Death Angel was one of my main reasons for traveling 7 hours to go to the Getaway Rock Festival. I hadn’t seen Death Angel perform live since 1987. Plus, they scored me a photo pass so that sealed the deal. I was going to Sweden.

When the lineup times were finally announced I was horrified to see that Death Angel had landed an early slot on the first day. Who created this schedule? There were a bunch of crappy bands at Getaway, with virtually no following, that had better time slots. Oh well. Lucky for me there was an early train from Copenhagen that was scheduled to get me to the festival in plenty of time. Or so I thought.

I woke up at 3 a.m., got ready, and made it to the train station by 4 for my 4:13 a.m. departure. The train station was closed with a sign saying to enter from the other side. No problem. Luckily I had 13 minutes to spare. I got to the other side by about 4:07. There were no signs saying which platform my train was to leave from. None of the monitors at the station were turned on yet leaving me, and the 50 or so other people looking to take the same train, very confused.

4:13 comes and goes. No train, no announcements, nobody from the train company to explain things. Great. Some people panicked (I felt sick inside myself) as they had to catch a plane. They hopped into taxi cabs to get to the airport. I couldn’t take a taxi to Sweden–way too expensive. Finally, at 4:30 I found an employee who told me, and some others, that we needed to find a bus to the airport and maybe I could catch a train from there.

I found a bus and got on. It didn’t go anywhere for 25 minutes. Now I knew I had missed my connecting train from Malmo to Stockholm, which also meant I would miss my train from Stockholm to Galve. I was beginning to think I would miss Death Angel too. Anguish set in. The bus stopped five times on the way to the airport, each time waiting for 5 minutes or more for passengers that didn’t get on. By the time we finally got to the airport it was past 6 a.m., passengers sprinted from the bus to try to catch their planes, and I headed to the trains to see if any were going to Sweden.

I finally got on a train to Malmo from the Copenhagen Airport. In Malmo, Sweden I discover that I could catch a train to Stockholm and then Gavle, but I wouldn’t arrive until 1:57 p.m. Death Angel were set to go on at 2:15 p.m., but I didn’t know how to get there from the train station, how far it was, or how to get my pass. For all I knew, I could have to wait in line for an hour to get in. So the whole morning I was extremely worried and stressed.

I found out that it was a half hour walk from the station to the festival so the second my train opened its door I ran, with a full backpack and a loaded camera bag, in the direction I thought was correct. It turns out I was going in the right direction! It was my first lucky break of the day. I arrived, covered in sweat, at 2:13, received my photo pass in quick order and ran for the stage. I hit the stage at the exact same instant that Death Angel did, and pretty much everything thereafter was smooth sailing.

Posted on July 12th, 2011 under Other • Tags: death angel, getaway rock festival, metal. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed