The journey to Leipzig was a little scary since it was my first time traveling around Europe completely alone. However, despite a train malfunction that required an unexpected train change, and then running 30 minutes behind, I managed to make all of my connections without any problems. I even managed to keep myself entertained during the ride by attempting to make sense of the German advertisements on the train.
Joseph met me at the Hbf at 1:00am, I got checked into the hotel, and after catching up, we got some much needed sleep.
The weekend at Wave Gotik Treffen was fantastic. Saturday morning, we picked up our wristbands and headed to the vendor area. I picked up a WGT 19 t-shirt, a new skirt, and a set of cyberlox hair falls. After shopping, we headed back to the hotel and got ready for the Rotersand show.
The crowd for Rotersand was absolutely enormous; I find it hard to believe that just a few years ago no one knew who they were. Ironically, I commented to Joseph that I wouldn’t be surprised if Ronan Harris made a guest appearance since he was at the festival and is such good friends with the Rotersand guys. Sure enough, a song or two later they announced special guest Ronan “Effing” Harris. Ronan came out and sang Merging Oceans with them – fan-freaking-tastic! After the show, I picked up a Rotersand t-shirt from the merch booth and headed back into the vendor area.
Joseph and I walked around the vendor area for a while mostly to avoid the cold outside, but I am quite thankful that we did, because we got to meet My Friend Skeleton. They were in full-on costume, and when they noticed me having a fan-girl moment, they motioned for me to come get my picture taken with them. In very broken German I negotiated purchasing a t-shirt from them, and then Joseph and I headed back to the hotel.
On the tram ride, we met up with Gwen and Brian from New Orleans. Seeing familiar faces in a foreign country is beyond nice. We chatted for 30 minutes or so, and agreed to meet up again before the festival ended.
Sunday, we tried to catch Ronan’s DJ set at the Dark Flower, but the schedule online had the wrong time. So instead, we wandered into a reading, in German, of Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite what we were expecting, but I enjoyed it mainly because I actually picked out enough words to know what was being read. When the performer started reading Lovecraft, we decided to head out.
While walking around, we found the Xtrax store and did a bit more shopping. Then we dropped by Dark Flower a second time, but not much was happening, so we headed off to catch Mono No Aware and Modulate.
Modulate put on a fantastic show. We snagged a spot right in front, I danced my butt off, and the Modulate guys spoke in English, so we could actually understand them. The guys were very excited about playing for such a large audience; about midway through the set, they asked the crowd to put our hands up in the air so they could take a picture. They said they would post the picture on facebook and wanted everyone to tag themselves. Most of the German kids had no clue what was going on, but Joseph and I thought it was fantastic. The highlight of the show was when they broke out with their remix of Faderhead’s Dirty Girls, which resulted in much screaming, jumping, and dancing on my part.
After picking up a Modulate t-shirt, we headed back to Agra Hall for Lacrimosa and Alien Sex Fiend. There we met back up with Gwen and Brian and rocked out for a bit before calling it an early night.
Overall, WGT 19 was every bit as awesome as WGT 14. I hope it does not take another five years before we make it back again.
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