Weekend (12.1.18 - 12.2.18): Death Before Disco

Pagan, out of Melbourne, which is a place I really wanted to visit even before I knew about this band, put their first, stupidly exciting and catchy single from their Black Wash album on YouTube at the end of spring / beginning of summer last year, and started appearing in international publications soon after. 

I looked, and am honestly astonished that it still only has 30K views. Hannes, Lars, and I all instantly liked them. Like, a lot. As Lars put it, "there's something for everyone in this band".

And so, well, Lars and Solvig gave me/us tickets for my birthday for their show here in Hamburg on the first of December. Y a a a s s s s s 

Molotow is one of the most popular venues here; it's right on the Reeperbahn.

I hadn't been there until this show, which was in the smaller, upstairs portion.

Obviously the band as a whole is great, and Nikki, their frontwoman, is one of those people who's more like a force of nature than a people. She's pure expression, energy, and goodness. I add 'goodness' not just because of her talent, sexy dancing, willing to experiment, or full-on femaleness, but because she's also extremely nice.

She thanked us all deeply and genuinely for coming to "mass" - they're all really chill, grateful, down to Earth people - and invited those front and center to take libations in this house of worship.

She also said, "Oooohhh, it's getting spicy in here!" which was absolutely the best word for it. It was steamy as fuck, for real. 

What a great show. They're absolutely one of the best and most fun (which are different) live bands I've ever seen. In fact, they're right at the top of my upcoming belated Best of 2018 roundup.

I was pretty excited about my first legit paycheck in literal years and decided to buy two, count 'em two shirts, because I had already seen a tee I wanted before going, but fell in love with the Black Wash longsleeve once I saw it. It's a good thing, too: their merch is expensive as fuck when you buy it online! I paid 25 for that longsleeve, but if you want to get it from their site, you'll pay 40! Ouch.

Anyway, Danny, their bassist, went down to their van to find a medium for me. At the merch table I had excitedly, sweatily, and slightly drunkenly (re: drunkenly. Just drunkenly.) rambled to Nikki - who with exactly the right level of flattery clearly recognised me from the front of the crowd when it was my turn with, "Hello, beautiful!"- that this was my 30th birthday present, and that it was such an amazing one. Oh - but no, sorry! I quickly added when she rang out a very genuinely glad, "Aww, Happy Birthday!" in her charming Aussie accent. Today isn't my birthday! It was two months ago. But I've really been looking forward to this show since before then, and my husband and friend have too! We love you guys, you're so great, etc. etc., you know, the standard fangirling-after-the-shots-are-already-well-underway niceties. All good things. All true. 

We went back to the bar and Lars bought us another round. Danny came back while we were talking and came over to us to give me my shirt. He had also heard it was my birthday (honestly like he probably heard me from the street) and gave me one of their pretty upside-down cross enamel pins for free. Eeee!

I invited him to have a shot with us, which means that I lowkey commanded Lars to get him one, which means that I lowkey commanded Lars to buy us all another round. 

Sorry. I was just excited.

We were drinking kümmel, which he didn't recognise at all. I told him it was a regional thing, basically ice cold cumin vodka. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was their first-ever time in Germany. 

They were loving it, he really liked the new liquor, and I told him that they were going to blow up for sure, and that the next time they were back - because they were pretty floored by how successful their shows had been, both in the UK and Germany, and he said that they would definitely be back - there's no way they would be playing a venue this small. 

(Fast forward only 4 months, and they're playing again at Hafenklang soon. That venue is too big for me; I don't even like it. Intimacy like what I'm describing is my jam. But we all knew where this was going, and are thrilled for them and their success.) 

When he mentioned looking into a North American tour and focusing on the Pacific Northwest, I also embarrassingly mentioned that I knew someone over there who might be booking shows, in reference to Matt. Eesh. Oh well. I'm sure he was glad to have fans tossing drunken support and maybe-contacts at his feet either way.

The last thing about our little chat with Danny: he told us that one of the things that brought Pagan together was the fact that they're all ethnically Italian. In Australia I guess that's a distinct and kind of unusual thing, and it made me wonder if the Croatian Aussie and Bosnian Aussie I know of felt the same way when they were younger. 

