“No Regrets” live in Milan
I still have a few videos that I promised to upload, here is “No Regrets” live in Milan… during the tour I really started to love that part of the show, the boys appearing from under the b-stage and the hugging, and then the jumping at the start of “Relight my fire”… fab! Aww… the after-tour-blues is slowly but definitely kicking in!
… and then it was all over…
As promised a report on the last day at the airport. We got to the private terminal at the Munich airport at around noon, just in time to see Rob being driven on the runway and getting into the plane. I wish we had been there 10 minutes earlier! Even though, apparently, we didn’t miss much… no pix, no autographs, no nothing… Some time later Mark arrived, Emma was in the backseat with a sleeping child in her arms, that’s why I didn’t take any pictures as she was in the way and I didn’t want to take pictures of the child. Most of the fans did the same by the way. Later Jason arrived and he walked through us and was in a really good mood as you can see :o) And finally Howard arrived, he took pictures with the fans and signed some autographs… not a bad way to end the tour :o) By the way, Gary had already left around 9, apparently went to France on holiday with his family. Jay has been spotted in London yesterday, and I suppose Howard is still in Germany and Rob went back to LA.
So now the tour is over, the after tour blues is starting to kick in, but I am grateful for all the nice experiences and the interesting people I got to meet. Of the concerts I’ve seen, Amsterdam still is my favorite one, even though Rob wasn’t feeling too well, but maybe that’s what made the concert so good! It’s difficult to say which one was the second best, loved all the German ones and Wembley on the second night. But I know for sure that Manchester is the one I liked the least… but then that’s just my opinion, often so many small factors make a concert good or bad, it often is much more than the boys’ performance, but also my mood of the day, the place where I’m standing, a special “moment” with the boys, and so on…
I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog, I may post a few videos in the next 2 or 3 days, and then I will take a loooong break, maybe until the next Robbie Tour in summer 2013 :o) Bye!!!
“Germany, do you want me???” (RW)
Ooooooooook, I bit later than expected here I am with the last stories for this tour, quite a few things to tell though! First of all I think I owe you a more detailed report on the Cars Premiere, cause I was really in a hurry when I published the previous one. As I was in Munich all by myself on Thursday morning, and had nothing important to do, I decided to check out how the cinema was already towards midday. They were still working on the carpet, lightning, and so on, and there were no fans in sight. A few hours later the first fans started arriving and occupying the places under the roof. The red carpet was really really long, about half of it was inside the cinema/shopping centre, the other half was outside. I then decided to go to the Bayerischer Hof Hotel where I knew TT were staying, I had a little chat with the drivers. At the time there were only about 3 or 4 fans there, even though I think Jay and Robbie were already there. Jay had come down to Munich by train again, Robbie, as we read in his blog, arrived from Paris. After a while more fans arrived, and at around 5 o’clock there were about 30. I then went to the cinema again to meet my friends. At about 6 o’clock, there were already a few hundred people at the red carpet, we decided it was time for us to get a good spot as well. We discussed for a long time on where to stand, and finally decided that outside would be the better choice, for different reasons. First of all there were less people because of he bad weather (though it didn’t rain very much at that moment), second it was where the red carpet started, so it meant that Robbie would probably still take his time to sign autographs, and third there were the press stands on one side of the carpet,so he would most likely stop to give interviews. We also decided that we could walk with him the rest of the carpet, just behind the other fans. And for once we were soooo right, we really got a good place and it was worth it! He arrived shortly before 7 and right away started signing loads of autographs at the beginning of the carpet, then he gave interviews… Gav and Gary (the 2 bodyguards) and Josie were walking with him, Josie was kind of telling him where to stop. When he finished giving an interview just in front of us, we called him, he turned around, and said “hi”, then said a second “Oh hi!” when he recognized us and came over to sign our pictures. I. and me both had brought our group picture with him, the one we took in 2001 in Zürich. He laughed when he saw the picture, and then carefully and very slowly signed