Even though we badly needed it, there was no time to sleep in. In front of us were 400km on Romanian, 120km on Moldovan roads plus the border. 12 hours were a realistic estimation. Other bands usually shake their heads when they see the routing of this tour but if you want to go from Russia to Istanbul and want to see every country in between you've gotta pay the price. Crossing borders is not one of my hobbies. It always makes me nervous as in this moment all the responsibilities rest on my shoulder. Usually I have to talk to unfriendly to aggressive border cops, open the van, explain that we are musicians, keep all the papers together, spend time running in and out of buildings, and just try to make the best out of the situation so that we can quickly move on.
And again, the Moldovan side of the border made no legitimate impression at all. Several people spoke to us in English an Russian, we were supposed to have some kind of declaration and in the end we had to pay some kind of ecology "tax". The first kilometers through Moldova again met our expectations: Puddles of mud, crazy chaotic traffic. The streets in general and missing lights on other cars allowed us to move with an average speed of 50 km/h. We entered Chisinau around 20:30. Vova, Slava and Daniel, our Chisinau connection, waited for us at the venue and were visibly relieved by our arrival.
The Boogiemen festival has been running since 3 in the afternoon and the small venue with two floors was packed. We had to unload and set up the backline immediately and 30 Minutes after we've arrived we played the first riffs of the intro. After sitting in a car for more than 12 hours this was all we needed.
The show was wild, hardcore kids showed their moves and others just came to hear loud music which, at a few moments during the show, led to some friction. We had to stop the show and ensure unity among the people in front of the stage. But nonetheless, the show stayed wild, stage dives, circle pits, lots of partying. Between songs, we had to shake hands. It's moments like this that remind you why it's worth sitting in a shitty car for hours and hours.
Like the year before we spent the night at Slava's place. His family had to move to the attic and everyone of us had a bed. There was also food, lots and lots of food, not only in quantity but also in variety! This was Moldovan hospitality! One of the highlights was Vladimir from Transnistria, a friend of Slava who came around just for the show. We just had to ask him a million questions about the pseudo country that he is from.
Christian