I had just assumed the St. Peter's cross and church references and motifs were connected to the band's name and black metal influences, to which I got a "well, that too", but I guess I would have connected the dots a lot sooner had I seen this press photo from a year ago before the show:

lol

"So yeah. Anyway, that's an interesting piece of trivia about us."

I hadn't had pure energetic fun and moshed like that since Double A in Seoul. I was exactly as sweaty and spicy as the windows. My Firefly button came off my vest and got stomped a lot, but thankfully Lars noticed it before we left and picked it up, not even knowing it was mine. 

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Lars, Daniel, Solvig, and their large circle of friends are pretty used to being out drinking, dancing, and otherwise partying for the entire night on the Reeperbahn and in St. Pauli, so naturally, there was something on after the show: a solidarity party.

Oh, and not just any solidarity party: it was the Christmas drag variety show spectacular.

People on the left here in the city of Antifa's global headquarters are massively paranoid about being identified through photos and videos, to the extent that they insist on no photography, even in public places like city festivals full of thousands of people who can see them just fine, and also to the extent that many of them have no photos of themselves and/or friends having fun. This is pretty ridiculous considering the ubiquity of smartphones, CCTV, and ever-improving facial recognition technology, but either way, that's why I'm only posting pics with this light censoring or that are cut-off, obscured, profile, or costume ones.

It's a damn shame too because the eye sparkle really makes this one.

For all I know I'll be asked to take this down altogether, though, which is way worse.

Yes, this totally happened lol

I had an increasingly debilitating headache and Hannes was pretty much kaput too, because I guess once you hit like 29 the hangover starting while you're still drinking is a thing, which I'm sure I've mentioned before. It's like a system upgrade you never asked for and that is actually worse, but that can't be uninstalled. 

We stopped at some nearby place for kebab (and falafel) and ended up in a heated discussion about Israel and Palestine that I won't describe in detail here. As a result the night did a faceplant right at the end of a lengthy and spectacular routine right at that last moment when it was riding high, home free, and just had to stick the landing, but either way, it was amazing. We had a great time, and that was a perfect gift.

Lüneburg

New Year's Eve 2018, and my 300th post since I started this blog over ten years ago. Yay!

Before I finish the ongoing series of marriage-, reception-, and guest-related posts, I figured I might as well post my Christmas pictures on time, if nothing else.

Three weeks ago we went to Lüneburg, an idyllic town not far from Hamburg that was, in medieval times, known for and made wealthy by its production and sale of salt. By the 1600's it was in decline, and it's not exactly an absolute must-see, but it is one of the German towns that escaped the extensive bombing and subsequent firestorms of the War, so that pretty much all of its charming buildings are intact. And wonky. Imagine the bulges, leans, and tilts that happen when you just leave thin stacks of bricks sitting for hundreds of years.

It's also a university town these days, with plenty of far-left and vegan stuff going on, and having found out about it because a mutual friend of ours got her Bachelor's and Master's there, I'd been dying to go. A number of people told me specifically that it's way cuter than Lübeck at Christmastime, so that wasn't a tough choice. Sorry, other bigger and more relevant Haseatic city. We'll get around to visiting you eventually.

Northern German Impressionism isn't something that gets a lot of attention, but I've decided I quite like this artist: Hugo Friedrich Hartmann. This is just a piece of one of the two murals of his at the main station, depicting travelling merchants coming into Lüneburg.

You can see where a number of water mills once stood, presumably powering salt mills within these buildings, which I can only imagine were once storehouses. (Obviously, apparently, it would seem, that) I didn't see a placard or ask a knowledgeable local or anything.

Charming ironwork bridge railing!

Oh, right, and speaking of public works and civic design: new city, new manhole cover.. that in this case reveals a probably-medieval emblem that looks more like it belongs to that of a real or fictional secret society.

Yes

Also yes

Pretzel pub sign with medieval brick gothic architecture all smushed together 

in a cute little row in the background? Obviously yes.

