Hospitality comes home

Saturday night was the first ever ‘Download’ gig at the Zodiac. The night of ‘rock’ started off pretty normal and ended up squeezed 4 in-a-bed with Miller and two Estonian girls …i’ll explain why in a minute.

However, firstly I should mention Saturdays headline act and Oxfords next big thing – Belarus.

To quote their website..

“Belarus are purveyors of stunning, melody-driven, often epic songs. While recently finding themselves compared to the likes of Snow Patrol, Athlete and Thirteen Senses, the group have also gained comparisons with Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright and Radiohead. The band formed at the turn of the 21st Century and originally took the name Spacehopper. A single, ‘Silent Film’, was released under this name by cult Oxford label Shifty Disco in 2003, becoming the imprint’s fastest selling debut single, picking up plays on Radio 1 and seeing the band perform a live acoustic session on Gideon Coe’s 6 Music show.‘Oxford’s Belarus sound very much like another hugeness-follows combo’ – playlouder.com”

and I can add that, they’re err – pretty good.

Not sure why they are called Belaurs but, as a local Belarussian points out on the forum “No organization or company is eligible to have the title or name including words “Belarus”, “Belarussian”, “National” …etc. without the official permission of Lukashenko” and as a result the “guys are really going to annoy someone”.

Anyway, after having a fantastic stay in Belarus in the Summer and meeting some great Belarussian people it seems pretty apt that they should have a great new band named after them too and who knows – if they make it big a few more people might even find it on the map!

Now, about Saturday. It was about 10pm on Saturday (after arriving at the Zodiac) when my mobile went and to my surprise it was Ingrid and Maria (pronounced M-aar-ee-a) from Estonia. I’ve never met Ingrid or M-aar-ee-a before but they belong to hospitality club and emailed me a week ago on route to Cardiff. Well anyway – they were on their way back from Cardiff, in Oxford and looking for a place to stay. A quick hello, two bus journeys and 10 minutes of changing in Tesco’s car park (I bet that doesn’t happen very often) later and we had two new Estonian friends and temporary housemates.

Unfortunately, they were beaten to the spare beds by Phil’s friend and ex travelling buddy, Sara (a friend from School) and Dave, Tim’s friend, colleague an co-host of the Download. 21 Stable close was a bit a squeeze (a stable) but we managed to make space and they left us at 10am for an 8 hour bus journey back to sunny Hull.

Not only were they the first HC’ers I’ve hosted but it’s a strange coincidence since the first people I ever stayed with were Estonians from Tartu! They were both lovley and didn’t steal anything more than the large and comfortable part of my bed.

Since then the only exciting events have been joining the gym on Monday and then thinking about going on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Posted from: www.bearder.com

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2 Comments

  1. Moyer

    I joined the gym on monday!

  2. Moyer

    I joined the gym on monday!

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