our way to security, had to wait in line behind some of the slowest people i've ever encountered, and eventually we were through and made it to our gate with about 10 minutes before boarding. thank you, british airways! we departed perfectly on time, received complimentary drinks and snacks, and landed a few minutes early. success!

we got changed in the toilets and marnie's mum came to pick us up from the airport. it was a bit of a mission to find her but eventually we did and off we went! it was pretty smooth going until we hit the festival traffic which was crawling along for quite a while but we made it with no major complications, yay!

we got there halfway through haim's set and we didn't really make much of them to be honest. the crowd filtered out a little after they left the stage and we moved forward a few rows but we were still the furthest back we've ever been for an imagine dragons show, heh.

they had an exceptionally short set (about 45-40 minutes) but they did their cover of 500 miles and it was insane, the whole crowd was bouncing! somehow ryan managed to spot us in the crowd too - probably because we were jumping about 5 feet in the air. marnie gave me a piggyback during tiptoe (we tried getting me on her shoulders, it failed miserably. we're too weak...) which dan spotted! it was also their tour manager angie's birthday so they brought her out on stage which was cute.

we tried to leave during radioactive so we'd miss the crazy rush of people after they'd finished but we ended up just getting stuck at the back of the front section barrier and got beer thrown on us. yay festivals! we eventually made our way out and got a drink and some food before claiming a spot off to the side to see ellie goulding.

that woman is incredible on stage. it saddens me that i haven't seen her more often - the last time i saw her live was back in 2010/2011 when she was just starting out and she was a little more reserved. now she knows how to put on a proper show and get the crowd going and it was incredible. she has so much energy and she looks absolutely perfect! i want to be her. after ellie we got some drinks tokens and started on the wine and had a wander around the festival.

we adventured to and braved the toilets, found a phone charging place, ventured into some kind of rave going on at the bbc stage and went on the big wheel during ed sheeran. high vantage point!

after the big wheel it was time for biffy clyro. first off we decided that we were going to stay at the back, but the back was boring so we just kept making our way through the crowd and ended up at the barrier separating the two halves of the crowd. oops? i've never seen them live before but they were incredible!

we left just before the last song so marnie could get her phone back from the phone charging place because it shut at midnight, then ended up sitting and eating the best chinese food i've ever had. eventually we made our way out of the festival and went to look for the bus back to glasgow, but not without getting lost and having to fork out £25 each! we made friends whilst waiting for the bus (for like an hour) and after a bus ride that took almost three hours we got back to glasgow and caught a taxi back to marnie's and fell asleep almost instantly.

t in the park, you were brilliant. i have no doubt that we'll be seeing you again next year.

next up, hamburg!

love,
the wolfpack
xo