Quite a lot of the buildings throughout the town are labelled - in the way that European buildings often are, like they're wearing nametags - with their year of construction, and while most of the ones you see in Hamburg are 19th and 20th century, and specifically post-War rebuilt structures, many of these were 17th and 18th. Although, of course, this tile mosaic sign in front of this book printer's must have been made fairly recently.

(hard to read, but for example)

I could spend multiple lifetimes just taking doortraits in Europe.

This is St. Johanniskirche, a typical brick gothic structure dating from the 14th-century. 

This is a goddamn unicorn pub sign. Yes.

Oh boy, there's that lean I was telling you about, especially on those tippy-tops there. Most of the old buildings in Rostock also have seven points on top, but in a different style.

Eh, photos really can't do this justice. Look at that little dark brown one though! It's quite striking in person and lowkey makes you feel like you're not sober, which I can assure you we soon weren't.

Hot fresh potatocakes with lingonberries and.. hot Aperol?! 

Hannes hated it and stuck to Glühwein and Feuerzangenbowle but I think it works!

The city hall, which I would like to take a closer look at sometime

Beeswax candles in normal and festive shapes are typical Christmas market fare, but I'd never seen tiny round rose ball ones like this before. I was tempted, but of course, no one needs these. Or do they? ... No. Be strong.

I went to this chick's website because her paste-ups were unique but yikes, skill level weak, arms spaghetti. No, that was not nice. No, no one really reads this, so no, I'm not sorry.

Um yes I would like to go to the gay-friendly Hanseatic fish restaurant-pub-hotel thing

Hannes commented along the lines of pretzel pub signs being possibly one of the least special things one can see around these parts, but I remained undaunted.

This, for example, is a common franchise bakery.

But here they have an adorable pub sign!!1!1
(Hannes can only be seen a considerable distance down the street by this point)

Tiny, probably-antique grandma wrapping Christmas presents at her dining table diorama seen through a random window on a little cobblestone side street ;o;

Ginger camouflage

This building is stupidly adorable in person. Actually, pretty much all of them are.

We want to go to the Salt Museum with the friend who studied here next time, because even after having lived in Lüneburg for around 6 years, she never did go.

Urgh, this pub sign! With this backdrop! This one is Nikolaikirche!
Hrrnnggg!

Oookay, way less cute than the last doll display!

Just a random griffin or something on a random stone thing, hundreds of years old, like whatever. It reminds me of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro even though I found that novel very mediocre.

Salt merchant ships in the center of town, surrounded by all those former warehouses and water mills..

.. and the Old Crane! If you look closely you can see the 

city's emblem in this bell-shaped part.

Charming! Interesting!

Hot apple brandy! Eggnog! Oh boy.. This is when things started sliding downhill for us, because it was raining, and so we just kept drinking while taking shelter at the little stands in the shadow of the crane. Calvados, the name of this apple brandy from Normandy, was new for both of us. And I had a lot of it. Sigh.

But these weren't a mistake! As expected, there was one totally vegan food stand, but it was really expensive. We settled for sweet potato fries with homemade vegan mayo, and they were great!

These views were really quaint, with the lights starting to come on and everything.

But, ah yeah, that means it must be around 3:30 P.M., time for it to start getting dark.. 

-rolls eyes-

We walked back the way we had come through the center of town and stopped at a funny little mini-market that was really just the small courtyard-like space through this tunnel of lights and situated between buildings. It was very crowded by this time but still not as bad as I had expected.

Quaint!

More hot spiced wine and hot Aperol! 

These ones were actually a really bad idea! :D

Pensive and kind of unhappy-looking, but I do like this one quite a lot. 

This is his "I'm getting tired and I want to go soon," face.

But it was just so pretty. Kind of looks like Disneyland or something, huh?

"Buhhh"

Pretty much exactly how we felt by this point

The medieval water tower, which may or may not have the Eye of Sauron 

perched atop it from time to time; survey points to "likely, yes"

And finally, these rainy nighttime cobblestone cityscapes. 

Oh, I love these ones! They look just like paintings.

10/10 would recommend this lovely town, and can't wait to go back!