Bochum, Germany

On June 19th I had spent almost two weeks in Finland and it was about the time to do a small trip to Central Europe. I went over to meet my very good friend Karima Houssa to Bochum of Germany. At the end of the first week a city festival called Bochum Total took also place, which was just great. We also went around to some other places. It's of course useless to go through each and every day but here are shortly the most important events. 

Düsseldorf and the folks

I arrived Germany late on Tuesday. On Thursday we did a small trip to Düsseldorf. We hopped in a train in Bochum and it took about an hour to get to the local main railway station. At the times suitable for them we were joined by Christian Weiler (one of the twins of master Paul Weiler), the old fooler-around Eike Pütz and his girlfriend Yvonne. On a rainy day like that you're not actually even allowed to do anything special, so we just wondered around, looking at things and had coffee. What a perfect way to spend an idle day of vacation. Just to mention, the previous time I went to Düsseldorf it was at the time of the football World Champs last summer. That time there was just a little bit more people on the move and the whole city was quite much having a festival. The fans of Trinidad and Tobago, for example, took it to another level with their song and dance right at the railway station. 

Budokan, Dortmund

On Friday we went to Dortmund to train some hojohojo. Karima trains under supervision of the highly appreciated 8th dan master Lan Ung Kim, who is also a national team coach. Several competitors who are or have been on the top level of the world come from his club. Besides Karima for example Anna Anastasiadou, Grycia Lopez, Hosnya Karim and Dimitri and Taki Vlachonis. Junior work is also strong and in the German national junior team were this season among others Anton Gritsen, Dennis Sander, Zarina and Jasmin Karim and Angelina Pier.
I think this was the fourth time that I had the pleasure of visiting Budokan. The spirit of togetherness in the group seems to be really good, on the first time a stiff Finn was even surprised when people came to shake hands before and after the trainings even with a complete stranger. The trainings themselves are often conducted the traditional way and during one session several aspects of Taekwon-Do are usually been trained: fundamental techniques, patterns and sparring. This time, however, we did only patterns with rather good pace, which suited my off-season situation very well. Master Lan is a very sympathetic person who speaks English to a guest. With my satisfactory German I can also follow the simple German commands pretty well; rechts und links, Beine, Hände... One gets already pretty far with these, right? The personality of master Lan has guaranteed him a solid post as the coach of the German national female team and his expertise has been acknowledged worldwide. In the seminar arranged at the time of the World Championships Master Land shared his knowledge over competition training of Taekwon-Do.

Bochum Total

Saturday and Sunday we spent in Bochum, where some bands from Germany and abroad ringed the ears of the audience in a festival that carries the name of Bochum Total. My biggest interest went to the direction of a brisky Finnish group Disco Ensemble but of course I saw other bands too. The first band I spotted on Saturday was a group called Fertig, Los! coming from München. Somehow the band's style fit my taste, even though I didn't understand much more about the lyrics than one song's links, rechts, links, and that in this song a boy saw a girl standing in the middle of the street during a demonstration. Anyway, all together a pretty good 8+ as the saying goes (in Finnish grammar school the grades go from 4 to 10 with plusses, minuses and halfs).
The group put together by six fellows, Monsters of Liedermaching performed seemengly funny songs, for the audience laughed often to the clever points of the lyrics. There were even real fans among the audience, singing the songs aloud together with the band. Unfortunately my too poor knowledge of German language reduced this experience greatly, even though Karima told me what the songs were about. Well, the thing must work when you take a bunch of funny friends that play on turns one guitar and sing both alone and together. And they even do it rather well.
Sugarplum Fairy is a group that seems to be remarkable because the singer-guitarist is the brother of the leader of a band called Mando Diao. However, this wonderful thing wasn't quite enough to convince me, even though the act was carried out in the manner of the big world and the music honoured bands in the direction of the Strokes and maybe even Arctic Monkeys. There was just something missing despite the energetic stage act. Karima liked this more.
On Saturday I also got to see a short while of a weird act called Das Ich by accident. There weren't any elements that would have thrilled us and we left the stage area asap. The duo in question, however, visited also Tampere at a gothic festival Lumo just a week later. And even as a main act.

On Sunday then it was the turn of the Finnish Disco Ensemble that I had waited. I was somewhat familiar with the band's material already due to the radio time they've got in the Finnish radio. I also saw the group at Rauma last summer just by accident and their music was interesting enough to make me watch their gig. Seeing the guys on stage one can really tell that they've been around more than just their home corners, even to the far and distant Ameerica. A small miracle is that the voice of the lead singer Miikka Koivisto carried through the whole gig despite the big amount of concerts they've given throughout the Spring and early Summer. This fellow really has the tendency of shouting and screaming in every song so that a normal human being's vocal cords would need at least a good month's rest. The German audience perhaps didn't quite take the delicacy DE was serving withoug chewing it, though the fanatics in front of the stage gave all they had. The boys gave a really good show and the drummer Mikko Hakila needs to be mentioned for a really convinsing work. Also the guitarist Jussi Ylikoski lead the group with strong professionality. I'll most likely see Disco Ensemble the next time already the first weekend of July in the far north of Finland in Rovaniemi at Simerock.

On Sunday I watched only one band besides DE. The bad weather that lasted throughout the whole festival bothered a bit, one don't feel like standing in the rain in this age anymore. At least not if the band is for sure known to be good. The last show of the night was given by the legendary Dog eat dog, who was a must just because their hit No fronts was somehow big deal back in the 90's. I got the feeling that this song would be heared in the end of the set and I wasn't wrong. Because of this one song we had to stand throught the whole gig that was quite much Ameerika. The group putting together punk and rap elements didn't quite impress us except for the extremely skillful percussionist. Too much talking, trying to win the audience on their side and shouting "Bockum". Even that No fronts in the end didn't raise the grade of the band too high. We've come a long way from the golden 90's...

A Finnish javelin thrower Seppo Räty had his strong opinion about Germany after a competition that didn't go too well (Germany is a land of s**t). Maybe his opinion is partially even easy to agree, what I've heard at least if you've lived in the country yourself. The fact is, however, that when you talk about holiday trips it's the people that usually make your trip good or bad. Luckily I didn't have to have anything to do with others than very nice folks, so I'd concider my trip to be very good at least. In addition there are some pleasant things in Germany, like the many Bäckereis, where you can buy bread and sandwiches as you walk by, and also the cosy caffés. In my opinion Germany is very much worth visiting, you don't have to stay there to live if you don't feel like it, you know