Romanian Wine
On Election Day 2012 I was driving in a van with Secret Chiefs 3 towards the Romanian town of Cluj Napoca - the capital of Transylvania. Travelling by road in this region means staring out the window at passing villages and dry autumnal valleys and stray dogs and impossibly large stork nests perched atop telephone poles.
The club, Gambrinus, was located on the old main square. We parked illegally to unload much to the anger of the police. They threatened to ticket us if we didn't move immediately even though we had fifteen people fire lining all our shit quickly onto the curb and then into the venue. Eventually the police left us alone because their arguing was actually slowing everything down and causing us to spend more time blocking traffic.
As always we were running late so there was a quick rush to set up. This included getting a ridiculously large DJ rig off the stage. I torqued my back pretty bad in the process. And the wifi didn't work here, goddammit! Look - I know this seems like a first world problem but back then international data plans were prohibitively expensive and how fucking hard is it to hook up a damn $50 wifi router and reboot it as needed? I sent Jenya a costly text message just to let her know what's up and to please pass along election results as they came available.
Got everything set up but then came to learn that the despite the rush the house sound people hadn't arrived yet. A few of us were hungry so we set forth to check out the town and get some eats on our own. Past a neat little outdoor bazaar we found an ample Italian restaurant. The exchange rate was ridiculously in our favor - I spent like $6 on a whole pizza and salad and sparkling water.
Hurried back to the club for sound check. We ran a bunch of tunes then cleared the stage for a.P.A.t.T. (our delightful tourmates). Once again we found ourselves with time to kill. But whatever shall we do without working wifi to keep us occupied?
Suddenly these guys appear well before show time. One of them, Sebastian, was a fan and friends with a nearby vintner. He offered a wine and cheese tasting at their place. Sure! So suddenly a subset of us were following these Romanian strangers down cobblestone alleys to this nice little wine shoppe a few blocks away.
Our local hosts were fans and audiophiles and happy to have us as guests and take pictures with us and feed us Romanian wines and cheeses. Who knew Romanian wine was a thing? And it was really good! It ended up being a bit of a party. The Romanians grew in number, including this one hilarious friend of theirs who was a Hungarian Jew. When I mentioned to him I too had some Jewish Hungarian blood he held up a glass and shouted, "Shalom!"
We sat at a long table and the locals kept filling our glasses, along with shots of plum and apple liquors. And some local sausages as well. Everything was super delicious. And I'm such a lightweight that I got fucking ripped. Not exactly how I usually roll pre-show.
Time flew by and there was still a gig to play. We all planned to purchase some of their amazing wines but they simply handed us twelve free bottles. Awesome! I love this town!
Stumbled back to the club. I almost felt like napping. Luckily energy drinks procured at the bar woke everybody up. After a.P.A.t.T.'s set we blasted out one of the best performances of the tour thus far, despite having two sudden power outages on stage during Halloween due to amps being cranked too loud. Wine plus energy drinks always equals amps too loud.
I was keen to pack the vans and get to the hotel for our five hours of sleep before the long drive tomorrow, but the party raged on. So be it, however as usual I was the only sober one a couple hours later. If I were to get any z's I had to manage getting the van out of the parking lot across the square, and spearhead the loading process. And so I did.
Turns out there was a flat above the noisy club where the a.P.A.t.T. crew were crashing. But the comfortable, quiet hotel seemed more appealing - we were down to 2.5 hours of potential sleep so I wanted to make it count. I drove the giant Sprinter van with little navigational aid about 5 kilometers through this very foreign city.
The hotel was situated on a scary narrow street with cars parked too close to me on both sides. I accidentally missed the turn. So I had to circle around via even more narrow streets. I survived without scraping the vehicle or taking out anybody's side mirrors. Macario the tour manager ran inside to get our keys and figure out how and where to park.
He emerged a minute later completely pissed off. Turns out somebody fucked up and they didn't have any record of a reservation for us, nor any free rooms. Fuck! I sped back to the club, and we found the aforementioned flat was still accessible. Half of us went up to claim whatever surfaces were available. I basically woke up Joel snoozing on one tiny, fold up couch and told him to move over. The other half slept in the van out in the street. Good god, what a clusterfuck, but I managed to maximize the two hours of sleep.
The wake up call was at 6:40am. I fumbled around the dark room to put on the same clothes I've been wearing for several days straight. One by one people appeared - some having stayed up all night - and met up at the parked vans. Kind of a bleak, frazzled scene as we came to terms with our current fragile state of being and the seven hour drive to Bucharest facing us.
But then I got a text from Jenya which simply said: "Obama!"
We cheered.