it. I was a little bit starstruck and apart from “Thank you” said nothing at all… gosh… I wish I had prepared better for that moment, I just didn’t think it would happen! To tell you the truth I didn’t even think about bringing stuff to sign (my other friends had nothing with them!), I just had all my pics with all of the TT boys with me by chance, I had been carrying them around for the past two weeks, just in case… Anyway, he then continued giving interviews and we walked to another spot further on in the line, I was lucky again cause he came to sign the book of a lady standing near me (what made me a bit angry was that she wasn’t really a fan, she was just collecting autographs, but anyway… I was able to have a close look of Rob again). Then he slowly proceeded giving smiles to people on the left and on the right while we walked around the building to get inside the cinema to see the end of the red carpet, that’s when he passed in front of us for the third time. There were loads of people there, so I didn’t see much though, but that’s ok. Like we had foreseen, the further he got, the less time he spent giving autographs and chatting to the people… it took him well over 30 minutes to walk the whole red carpet! Some people I know had won tickets to the premiere, they told us that basically they didn’t see much of him, he stood in front of the audience for about 5 minutes talking about the movie and then left. But those people weren’t allowed to stand at the red carpet as they had to enter the cinema before him. After the red carpet thing, we decided to go to the Bayerischer Hof again and had a drink at Trader’s Vic, the bar downstairs from the hotel. There was the Cars 2 party on the 7th floor, I think Jason quickly went there to have a look at what was going on, I don’t know if anyone else attended. Fact is that up to about 1 o’clock nobody came down to the bar. It seems that the boys arrived at the hotel around 9, but I think they went in through the underground garage, I only know for sure that some fans met Jason and had a little chat with him in front of the hotel.
On the following day we arrived at the Bayerischer Hof at around 11, slowly a lot of other fans started arriving but it must have been a really disappointing afternoon for most of them because not much happened, everybody left through the underground garage so you didn’t see much. We saw Robbie’s van leave from the garage and once again waved to black windows, really exciting ;o)))) At four o’clock we arrived at the stadium, got green wristbands and after it had stopped raining, sat down at the back of the b-stage. At the front of the b-stage there were about 7 to 8 rows of people only, and then a lot of space until the barriers for the second pit started. That space was great for us, we could move around, sit down, dance, and could see very well… loved it!!! I again really enjoyed the concert, as it was the last there were a few surprises, for example, during “The Flood”, when Robbie turned around to sing with Mark, Mark was eating a banana :o)) During “Pray” there was a man in the pit dancing along to the routine, I guess it was somebody from the crew… and during the wine/milk sketch, instead of the girl, on stage came 5 men dressed up as women in traditional Bayerish clothes and carrying beer mugs with wine and milk inside :o) Then Rob showed his bottom (well, saw that one before…) and the sacked/left sketch was different too… Jay went “15 years ago, when I sacked Robbie from the band…” and Rob said “…when I left the band”… and then it was “group hug, group hug, group hug” again ;o))) Rob promised to be back solo soon (as I said before, 2013 it is!), Jason also participated in the “Could it be magic” dance routine and in the end, after “Relight my fire”, the dancers stayed on stage, sat down and listened to the band thanking them… that was a really nice picture, looked like teachers explaining something to the children :o) Then they all had a BIG group hug before “8 letters” started. We then went back to our hotel and got ready for the Pacha, where the official after show party was going to take place. In the afternoon, the drivers had told us already that Rob wouldn’t go there, and neither would Mark… but we decided to go anyway. Well, what a waste of money… we all hated it, they allowed far too many people inside the club and you could barely move! I also think that most people were quite rude, it was really bad. When Howard was DJing, naturally a lot of girls were piling up in front of his desk, but it was tighter than being first row in a concert! I’ve seen Howard DJing a few times before, but it never was that bad… anyway, we stayed for about an hour and then left. I think the only other TT member who was there, was Jason, but we didn’t see him.
Here are the pics of the Munich concert, will be back later with some pics and stories from the airport on Saturday.
