Thursday night. That seems like a good place to start my dramatic retelling of my Journey Though The Dark to meet with the Bards. I went to bed at 9pm. I knew I had a very early morning, so I tried to get as much sleep as possible. Though, that's very hard when normal bed time is 1am and I was trying my hardest not to get excited. Nevertheless, Blind Guardian wouldn't leave my head till I sung hymns at it and finally drifted off to sleep.
Friday. I woke up at 4am when my alarm went off. I had a shower (washed my hair), ate some breakfast. I woke Dad up at 4:45 and made him a coffee. I wore my Opeth t-shirt, jeans and my black work shoes. I figured I'd be on my feet all day, and I've wore them so much, they're rather comfortable, as well as being quite sturdy. I packed my Big Day out bag with my diary containing tickets and pen, my wallet, a hair brush, lipstick, phone and bluetooth, a couple of hair ties, jplayer, mints and a water bottle. That was all I brought. Dad drove me to the air port, I self-checked in using the cool new system with my credit card. I got on the plane, ate a terrible aeroplane-breakfast and watch
Employee of the Month which got very boring rather quickly, so I just read my trashy women's magazine I bought at the airport to keep me occupied. The flight took 3 and a half hours. I arrived in Melbourne at a bit past 12.
I wandered around the airport a bit until I found the shuttle bus service that runs between the city and the airport. I made friends with a man from California holidaying with his wife. They were nice. I arrived at the city, attained some directions and started walking towards Young & Jackson, the arranged meeting place for people who's been chatting on the Blind Guardian forum boards (and also some others who tagged along). Because I didn't know what anyone was meant to look like, I merely saw some people in various metal t-shirts, walked up to them and introduced myself. This tactic worked very well for the remainer of the evening and I made plenty of friends this way. All the people I met were so friendly and welcoming, most of the them having come from outside Melbourne themselves. I eventually met up with the forum people, and drank 4 pints of beer (only had to pay for 2). We started singing too, which was a whole load of fun! I forget most people's names (except the forum people really), but drinking and singing at the pub was pretty damn awesome, and I'm so glad I went for that.
It came to about 6, and I decided I wanted to line up outside the venue, so I'd get a good spot in the crowd. I think I'd met most of the people who were in the first half of the line (only once really - just introductions and shared excitment over BG) so I managed to hang around with them and skip the que (tee hee, sneaky). I gang of people came in and unofficially pushed in as well, but I really don't think anyone cared. I joined them for a bit and started scaring strangers walking past by going \m/ "METAL!! Blind Guardian!!" at them as they tried to squeeze through. It was pretty funny. Some people would do it back, while others just looked scared. Metalheads are so misunderstood. At 7:30 the doors finally opened. I went straight to the merch table only to find that Blind Guardian didn't have any womens t-shirts (boo), but I bought one for Ian and came back at the end of the show and bought one for me anyway :D
I managed to secure a place at the very very front of the stage. No one else in front of me, I was right against the baracade. I made friends with the people surrounding me, which was great, because we weren't all trying to shove each other out of the way later. We waited for a while, until the first band came on; a thrash metal band called Dissymmetry. I suppose if you like thrash metal, you'd like them, but pretty much everyone I chatted to about it, thought they were crap. I certainly thought they were crap and spent all the time listening to them with my fingers holding my ears shut. They were dressed up funny too! The second band on was called Eyefear, and was a whole lot better! They were power prog metal and did quite a good job. They also warmed the crowd up to Blind Guardian instead of themselves (i.e 'who's excited to see BG?' instead of 'who's excited to see me?") The lead singer had some mighty hair! It came all the way down to his ankles! I'd never seen hair that long ever before. It was intense hair!
Anyway, then after another wait, on came the bards!! OMG! It was nuts! It went off! They opened with Into The Storm, which was awesome. Then they played Born in a Mourning Hall, which was awesome. Then they played Nightfall... which was, you guessed it, awesome.
1.Into the Storm
2. Born in a Mourning Hall
3. Script for my Requiem
4. Fly
6. Vahalla (the crowd kept chanting the chorus in this one for ages, so much so, that Banish From the Sanctuary, which was meant to be #12, was cut from the set list entirely)
7. Time Stands Still at the Iron Hill (or Ire-ron hill for those BG fans who pronounce it properly, ;D)
8. Lost in the Twilight Hall
9. Mordred's Song
10. This Will Never End
11. Lord of the Rings
12. And Then There Was Silence (this was one fo the great highlights for me as I love this song and know all the lyrics, despite it lasting 14mins. There's a dadadadadadadadadadadah! bit in it (lol) that the Bards got the crowd to sing over and over again, that was awesome)
That was the set list, but then they had 3 encore songs. So they went off, and we cheered and sang Valhalla and cheered some more. Then they came out and played
13. Imaginations From the Other Side
14. The Bards Song - Into the Forest, which Hansi didn't sing much of, he got all of us to sing most of it. And that was awesome. Just the two acoustics played by Marcus and Andre and the whole crowd singing it. "Tomorrow will take us away, far from home, no one will ever know our names....!!"
15. and finally.. Mirror Mirror. This was the other big highlight. I went absolutley nuts in this one and was singing and headbanging my little heart out! The whole crowd was singing, it went off, a fine way to end the night with the Bards.
I should mention that through out this, I wasn't being squashed because I'd let the guy behind reach his arms forward to hold on to the rail. So his arms were either side of me, so he could brace himself and not get pushed either way by the crowd, and also brace him so he wouldn't get pushed into me. w00t! I also should say, more importantly, that Hansi looked and pointed at me
4 times!! throughout the set. And Marcus was right in front of me for pretty much the entire set, and he smiled at me a couple fo times.
So afterwards, I had every intention of trying to score an autograph, so I settled in with a mate who'd flown in from NZ to see the show, and his two mates (one of which had twisted his ankle, poor guy). We waited for probably only an hour. Frederik, the new drummer, came out first with the guys from the other bands. We missed his signature because of a couple of security guys. We were a bit worried that Frederik coming out without the rest of the band, meant that the others had snuck out at the same time, a convenient distraction. But, about 15mins later, out came Hansi, Andre and Marcus. They were so awesome! I managed to get Ian's t-shirt and my ticket autograph by those three guys! And they stayed long enough so the handful of fans there all got as many autographs as we wanted and photographs as could be taken. And they were so kind and polite and put up with all of us so nicely and chatted with us and it was awesome. I shook their hands! *squee* It was the icing on the cake. I still can't believe I met the Bards. SUGOI!!!!
So, afterwards, three guys from the forum boards and I went to the crown casino and drank alcohol and chatted until about 4 - I think. Then they walked me to the shuttle bus and I headed off. I've had maybe 3hrs sleep or something. I'm so tired and cannot seem to get much more sleep, but the past 30 hours have been absolutely nuts... and totally unforgettable. I made some great friends and exchanged emails with people. So that's my completely awesometastic adventure!
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nicwhite86 and the other two from 
good
pleased
satisfied
excited
giddy
exhausted
energetic
enraged