Germany
6/09/00

On Thursday, we boarded the plane from Seattle to Washington, DC, then on to Frankfurt. We ate some decent airplane food, but our first real inklings of future disaster occurred when our planes seemed to be habitually late. We arrived in Frankfurt an hour late, missing our scheduled train to Leipzig, and were forced to wander uncomprehendingly through the Frankfurt airport to the subway to the train station.

We cooled our heels in Frankfurt for several hours. The ceiling was beautiful, but the place was pretty dirty and boring. The young man asleep next to Donya is Cedric, who aided us a bit and let us know that the train to Leipzig was delayed.

Finally on the train, Cedric and Kai helped us get our luggage around, then announced that all the seats were taken. Finally, in desperation we plopped our things down and occupied a closed dining car, which put us in close proximity to beer (poor beer, Kai told us - but it was cold and I was thirsty!). Outside our window, Germany sped by. As the train took on more passengers we were joined by 2 British goths, Paul and Katie, who had lost their seats.

Arriving in Lepizig, we milled around the train station, trying to decide what to do. Cedric and Kai led us to the tram stop, then lost us (probably to their relief). We stood around for a while, while Paul and Donya tried to find info in the train station, but the Wave-Gottik-Treffen info booth was mysteriously closed. Hundreds of goths milled around with us; we were given dodge directions to "the second campgrounds," but decided to take the No. 11 tram that everyone else was taking, and went to the main entrance for the festival, where we saw several thousand other goths. Paul is looking pretty tired here, as he'd waited in several lines trying to get tickets (he and Katie came with the hopes that they'd be able to get in, and were told that they may or may not be able to when we arrived here). Katie wandered away, and Donya and I went to look at the campgrounds, and got our first wave of real horror. Camping was on old cement, broken gravel, and waist-high weeds. There was nothing resembling shade, and tents were staked wall to wall. We went back to the line, and discovered several thousand more goths waiting in lines now 10 times as long as when we'd left. Disorganization reigned; one had to stand in 3 or 4 lines to get everything needed (wristbands, program booklets, info), and the line at the corner store across the way was 30 minutes long just to buy water. At this point, Donya and I decided to sell our tickets and leave. She sold tickets, and I took more photos of the sheep being led to slaughter...

Paul talked with his friend, Laura, as people passed out in the 95 F heat, and others managed to somehow look cool despite hair extensions, fur, vinyl, leather, cloaks, and pounds of makeup.

These photos don't really do the lines justice. There were thousands of people waiting in the sun. It was sick. Finally, we escaped the crowds and made our way back to the train station, where we saw many more poor souls on their way to hell, I mean W-G-T. After getting the times for the Leipzig-Prague train, we found out that, in fact, the hotels were not all full, and got a room at the Garden Court Holiday Inn, where we were finally able to bathe and sleep! We decided that going to Prague would be more fun than battling the heat, poor campgrounds, dirt, crowds, and disorganization, so I set about to contact Richard, my ex-BF who lives in Prague. I discovered that calling Prague from a Germany hotel phone is too tricky, so instead I called Anthony and asked him to call Richard. It was 8ish pm for us, but only 1pm for Anthony. Unfortunately, I couldn't give him the number and he couldn't call from work, so we had to wait for about 6 hours until he could call, which would put him calling too early to get Richard. I told him I'd call when we woke up, which was in about 8 hours, we ate some tins of herring in dill sauce I'd packed with us (our first meal in over 24 hours!), and we had a wonderful night's sleep.

Retreat | Onward