This is our first visit to Sofia, one of the oldest cities in Europe. Bulgaria is one of the largest Balkan countries and has 5 others on it's borders, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey. We flew in once again from Istanbul, and were met at the airport for the last time on the tour by Mannfred and his driving team A. When we got to the gig at just after 6 o'clock, the stage wasn't set up at all. Investigation revealed that we were once again extremely lucky to be doing a show at all since when the trucks arrived at the Bulgarian border there was a 3 km truck queue! Pete Hillier (production manager) leapt into action and sweet-talked the border guards into letting the trucks through in the bus lane! Not quite sure how he managed that but thank god he did as it was a tight schedule as it was. The show-time was delayed by an hour but we did the show.



The backstage entrance was guarded by this huge lion.



A Bulgarian bendy bus.





If I'm not mistaken, a Trabant.



Matt and John fight over the love seat.



The chairs in the hall were very comfortable indeed and each one has a loudspeaker fitted in the back. These weren't used in our show.



Tensions were running high today and Johnny found himself being the subject of a good kicking from Pete, Simon and Mike. (THIS WAS A PRETEND FIGHT) Incidentally, Johnny's face was a lot blacker than usual today because when he arrived at the venue to co-ordinate the rigging, he decided the local riggers were useless and unsafe so he fired them and did the rigging himself. Below, Mike does his dance whilst Simon focuses the lights.