It was in fact the toughest drive of the tour, and yes, we were worried we wouldn't make it. What about the roads, the traffic, snow and the Serbian border police? We chose the route via Sebes and Orastie and then through the mountains via Hateg, Caransebes and Deta. That was a fortunate decision, because the part between Hateg and Deta is closed for trucks: empty roads and good pavement. And we had Alex at the steering wheel, our badass driver pushing forward and forward, while we got hungrier and hungrier... Gas stations in Romania don't seem to sell sandwiches, and we didn't dare to stop at one of the restaurants near the road. They did look nice, but we did not want to spend time, not knowing how long we would be stopped at the border.

And then finally, the intersection to the road R50 Timisoara-Deta, which will bring us straight to the border, 15km to go...

CRASH!

For a moment we were all thinking: "That's it. Someone crashed our van. Tour is over. We'll have to walk home."
Luckily, not quite. While we were waiting at the intersection, two other cars collided right in front of us. They skidded across the road towards our van... and came to a stop 20 centimeters before the front.

Phew, that was close.



We got off to see if there really wasn't any damage and decided to wait around for the police to see if they need us at witnesses. Fortunately, the police came pretty quick and soon decided they didn't need us because we couldn't understand them anyway. Without more trouble, we finally reached the border to Serbia. No problems at the border, too - it turned out that the customs officer used to be a DJ and likes rock music. Belgrade, here we come!

When we arrived at the club SKC, we were greeted with "Good that you're here - because Haggard isn't here yet."
Uh-oh, thats bad news. Apparently they had a real accident in Romania and problems with the police and still need to pass the border. So what should we do? We used Haggard's drum kit during the tour, so we needed to wait for them. Will Haggard arrive in time for a concert at all?

So then there came the finest hour of our technician Alex: It was decided to do most of the stage set-up as we remembered it from the previous shows and test everything so most of it was ready when Haggard finally arrived with no need to waste time. All this was done by Alex with the help of Jogo and the fabulous technician crew from SKC, which really helped to maked this show a success!



Meanwhile, the audience was waiting outside of the club in 0 degrees cold weather, for three hours! Just impressive.



Finally, Haggard arrived, quick unloading of their bus, quick line check by us - and we entered the stage! The audience greeted us with loud cheers and we played with wild abandon - relasing all the pent-up energy of the troublesome day - I even fell off stage once (it got captured on video too):





Luckily I didn't break my instrument. Before the show, we thought the crowd may be impatient, but instead it went completely wild and pushed us to once of our best shows of the entire tour! This was so impressive. You wait three hours in the cold and then go
crazy for a completely unknown support act... We were completely overwhelmed.
On the road, backstage, on stage, this was the most intense day so far.





Sadly, I didn't find other pictures of the show on the web. Do you have some?