Cars 2 Premiere
Just a very quick note and a few pix… been to the Cars Premiere yesterday and got Rob’s autograph, I’m beyond happy!!! Had been waiting for that moment for over 10 years, so I’m pretty sure I deserve it. He gave a lot of autographs and was really really cute… but look for yourselves :o) I probably won’t be able to blog until Sunday, or maybe, if you’re lucky, Saturday evening. It’s a busy day today, first at the boys’ hotel (as long as it’s not raining), then the gig and then the official end of tour party at the Pacha… I hope I will have loads of things to tell you on the next entry! Have a nice day everybody!
danke danke danke, ich liebe euch!
So, I’m in the train right now, travelling from Düsseldorf to Munich and as the journey is taking me nearly five hours, I have plenty of time to tell you about the events of the past few days. As I stated quickly in the previous post, Jason travelled from Hamburg to Cologne by train. One of the bodyguards travelled with him, I suppose Jay doesn’t like flying too much, but I am still wondering why he didn’t travel to Cologne by car as the Take That drivers were driving down there anyway… hmm. Well, as I also said the boys were staying outside Düsseldorf, I think at Schloss Bensberg. At least this was the plan, I’m not sure if it’s confirmed that they were there… I have been to that hotel once before when Robbie was there, it is a wonderful place, but also a bit complicated to reach without a car, and not the best place for meeting Take That, so me and I. decided to stay in Düsseldorf and not bother with the hotel. For once even the weather seemed to be on our side as it was sunny all of yesterday morning! At 3pm we went to the stadium and got ourselves a nice spot in the second row at the middle of the bstage. I think that the Germans once again had a pretty strange organization… they put up some “Wellenbrecher” between the bstage and the main stage, don’t know the right name for it in English, but it’s basically these barriers to make the place more secure, but are superfluous when there is a catwalk, at least that’s what I think. Anyway, it meant that once you were at the main stage you got a yellow wristband and were not allowed to get to the bstage, and viceversa. As the bstage was nearly empty but the main stage really crowded , we quickly had to get rid of our yellow wristbands and smuggle into the bstage area… apparently they were counting how many people got into the yellow wristbands area so that it wasn’t too full, but well, I think it was strange how they were doing it as you couldn’t really see where you were going until it was too late. Anyway, we managed to get a good place so I probably shouldn’t complain ;o) Well, of course then it started raining. This “summer” tour really seems to be cursed weather wise, whenever TT get near, the clouds arrive too and it gets cold and starts raining. The Düsseldorf stadium has a roof that you can close, but it takes about half an hour to close completely. As they decided pretty late to close it, we were already soaked when it finally stopped raining on us. I was discussing with I. today, that even though at the moment we were really happy for it to be closed, in retrospect they should rather have kept it open as it was really really hot and humid in the closed space, and because of the special effects and fireworks, there was a lot of smoke in the air. I think I would have been more comfortable with the rain, but maybe that’s just me. Finally at 8.30 the Take That show started, to me it seems that the gigs get shorter and shorter (they don’t of course, it’s just my perception) and even if this was my 9th show, I still enjoyed it very much. You really get to see different things at each show! For example, did you know that the crew people have a lot of really nice TT tour T-shirts you can’t buy anywhere? Yesterday I saw one which said “The independent republic of the b stage”. A few shows ago I also started to pay more attention to the dance routines and the dancers themselves (a few of them are pretty easy on the eye too ;o) ), and to the crazy professor. Yesterday, for the first time, he announced the guys in German instead of English… as far as I remember it was English all the time at the other shows. I’m sorry if I speak about Robbie all the time, it is in part because he is my favourite, but on the other hand he is also the one who keeps changing the stuff around more than everybody else… while the others stick to the same sentences every evening, Robbie says some new things night after night… yesterday he thanked the German audience again and again for always