I'm two years into what has become a 10 year endeavor with an end in sight.... Kultur Shock: No Borders, the documentary.
I ran my first Kickstarter campaign to fund a trip to go on the road with Kultur Shock in Italy and the Balkans. Over the last 12 years, I had designed t-shirts and posters, directed and edited a handful of videos, shot countless photos of the band and dozens and dozens of shows.
As I said earlier, these people had become family to me. Their families and friends had become family to me. I met Kasia as a result of my relationship with the people in this band. So, going on the road with them to see what life on the road was like for a working band was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
The tour would take us to Umbertide, Rome, Modena, Motovun, Sarajevo, Mostar (oh gawd I freaking love Mostar!), Zadar, Osijek, Zajecar, Rijeka, Vinica, Zrenjanin, Sofia, and ultimately Burgas on the Black Sea under a full moon!
The first three shows were in Italy. We flew into Rome via a route from an Eddie Izzard bit. Hanging Gardens of Babylon... The first show was in Umbertide about 2 hours north of Rome the same day we arrived in Italy. It was a public park along a river. There were a couple hundred people. Ok. They're not very well known in Italy and it's the first show. Cool.
We drive to Rome the next morning. A day off! I wander around the neighborhood around the hotel. Holy shit! The espresso in Italy! Wow. Just wow. Amy and Paris get a gig playing in a local artist squat while the rest of us hang out and go to a nice restaurant known for its pizza. RIGHTLY SO! It was out of this world good!
Get a decent night's sleep. Get up early. Call Kasia. Find some more life giving espresso... and then some more. We change hotels and head to the venue for soundcheck and the show. It's a nice outdoor venue that could have easily held several thousand people, but tonight there were a couple hundred. Again, being consummate professionals the band charges through an amazing set.
The opening band, The Banditi, were a lot of fun. High energy pop rock and we hang out with them before and after the show. Great people!
Then back to the hotel. Sleep. Head to Modena in the morning. Check into this super modern, comfortable efficiency hotel. Head to the gig. It's at a state fair kinda thing and the band is playing inside a circus tent! The promoters treat us to an amazing meal. Seriously, the best ravioli I've tasted in my life. Giant! And they gave each of us several bottles of really really good Lambrusco which we all jealously guarded. I would make the mistake of taking my last bottle out of my bag in Zadar and it would be gone by the time I woke up from my nap! I blame Val Kiossovski.
Back to Modena. Again, the show is excellent, but sparsely attended. I like to joke that the Italian shows were like Spinal Tap opening for the puppet show. It's not that sad of course, but it always gets a laugh.
Back to the hotel! Sleep! Next stop Ljubljana to pick up some gear at Channel Zero in Metelkova before heading off to Motovun, Croatia. We stop for lunch at a place called Trnovski Zvon, a place famous for 2 things... pizza and horse meat! I opted for the pizza and am blown away. This topped even the pizza I had eaten in Italy. Slovenian pizza is like Italian pizza but like 4-6% more generous.
Once we're all stuffed and seriously farty, we head to the Croatian border. We have a little difficulty at the Slovenian border because our passport control in Rome went like this...
Follow the sign to passport control. A customs official up high in an enclosed booth looks at your passport from 20 feet away, says, "Ciao!" and waves you through. No stamp. Nothing. Welcome to Italy!
So, none of us had entry stamps in our passports! Luckily, it was still early enough in the tour that most of us still had our plane ticket stubs with us and we could prove when and where we entered Schengen. A little hassle, but we get through it.
Drive through the no mans' land to the Croatian side. It's getting dark. It's up in the Julian Alps and kinda cold and dreary. The customs agent is alone except for one assistant who he obviously had eyes for. He's bored. We look like a bunch of vagrants. This border crossing is a story unto itself, but for the sake of this yarn, let it be known that it took us 2.5 hours to get into Croatia.... and oh, it could have taken a lot longer and possibly ended tragically!
We drive to our hotel outside of Motovun. It's delightfully Soviet in construction and kind of horror movie-ish on the inside. We check in and drop stuff off. Everyone is amped up from that stressful border crossing! The promoter calls and invites us UP TO THE CASTLE ON TOP OF THE HILL WHERE THE FILM FESTIVAL IS AND WHERE THE BAND WILL PLAY TOMORROW!
We take a bus up to the castle. I had never been in a castle before. This is mind blowing. The bus drops us off and we have to walk the rest of way into the castle proper. They hold open a restaurant for us so we can have dinner. After Italy and so much dough and cheese, I'm ready for some vegetables! I order the vegetable risotto. It's... hmmmm... it's soooooooooo good!
After I get back from tour I watch an episode of an Anthony Bourdain show where he ate at the same restaurant and it turns out that it's one of the most famous truffle restaurants in Europe! DAMMIT!
We head the rest of the way up the castle and get a nice tour... and a lot of drinks. It's 1am and the place is on fire with young Balkan folk partying it up after a long day of watching films.
Back to the hotel. Sleep. Good sleep. Get up at a reasonable hour, espresso and Bitter Lemon with Val and then a trip to the castle for lunch and a couple of movies and then my first cevapi in the Balkans. It was good, but 24 hours after this I would get the real deal in Sarajevo! I go back to the hotel to pick up my gear and head back for the soundcheck. This will be my first Kultur Shock show in the Balkans!
There are still a few hours before the films end and KS starts. I wander around taking in the sights. I'm LOVING this. The people were so friendly and full of life. It was one giant party... in a way that really only Croatians can survive.
The time is upon us. The venue is a shallow sort of coliseum. Maybe a little bigger than the Showbox, but outdoors and the band will be playing behind a waist high fence on the ground. I set up my GoPros and make sure I have easy access to camera batteries and cards for my DSLR. It's an hour before the band goes on. There's no opener tonight. It's already probably more packed than the last three shows combined and I'm chatting with people left and right. People had come in from all over Croatia and Slovenia for this show and loved talking about the band.
The lights go down. THE VENUE IS PACKED! The crowd roars! Backstage the band gets in a huddle and sings the chorus of Sheitan together, a ritual they would perform before almost every show on this tour.
The band launches into King For Today. The crowd goes WILD! The band is on fire. I was struck with the power of the performance. I knew all those faces up on that stage. I know all the songs. I know the band so so well, but I had no idea who THIS band was! The performance was so so so so different than anything I had experienced in Seattle, Portland or Bellingham over the last 12 years. So much intensity. So much connection with the crowd. So much energy from the crowd. I was stunned, amazed. This was incredible!
It was 90 minutes or so of a simply blistering set and the audience ate it up. I had never seen anything like this before!
The show wraps up. We load the gear on a tractor to take down the hill. This all concludes around 4:30am and we can see the first glimmer of sunlight coming up over the hills in the east. The decision is made to skip the hotel for a nap and just charge on to Sarajevo.
That is a story for another day! That was a bastard of a drive!
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