Hello,
I've done this is two parts because this part isn't really anything to do with the band!
After the run of gigs we did in May me and my friend David were applying for tickets for the Champions League Final in Rome. We were lucky enough to get two tickets and David figured out the cheapest way to get there. There was however one problem, I didn't have a valid passport.
So off i went to Liverpool to the Identity and Passport office. I was booked in for 10am and had a 4 hour wait until i could pick it up. I put in my headphones and decided that the best way to find out what Liverpool had to offer was follow my instinct, walk around and explore the city. My general thought process was 'that looks cool, lets follow that'. I didnt expect to learn so much in a day.
The first place i visited was what i think is the town hall which had a courtyard round the back. I carried on walking and saw the Liver building which i thought was pretty ugly. I carried on and found St. Nicholas Church and it's small garden. This is when it started to dawn on me the history of the city. On an information board in the gardens it explained about the history of the Church. It was used to bury victims of the black death, to detain prisoners of war in the civil war and used as a trading ground for the slave trade. The prosperity gained from this led to the development of the very garden i was stood in, albeit many moons ago.
Most of the church as it stood for it's longest period without damage (a good few hundred years) was destroyed from a fire in World War II. There is a memorial for the people of Liverpool and Bootle who died during the Blitz. On it was a bouquet of flowers with a small handwritten note from someone who lost their 12 year old sibling in the Blitz. I'm still in quandary over whether i should have read the note or not but it sent a shiver down my spine. Obviously everyone is aware of World War II, most people are vaguely aware of the atrocities that occurred but for me I have trouble even relating to what it must have been like. It can be hard to imagine any of it ever happened, such is it's magnitude... if you understand what I mean.
I crossed the road and walked down towards the Mersey behind the Liver Building and Port of Liverpool Building (which is way more aesthetically pleasing despite being built in the same period). I started to see more memorials for various countries naval forces and the first one i saw read 'Dedicated to the men and women who gave their lives willingly for the freedom of others and have no grave but the sea'.
Drawn in by the memorials I walked on and saw 'Merseyside Maritime Museum' on the side of a building. I got to the docks and saw a sign for the Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum and the Tate Liverpool. The two museums were in the same building and the Maritime mainly had galleries on the Lusitania, Empress of Ireland and Titantic disasters and the 'Battle of the Atlantic'. The three commercial liner disasters all had links with Liverpool and all sunk in the space of 3 years from 1912 to 1915.
The slavery museum was incredibly powerful. Despite being a lot smaller than the maritime museum it was still very interesting and maybe slightly more depressing and sickening. Some particular things that stuck in my mind were the conditions on the boats used to transport the slaves from Africa to Jamaica or the US. One had 133 enslaved women and girls put into a room 5m by 5.6m for up to 8 weeks. A harrowing and disturbing drawing of a slave being hung by the ribs in America. A quote from Jesse Owens in 1936 which read "I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either". Whilst walking to the exit i saw a display with famous street names in Liverpool. Penny Lane stuck out and you could flip the street sign to see who the streets were named after. Penny Lane for example was named after James Penny who made a fortune from owning slavery ships. For me at least when ever I hear that song i'll think about the slave trade!
On to the Tate where you can see the works of the likes of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Andy Warhol and Damien Hurst. Some of the surrealist stuff interested me the most and my favourite was Autumnal Cannibalism by Salvador Dali. I went to try to go to The Beatles museum but it cost about £12 and didnt have any money. I thought about it and realised I was asked to nothing to see a Picasso but have to pay to see Ringo's drumsticks. I got my passport and on i went to Rome.
The cheapest way of getting to Rome was flying to Milan via Zurich, spending two days in Milan then getting the train to Rome on the day of the match. We started out by flying from Manchester on a beautiful Monday morning and having a Mojito with breakfast. We had 4 hours in Zurich and only had hand luggage so walked straight out of the Airport onto the train to the city centre. When walking out the airport we slowly remembered that Switzerland wasn't a part of the EU and our euros were useless! Zurich is was so clean, beautiful and on this day very hot. The river running close to the train station was full of fish and you could see to bottom quite clearly. Compared to the rivers running through the cities of the UK it was quite astounding.
In Milan we went to our hotel first (the best way of describing it is 'cheap') dropped off our bags, changed and went for some food. Upon a tip off we went to the trendy Porta Genova district and drank more Mojitos by another, different river, full of fish. The next visit was to Stadio Giuseppe Meazza or the San Siro to me and thee. Home of AC Milan and Inter Milan we went on the stadium tour and museum. Compared to Manchester United's tour and museum it was pretty rubbish but the stadium itself was huge. Next on the tourism trail was Duomo Catherdral. It's a gothic cathedral, i heard from someone it was the oldest of it's sort in europe. Inside it was just as impressive as it's exterior. We were in awe of the attention to detail of every part of the building.
So Rome, it took 4 hours to get to the train down and whole city was bubbling with 60,000 football fans. The underground railway network reverberated with football chants and the ancient ruins of the coliseum were merely a backdrop for photos as most of the people we met had one thing on their mind. We met a lot of Barcelona fans and they were very nice, very friendly and very confident of winning. There was a lot of mutual respect and when we took the underground to the stadium there were hundreds and hundreds of united fans all singing, bouncing and banging for the whole journey. United were destroyed in the game and were subjected to a similar journey away from the stadium on the bus to that of the way there but with Barca fans, not United fans! Me and David's hole plan hinged on us winning. If we'd won there would have been a party until 4am when we had to get on a 6 and half hour train back to Milan to get a flight to London at 12.
So we had about 3 hours to kill and tried to get some sleep on the floor of the scummiest train station i've ever been to. The train turned up late which wasn't great for our tight schedule. We ran down the platform and found the last remaining empty cabin, turned out the lights and lay down as if we were asleep to ensure we could sleep the whole journey. Somewhere along the the line we get even more delayed and we decided the only way we could make the flight was to get a taxi to the airport 50km away from Milan Central train station. We got to the airport with 35 minutes until the flight took off and made check in! After 2 hours change over in London we finally made it home at 7pm on Thursday. David had a day of sleep the next day but I had a gig the next day that was being recorded for BBC Manchester Introducing! That went ok though considering I was so tired and depressed!
Overall though, i'd do it all again and the positive outweighed the 9 or so hours of negativity! I'll defiantly go back to Milano and Zurich and they've made my list of places I want to play with the band.
Thanks for reading if you made it all the through. Sorry if the ending is rushed it took me ages to write and I want to go to bed. I also haven't proof read this and did it Kerouac style in one sitting from start to finish.
Steven
St. Nicholas Church.
Blitz memorial.
Port of Liverpool building.
Memorial.
A slave being brutally hung.
The Passing Winter by Yayoi Kusama.
Duomo Cathedral.
Stadio Olimpico.
 | Currently listening:
Alligator
By The National
Release date: 2006-04-03 |
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