After 10 years it was finally a new album to be released by Rammstein. Appropriate to that they went onto the first stadium tour of their 25 years lasting band history. The first stop was the Veltins Arena at Gelsenkirchen where I joined on the second evening.

First, I spontaneously paid a visit between Christmas and New Year to the small Dutch town Zwolle. At the local exhibition hall respectively a specially built tent next to it a small but very impressive ice sculpture festival took place. After one was able to admire the artworks at arctic temperatures one was finally quite happy to get back into the warm.

In front of a sell-out crowd first the Hungarian band Firkin opened the evening and did not have to do much to make the audience moving. The atmosphere was immediately at the boiling point and did not cool down during the break for changing the stage setup. At no concert up to now I experienced the crowd singing along the songs from tape loudly. At roughly 21:30 Saltatio Mortis finally entered the stage and displayed the fireworks for 2 hours.

It was meanwhile ten years ago that the last album of Rammstein had been release. Already to that time the hubbub was immense but then after the release when the album was threatened by censorship. After the first concentration camp teaser video the outcry was immense even beforehand and the interest into the new album was a hard act to follow.

For the first time at the EmslandArena at Lingen and everything started quite relaxed. Just directly before the Stahlzeit concert began the arena started to get filled but nevertheless there was enough space for everyone although the venue was quite well filled with 1800 optimistic visitors.

Originally the concert of Saltatio Mortis should take place at the Turbinenhalle 2. But the popularity was that big, that without further ado the gig was moved to the large Turbinenhalle 1 which was immediately sold out. Due to that there was a long queue at the entrance that went all the way across the whole parking lot and which I have never experienced like that before. At a certain point in time they seemed to have told the security to speed up controls as otherwise the last ones would have entered the venue not before 23:00.

It was quite early when I had to get up because already at 5:30 more than 500 Krefeld Pinguine supporters had to gather at the Krefeld main station to start their long trip towards Straubing at 6:00. But this was gladly accepted and so the athmosphere was excellent on the way there.

Already very early on Saturday morning a bus started form Krefeld towards the hanseatic town to first visit the monuments and on Sunday the O2 World to hopefully take the three points back home. Because of Servus TV is broadcasting live on tv the first bully was delayed by one hour. Therefore they kindly showed the prepared choreography of the motto "Ballermann 6-undreissig". Especially for this many supporters came wearing shorts and t-shirts (kudos for this because it was extremely cold outside).

The game was announced quite short-termed and so "only" 513 fans went to the Nordhorn Ice Rink. For the Ritter it should be the first test against an equal or even better opponent because no one else than the present champion of the Dutch 2nd division, the Romijnders Devils from Nijmegen were guest.

Shortly after Easter I made use of a stay at Nordhorn to take a look after many years to the meanwhile extremely redesigned zoo. The zoo is not only on German side very popular but due to the neighborhood to the German-Dutch borderline also at the bordering country.

Between Christmas and New Year, I made a short trip to the Dutch Zwolle were a really great ice sculpture festival took place. After some waiting time (overall nearly 90 minutes) you entered the ice cold hall.

Our round-trip led us to the uprising Cuba. Each day a certain part of our route was passed via bike (2-5 hours a day where we made from 30km up to 60km). The rest was spent inside the escort vehicle. Without that it would not have been possible to make on some days trips of up to 180km.