Bleah.... an alarm is ringing... it's my mobile phone right from the opposite side of the room... where the hell am I... strange room, the air is dry and I am all alone in the dark!

Blinking myself awake, I haul my up with as much energy as I can muster at this ungodly hour (it's probably around 4 in the morning)... I have learnt from long experience that the best way to conquer the lack of seep is to just get up... hitting the snooze is just going to make everything worse... and I will miss an very important rendezvous in an hour's time.

I have also learnt from experience that the best place to put an alarm is anywhere that you can't reach from the bed! Stumbling across the room, I get to the phone... resist the urge to throw it in the bin and return to bed. Time to do the toiletries... immediately!

However, for a proper start to this story... I have to back up about 4 hours to the previous evening... which is technically still the same day!

The Previous Evening

...the concert is finished... and there were no serious casualties! All in all a good night!

Now, the choice starts... get changed into mufti (or at least not look like a pengiun...) and either walk back to the hotel in a strange city... or wait for the bus to take everyone back. Well, sometimes there isn't really a choice... sometimes the concert hall is just too far away from the hotel... or we are staying at a central location and bussing out to smaller towns and outlying concert venues every evening...

However, in the morning, we are relocating to a different country... so that means we are taking an early morning flight... again... which means, I'm going to be lucky if I get more than a handful of hours of sleep...

So, the fastest way back home... and the fastest way to get to bed...

... but before I can go to sleep, I need to partially pack the travel kit. This means that all the clothes (concert gear and dirty stuff) are packed already as are most of the electronics. leaving out only the stuff that I need to wear for tomorrow, and the toiletries that I will need for a quick freshen up in the wee hours of the morning.

I've learnt from past experience, the more that I do now, the easier the morning will be...

Back to the morning

Shower and poop done... well, more like poop and shower.. then teeth. It's amazing what a quick shower will do for you in the morning.. it does wake you up... I'm not feeling quite like a zombie now... and more like a foggy brained animal working on instinct and habit.

Instinct and habit are great... as it means that I'm packing my electronics and toiletries whilst in a daze, listening to a podcast on physics or something like that... hoping that the attention required will kick start my brain.... Now, I have this process down pat, I've not lost anything behind by accidentally leaving it in the hotel room!

Flying

I tend to skip breakfast on the days that I am travelling... for some reason, eating a full breakfast in the morning gets me quite sick when I'm tired and also needing to catch flights. However, there is one thing that I will definitely need at some point between waking up and getting on the flight... and that is a coffee... despite the fact that I desperately want to get back to sleep, if I don't have a coffee within the first few hours of waking... I will get a terrible headache for the rest of the day... I wish it was just in my head, but it is real.... and it hurts....

... but back to the important rendezvous in the morning. The coach departure time... now, this is a set time... if you aren't there, then the coach leaves (hopefully with some attempt by the tour manager to try and contact you), after all... the orchestra is on a pretty tight schedule, and if you aren't there then you can make your own way to the airport and the next country at your own expense...

The coach to the airport is a great time to try and snatch a little bit more sleep... after all, by this time, you aren't really quite awake anyway... and the gentle motion of the bus starts to lull me to sleep pretty quickly!

Once on board the airplane, I am likely to have nodded off between sitting down and often I don't even get to experience the take-off! If the flight is short, then the next thing that I know will be that we have landed!... however, if the flight is longer, then I will wake sometime in between (with a very sore neck... and hopefully having not dribbled on my next door passenger!).... and then I will pass the time with the Nintendo Switch or a game on the laptop! It's kinda funny, I'm one of the younger people in this orchestra... and I am definitely by far and away the most technologically minded of the group... whilst others are reading serious books and stuff like that... I'm the one playing computer games or reading comics!

The Arrival

After landing... we are straight to the hotel if we are lucky... or straight to the concert hall if we aren't! That said, if we hit the hotel first, we are going to be lucky again if all the rooms are ready... If fortune has favoured us, and we get a room... then it at best an hour of rest before heading out to the concert hall.

At the concert hall, we have a brief hour or two rehearsal... just getting a feel for the place.. and fixing anything that might have fallen off the evening before. It's great touring with this particular orchestra, musicians are really skilled and talented... and people know how to just make things work and also know when to back off and not fight... after all, when everyone is tired, things can escalate out of hand quite quickly if you aren't careful!

The Fun Part!

I have a colleague in the orchestra who is a good friend... and she will have spent the better part of the day researching where we can eat that is good and fast... after all, we will have at best around 90 minutes from the end of the rehearsal to the start of the concert! She always chooses some great places... and these are the restaurants that I often feature on the @tasteem contests!

The great thing about touring is the fact that you get to try out lots of different types of foods that are typical to the places that you are visiting and working in. Even better is the fact that we get a stupidly high stipend for eating (something like 50 euros per day...), so we get to spend some serious money on eating at places that would normally be out of our normal price range for eating out!

The only down side is the fact that we can't really drink before going on stage... well, some people do... but there have been instances where people have gone a bit overboard and subsequently lost their jobs... after all, we are trying to be professional about this! Well, if I had to think about it... there is also the downside of needing to finish quickly... so, we can't take the time to eat slowly, and sometimes dessert has to go by the wayside.

The Job

Wikimedia Commons

In the end, this is the reason that I'm travelling around like a demented zombie... We will have a concert in the evening sometime... depending on the country that we are performing in, this could be early at around 1800 or stupidly late at around 2200... most often, it is around 1930-2030 mark...

At the start of the tour, these concerts are pretty easy work... after all, this is what we spend years and decades training to do. However, by the end of the tour (and multiple days of lack of sleep and travel...)... we are all doing our best to be at peak condition whilst staying awake on stage. Needless to say, the late start concerts are incredibly difficult during these tours... it has been more than once where I start a concert... and then it is finished... and I honestly don't remember much of what happened in between!

So, as the day finishes with the concert... you find yourself at the start of this post again! Making a quick getaway back to the hotel and the lovely soft embrace of a bed... ready to get your 4 hours of sleep before being rudely awakened by an alarm which someone has so inconsiderately placed on the opposite side of the room.... BASTARD!