being so nice to him, he said “Ich liebe dich, ich liebe dich, ich liebe euch” and “danke danke danke” quite a few times, he also asked us “alles fit im Schritt?”, a sentence I hadn’t heard him say for quite a few years :o) and “das ist sehr gut” in response to the audience reaction. I think yesterday’s audience was really loud by the way, they could sing along to every song and people were participating even if they were sitting at the very top of the stadium… sehr gut indeed! Before introducing the medley, the boys had us sing some bits of old tunes again, it seems to me the number of songs increases every night, yesterday it was “Take That and Party”, “Do what you like”, “Could it be magic” (with Mark dancing and Rob trying to do so), “It only takes a minute” and “Promises” (for the real fans as somebody said… not sure if it was Howard).They cut short the sacked/left sketch yesterday, as they were bored of it (I don’t remember if somebody actually said so or of it was just our interpretation) and went over to the group hug very quickly. Also I think Gary was a bit put off by some people in the audience talking his words during the wine/milk sketch… you know… “Jason, red wine for you, my friend, red wine for you”, and so on ;o) Well, that’s the risk if you keep using the same words every evening ;o) Also, some shows ago Mark and Rob started giving out the milk and wine glasses to the fans in the first rows, I don’t think this was the case during the early shows in the UK, but I might be wrong… just don’t remember it happening in London. Another funny thing I started noticing during the past few shows, is the reaction of the people working on the show, if you look around you can always catch one of the roadies or technicians singing along or even dancing a little, yesterday we even saw James the bodyguard (or Paul? Never know who’s who) doing the “Never forget” moves and singing, quite funny :o) But to me it means that everybody who’s working for the show actually enjoys it and it seems like there is a positive atmosphere all around the guys. The same is true for the dancers by the way, you can see they are always in a hurry, but when they walk to their positions, before the routines, you can see them smiling and singing most of the time.
Ok, I think I’ll stop now, I’m hungry :o) I hope I’ll be able to post the Düsseldorf pix real soon (some of them turned out really well!) but for now you can enjoy the Hamburg pix, which are just average, but well…
at Starbucks
At Starbuck’s right now, my hotel in Düsseldorf didn’t have an internet connection so I had to come to the coffee chain to write something… I prepared a blog two days ago but never got the chance to publish it, sorry! I still owe you loads of pix! Anyway, not much happened in Hamburg for us, but we met a few interesting peeps working for the guys and had a few interesting conversations. Because of the weather on Saturday we decided to skip going to the hotel of the boys, and went sightseeing again. I’ve heard Mark took pics with and gave autographs to some fans but we don’t regret our decision as we had a wonderful day and late night as well :o) When we were walking near the railway station to go to our hotel, at about 6.15, we passed one of Robbie’s vans and quickly panicked as it stopped just a few metres away from us, but then only Ayda, Gwen and Richard the bodyguard came out of it, and went shopping inside Saturn.On Sunday we travelled to Düsseldorf by train and then discovered that Jay had done the same, only about 2 hours later then we did. We knew the boys were staying in a hotel quite far away from Düsseldorf so we didn’t bother going to look for them. We relaxed a bit yesterday and at 3 we went to the esprit Arena for the gig. I want to publish some pix before I get on the train, and I will blog about the concert later today, promised! I’m off to Munich where I will be on my own for two days, so I’ll have enough time to write ;o) Have a nice Tuesday everybody!
Here are my Amsterdam pix, considering where we were standing and what time we got to the concert, I think they are not too bad… I’m sure you’ll find better ones somewhere else though.
Like this:
Robbie’s back!!
Hello everybody, I’m baaaaaack! :o) Sorry for the lack of entries these past days, but the boys had a few days off so I took a few too ;o) Anyway, before I start telling you what happened, I need to ask you for a BIG favor: me and my friends are participating in a competition to go the Cars 2 premiere in Munich, and to win we need your votes! Could you please please PLEASE give 10 stars to the following 2 pictures? Thank you so much!!!
