Alright the Captain’s Euro Tour Diary: Days 5 & 6 – Luxembourg & Groeningen
Posted on 23rd Apr 11 by Mike McGrath Bryan | 
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Having done the business in France, ATC hit up Luxembourg and head back to the Netherlands for a tour of the city of Groeningen.
DAY 5:
Waking up on a beach in a slightly damp sleeping bag is definitely a first for me. The brutally early start was softened by the novelty of opening myeyes and seeing the sun rise above the sea on the horizon. We had another massive drive to do across the length of France heading for Luxembourg. Most of the day consists of more bus-banter punctuated by sleepy silence. We bite the bullet and hit the toll road straight across the middle of France which stings us for most of our money from the night before but we make good time and arrive in Lux at about 7pm.
There’s a late curfew so we all get to chill out a bit and watch the support band who, despite having some rocking riffs of their own, pretty much peak with a hilarious cover of Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit.
It’s nice to play a familiar place (ATC played Lux back on October) even if it is a bizarre cafe/bar on the front of a sports centre but the eclectic suburban crowd are well up for it. The beer starts to flow and the locals are friendly and enthusiastic for both bands, cheering and chanting while we lift the roof off the unlikely venue.
We retire to our friend Yacht’s house and the group splinters into those who desperately need sleep and those who wanna get fucked up on schnapps and absinthe.
DAY 6:
We played an awesome show at a cool little squat in the massive student city of Groeningen and were treated with such great hospitality that we knew it was going to be a great night. The Wickets opened the show and after a string of technical problems they got back in the zone and played an angry and energetic show to fire up the quickly increasing crowd made up mainly of the most beautiful girls. The second band were a hand called Woum, they completely changed the atmosphere of the venue while through whole crowd pulled a seat near the stage and got wrapped up in their ethereal sounds. And so to our show we got 2 songs in to our set before our first on stage disaster struck and 2 of my guitar leads died. We battled through angry, got everything sorted and played possibly my favourite show of the tour so far.
After the show we got chatting to a load of locals and we also met the most crazy girl from sligo who it turned out was friends with our buddies A plastic rose, it really is a small world. The bar stayed open until 7am and as a fee people went off to paint the rest of us sat chatting the night away.
The next day we woke up and took advantage of not having to drive all day so we got taken on a tour of Groningen with our new friends Kristen and Laura where we tried some delicious kibbeling (fried fish chunks) Running out of time we made our way back to the venue and loaded the van to make our way to Haarlem…..
Tags: Alright The Captain, Groningen, Luxembourg, tour diary
