Liege - 8th October

Our day started with bumping our suitcases across the cobbles of Brussels again and a pretty long walk to the Midi/Zuid station. Weird looking place - it looks like a big generic office building from the outside. If it wasn't for all the train lines converging and the big B logo outside, you could easily miss it.
We arrived in plenty of time, so went and had a very nice cafe latte and chilled out for a while in the sunshine.
Once you're inside the Midi/Zuid it's all business. It's well laid out and there's loads of information screens everywhere that update constantly with reliable information. Nothing like the UK... Travelling by train on the continent is a real eye-opener and I highly recommend it.

The journey to Liege was only an hour and a bit. Our guidebook was pretty negative about the city, describing it as grubby and unpleasant, so we weren't expecting much. We arrived in blazing sunshine at the groovy new station. The guidebook was wrong!

Our hotel was right across the street from the station, so no messing about with cobbles today. We checked into our very nice room with a super kingsize bed and wifi. Woohoo!

We were in Liege quite early, so decided it would be a good opportunity to eat some proper food - something we hadn't done for several days. So we headed into the centre of town and had a very nice curry at the Taj Mahal restaurant. It's a small unassuming restaurant down a narrow back street.
Good food + exceptionally friendly service = big tip.
Suitably full, but not stuffed we set out towards the night's venue - Caserne-Fonke. A quick call to Jon confirmed the details of what time they were on. The Liege show was the only show where The Posies were playing with (actually supporting) another band - Puggy. Never heard of them, but apparently they're pretty popular around these parts.

It was quite a trek, but we really enjoyed walking everywhere on this trip. It gave us a chance to see a little bit of each city that we wouldn't have seen otherwise, and get some much needed exercise. We passed through the wig district - I shit you not - there were loads of wig shops all bunched together in one street. Then walked a long way up the river and over a bridge, just as the sun was setting. It was really pretty.

We found the venue, no problem. We knew we'd arrived when we reached the end of the queue, which ran right down the street and round the corner. Puggy are VERY popular. 1,200 tickets sold for this show. Blimey! We stood in line for what felt like a very long time before we finally got in. We were very thankful to be given backstage passes - the place was heaving with teenagers! And what a place. HUUUUGE, one might even say cavernous. The stage was set up about half way along the 'room', so the dozen or so people backstage had the same amount of room as the 1,200 fans crammed in front. It was so big the van which was parked in a corner looked like a toy in there.

We met up with Matilda, who was on video duties for the night this time, said hello to everyone, had a quick drink, then it was show time already. It was absolutely packed, so we decided to stay in the relative calm available to us and watch The Posies play from the side of the stage. This is something we've not done before. It was interesting to watch the show from a different angle like this. OK, we didn't get to hear the full-on sound out front, but we thoroughly enjoyed the show. It was fun to watch the audience. They seemed to really enjoy the set, despite being born after some of the songs were released! There was lots of clapping and cheering - always a good sign.

 

Mahoooosive!

They played a great, but short set of beautifully executed songs, but it was all over too soon.
After the show I found this on the wall and had to take a picture.

GET IN The Posies!!!
Hell yeah.

Tired and shagged-out after a prolonged squawk, the guys had a long drive ahead of them to Utrecht, so we all called it a night pretty early - after spending some considerable time trying to find Darius' wingnut, which he'd dropped in the dark while packing up his drum kit. Eventually it was found.
Matilda, Mark and I went outside to find a bus back into town, where she was approached by a man who wanted to offer her a job. Random! Anyhoo, their conversation was entirely unintelligible to us, but seemed to go well.
He offered us a lift, which saved us time and money and gave them more chance to talk about TV stations and web applications (the only bits I understood). It was a bit of a manic ride, but we got dropped off at the station 10 minutes later in one piece.
By this time I think it was only about 10.30pm ish, so we decided to go for a night cap and chat. Around 11pm Matilda found out she'd just missed her last train back to Brussels, so she got a room at our hotel for the night and we ended up sitting outside a bar a couple of doors down from the hotel until 1.30am, just enjoying each others company.
We were interrupted for a while by Victor, a local loon, who wanted to sit with us. Matilda handled him really well and tried so hard to politely tell him that we were deep in conversation and didn't want him to sit down. He was getting pretty pushy and quite aggressive, but she stayed calm and refused to be baited by him. Kudos to you girl.

All in all a great night in Liege. Don't believe everything you read in guidebooks.