Production Day in Germany

Made it to Frankfurt a little early, but one of the runways was closed for some reason, which caused us to be put in a holding pattern for about 30 minutes. No big deal, really, because we had people coming in on various flights over the next few hours. Once everyone lands and collects bags, we'll all take off on the crew bus for Nuremberg, Germany, where the Rock Im Park Festival is held.

Breezed through immigrations, and headed to baggage claim, where I'd spend the next 90 minutes. Yup, no luggage for me. Pisser! No luggage for Shirley, our Production Assistant, either.

Waited and waited and waited, then headed to the counter to do the paperwork. Funny thing, though, there was a BROWN bag about the size of my BLACK bag that, like mine, had bright yellow handle wraps on both handles. Hmmm…could it be that some moron took my bag because he was groggy and couldn't tell brown from black at this time of the morning? Why else would this bag be sitting here instead of with its rightful owner?

Thankfully, his luggage tag yielded a bit of info – his name, address, and most importantly, his phone number. The super-duper American Airlines guy called the number, but got voice mail in Sunnyvale, CA, where the dude lived. Within 15 minutes, though, someone called back and gave Mr. AA guy the dude's hotel info. Even better, the hotel was less than an hour away. Next, Mr. AA guy coordinated the return of my bag with the hotel's concierge.

And lucky me, my bag arrived about an hour later, just 15 minutes before we rolled away on our bus to make the two-hour drive to Nurnburg. I had a backpack with a few days of clothing and some mini-toiletries in it, so I could have gotten by, but being a moving target (moving city-to-city daily) makes it harder to have your luggage forwarded. Damn glad to get it back.

Next problem was an overturned truck on the autobahn, which turned our 2-hour drive into a 5.5-hour drive. Meaning there would be no chance to go by the hotel for showers/naps, etc. Bummer!

Straight to the Rock Im Park festival site to load in for tomorrow's show. I had the usual crap to do – set up the office, build a few Excel files, advance a few final items, etc. The band showed up and soundchecked around 7:30.

Finally got back to the hotel at midnight. Totally exhausted, but I still went down to the lobby bar and had a couple of Beck's drafts. Tasty stuff, indeed. No one else on the crew came down, so I chatted with the dude tending bar. They closed at 1am, at which point I grabbed one to go and headed to my room. After a bit of emails and web-surfing, I finally crashed out about 3am.