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We’re back in February, just came to Bucharest after my exhibition in Verona. We left for Timisoara where Urma would have their concert, followed by Cluj on the second day.

The winter passed and our route was right on the freshly repaired road to Sibiu. When we got to Dealul Negru I thought we made a wrong turn and got to some historical site with trenches from the second world war. I’m not kidding, there were 40 cm deep craters all over the road and funny pieces of debris that looked like bombshell. There was a time I thought a helmet would be appropriate. In front of us there were cars literally jumping up and down as they were speeding at 25 km/h on this road that made swiss-cheese look flat.

Luckily we survived.

We got to Timisoara, a nice city by the way, a little weird in it’s own way, but nice. Got straight to the venue that would be hosting the concert.

As you can see it was cold. Dead cold to say the least. The more we stood there the colder it got. It took the technicians merely two decades just to assemble the whole rig. During the first hour there was one thing that made the cold even worse. We couldn’t find any posters announcing the concert. Not a single one, not even on the club’s entrance. Everything was a disaster. This big, empty, cold place that would have been great, if it had people inside.

The last thing that we did after the sound check, and I’ll not forget this in a while, was to put some of the chairs (not quite chairs, but some sort of cubes that you could sit on, mini sofas) in the middle of the hall, in front of the stage, thinking that we could make a nice and cosy place for the 8 people that were going to show up for the concert, since there were no posters or fliers or pretty much anything.

We left the place and went to eat, pretty much disappointed because of this whole thing. We even made some bets on how many people would come. We all lost.

We got back to the venue and were totally shocked. I mean it was a full-house and there were more people waiting to get in. The place was packed, it was great. There were more than 650 people (*edited / official numbers) at the concert, filling the place up to the limit. There was this big excitement because all of this. All was great, except one thing. There was this little voice inside my head telling me: „Radu, you’ve only got fixed focal lenses, how on Earth will you move through this crowd. Ha ha, you’re screwed now”. And indeed I was, it was a pain. If I had 8 hands they wouldn’t be enough :) it’s never enough.

The concert was great and the people loved it. There was a huge amount of energy coming from the whole situation (disappointment during the sound check and then the enthusiasm from seeing the place full of  people). The „encores” never seemed to stop and the night was great.

We left for Cluj in the morning, for what it was supposed to be a 4 hour drive. Guess what. It wasn’t.

Plans changed because of some logistics problems that caused the poster issue in Timisoara, there was a problem with the second car that was supposed to carry the rest of the equipment to Cluj. So I went by train, together with the 2 technicians for a 6 hour trip to Cluj, that got us just in time for the concert. No sound check.

But when I said that the 4 hour drive wasn’t at all a 4 hour drive I meant it. The road was so bad that the band, which left a long time before we did, arrived just in time for their concert. There was a short sound check that delayed the concert for a couple of minutes, but that was it.

The place was smaller than the Setup Club in Timisoara, and shaped in a weird tunnel-like shape. It was a small stage that barely fit 6 musicians (Ati was ill so we didn’t have percussion). Luckily there was a door for the backstage entrance that allowed me to get on stage for a couple of shots.

It was full.  Over 450 people (*edited /w correct numbers) filled the place right to the exit. It took me 3 songs to get close to the stage and I could hear the same voice again saying: „You’ve got fixed focals, you’re screwed”. What can I say. Thank God for wide-angles.

The people loved the show, but there was a time limit. The pub that hosted the show, Music Pub, an old pub in Cluj with a fairly big tradition in good live music, was only allowed to host concerts to 11:30PM, because the noise level had to be kept down. The limit was forced by 30 minutes of encores, but, as all good things must come to an end, they called it a wrap.

So after two successful days we left Domi in Cluj and got home to prepare for our next destination: Freiburg, Germany. Freiburg is a little town that hosted the Jawala Festival, where Urma would play on February 19.

Stay tuned for the future posts covering the trip to Freiburg and maybe some delicious pasta with Bucharest’s fine, enthusiastic young chefs.