http://www.tikonline.de/community/fotodetail.php?pic_id=1093
http://www.tikonline.de/community/fotodetail.php?pic_id=1105
Ok, back to the tour. As I told you, they guys left Amsterdam on Tuesday and we did on Wednesday, travelling to Hamburg by train. Somebody from the crew was on our train too, there seem to be TT related people everywhere you look in the tour towns! In fact, when we arrived in Hamburg, we discovered that all of Take That’s drivers are staying at our hotel and they have their posh cars parked in our garage :o) How we wished we had a spying kit and could track the cars wherever they went, it would be so much easier to find the boys’ hotel ;o) So, as TT were still in UK, we decided to take advantage of the break and visit the town a little bit, I’ve never been to Hamburg before and it really is a beautiful town. We also went shopping and in a vintage shop ran into two Take That dancers, we had a little chat with them, they were really nice. They told us that they are spending far too much money on the tour due to all the free time they have, and the guy told us that the show he preferred so far was Milan. He also told us that Rob was feeling better, and that everybody felt really sorry that they had to cancel the show in Copenhagen. In the evening (must have been late because at 8 the drivers were still having a meeting at the bar of our hotel), Take That finally arrived… well, maybe somebody had already arrived earlier… but we didn’t know the hotel until even later so we decided to go eating and go to the boys’ hotel only on the following day. So yesterday morning we left pretty early and went to this hotel outside of Hamburg. Unfortunately shortly after us a lot of press and paparazzis arrived so we left again and went sightseeing and shopping (again!). Our friend B. kept texting us from the stadium and from what I’ve heard the organization was horrible, she basically queued up at 8 and only got second row anyway! Because of the cold and the rain, we only went to the stadium at around 6 and decided to stand in the first row at the very right of the stage, under the screen. Again it was a wonderful concert, Robbie was back to his usual self and kept smiling during the whole gig. He apologized again to the Danish fans (there were quite a few in the audience) and told the Danish press to go f*** themselves for writing that he was probably drinking again. The other four boys were in a very good mood too, despite the rain. I don’t know if it was because of the rain, but during the OM part nobody was wearing the blinking jackets, what a pity! As for the rest it was a standard concert, pretty much the same jokes as usual ;o)
By the way, it seems the Robbie solo tour will be in summer 2013… at least that’s what our inside people are saying ;o)
I’ll try to upload some pix later today…
Like this:
another day in Amsterdam
Hello everybody, in a way I’m feeling as if the tour is slowly coming to an end, only Germany left :o( But anyway, this morning started pretty well as we saw three of the boys leaving the hotel. At around 10 Gary came out of the building , he was looking really tired but despite everything still posed for pictures with some fans. Mark came out shortly after that but didn’t have time to take pictures because the bodyguards were telling him to hurry up… I guess they were late for their flight, but of course he gave us all his best smile and asked us how we were doing. Robbie came out of the hotel about half an hour later together with Ayda, he looked tired too, gave a little wave to us and then drove away. As it was finally sunny we then decided to do a little sightseeing and a canal tour, so we don’t actually know what happened to Jay and How… tomorrow we’re leaving for Hamburg, another new town to discover, wahey!!!
By the way, back to yesterday’s concert… there were a few funny moments, for example when we started singing “Could it be magic” before the medley, Mark started the CIBM dance routine, he could still do it! Rob was very surprised and asked him if he could do other ones, Mark said yes and asked him to sing another song, then Howard went “What about this…. You’re my kind of giiiiiiirl!” (for the new fans…. that’s a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery old TT song with a ridiculous dance routine) and they all started to laugh. Then the sacking-left sketch was funnier than usual, as the lads were teasing Robbie quite a bit. Robbie’s face expression when he was supposed to drink the milk was funny too, due to his problems of course he didn’t drink one drop :o) There were a lot of other few cool bits, I really really loved that concert, maybe it’s the one I liked the most of the 7 I’ve seen so far…
“Tonight I’m fucked!” (R.Williams)
Hey there, just a short post to let you know that the concert in Amsterdam took place as planned and Robbie gave his best despite still being quite sick. He was very sentimental, cried a few times, and generally was very very sweet. He joked a few times about shi**** himself, for example he refused to jump during the TT & Party cover shot. You could see that he wasn’t feeling well, he sometimes had to stop for a few seconds and take a deep breath and was sweating like mad. As for the rest the concert was like usually, I really enjoyed it as I could see quite well. We were also at the hotel and quickly saw Jason, Howard and Robbie… Jay chatted a little bit with us fans, asking if we were wet (it was raining) and he wanted to know if we were coming to the gig. The other two said hi and then left in a car or van.
