WGT Day1 09-05-28

On Wednesday, May 27th, we drove to Leipzig to meet with a friend of Mr Nicaolaus. We were about to stay at his place for the next 6 nights – and we were really very grateful for that, so we didn’t have to sleep in a tent, had a shower we didn’t have to share and it would be very quite compared to the large WGT camping grounds. What we didn’t know then was: we would have the nicest person on earth caring for our wellbeing: his mother ( I will call her Ms Nice from here and him Nice jr. 😉 ) Ms Nice offered everything to us, which we should possibly need. Food? Just take it from the kitchen. Drinks? Whar do you like? I’ll tell Nice jr to get it from the cellar and put it up for you. Anything else? Just tell me.

On Wednesday we sat on their terrace, with a wonderful view of her garden, chatting about this and that and we were treated with snacks and drinks and were offered supper. We had to decline, as we had already eaten supper at my place. They gave us a room of our own and a key to their house, so we could come and go as we wished.

On Thursday, May 28th, we got up late, and then we went to Leipzig Zoo.  Compared to Dresden Zoo it is really very large. Although many buildings are really old, they contain quite up-to-date technology when it comes to adequate animal housing. If no contemporary usage could be found for the buildinggs – like the old lion house – the buildings are used for exhibitions on the history of the zoo. Besides these “recycling” of old buildings, the zoo also features a newly built elephant house being made up to look like an Indian temple, Pongoland, which is the worlds largest primate housing, or the Kiwara savannah, which features zebras, giraffes, gnus and other herbivores from the savannah of Africa in one housing. It was really very nice, although it was a bit rainy and Mr Nicolaus was taking photos of me( I look soooooo ugly on photos). The animal which I found to be most impressive – and saddening, by the way- was a male Spectacled Bear, who still inhabits the old Bärenburg. This building wass errected in 1912 and was adequate animal housing – at that time. It is made from bricks, has a moat, so the bear can’t reach the visitors, and there were only very few logs or branches, but to refuge for the bear except going back to the inside cage. The poor guy swam around the moat – which made him the most agitated animal on that day (see the irony ion that??).

After that we tried desparately to find some Döner seller in Leipzig’s inner city. We failed miserably and so we went into a Asia restaurant where we had noodles with chicken. We had been searching for at least one hour. There is no Döner in Leipzig’s inner city. What a scandal.

Then we went shopping. Mr Nicolaus was looking for a long skirt, but he didn’t find anything he wanted to buy, yet. We also tried to find a gift for Ms Nice, but we failed at that, too. So, around 5 o’clock in the evening, we went back to Leipzig Main Station to obtain our wristbands. When we saw the queue, we decided to drive to the Agra (where most concerts would take place and where the camping area was) because we hoped, we wouldn’t have to stand in such a long queue. Guess what – we were so wrong. But in the end, the queue looked long, but moved fast – so we had our wristbands after approximately 25 minutes. And we were so thrilled, we just didn’t care.

We had decided to go to the opening party at the Dark Flower ( a gothic club in Leipzig, small but nice), so we went home to relax and change. On arriving we were scolded by Ms Nice for not having breakfast (we just went to a bakery without looking in the kitchen) and she repeated her generous offer of “just take what you want from the fridge”. So we had very nice supper and she was telling us, she was really looking forward to seeing all the people dressed up over the weekend. In fact she would tell us every day 😀

The Dark Flower was pretty much packed. The club is rather small with only two small dance floors and some area adjoining these floors, where you can sit down and relax. On the first floor, the DJs played EBM and on the second floor Dark Wave. Mr Nicolaus firstly stayed on the first floor and danced a lot. It was really fun, because the DJ’s style was so different from what we are used from our local DJs. And most people were dancing really great and cautiously. On guy who used to push his elbows behind him with full force ( at any height he could reach – he was smaller than me) understood the hint, “that I really liked his elbows, but not in my eyes or rips or anywhere else”.  There were also lots of plastic goths. No offense – for me its the easiest term to describe goths who:

• like EBM
• mostly wear highly glossy cloth (cotton and some type of latex on it) in one colour (I saw: pink, red, neon colours, blue)
• welding goggles with rivets, tubes, LEDs, hello kitty figures,…
• dance with snap light sticks (which looks a little techno)
• wear face masks like lacquerers
• have plastic hair pieces which consit of plastic tubes, dread locks, foam rubber pieces,…

Party with those guys was really great. On the second floor the music was better for chilling than for dancing and dancing itself was quite dangerous. I don’t know why, but they put some metal panels where they want the dancefloor to be. These panels are slippery like hell! Even withoug people spilling drinks. You can’t really concentrate on dancing because you have to concentrate on not falling! Still I enjoyed it, because most people were on first floor, so on second floor the music wasn’t too loud and the temperature was lower. All in all a very nice evening for me – and Mr Nicolaus, too, I assume. (He didn’t say differently *gg*). Unfortunately stupid me had to wear old, worn out flip-flops all day, so my feet were already sore before WGT had begun, and we had to leave early (which was around midnight). But I was strong and would be running around until late at night every day until Monday night (YAY me!) 😉

To be continued tomorrow…