Paul Potts

European Tour – From Margate to Berlin

Posted 3rd December 2009

First of all, sorry it’s been awhile, it has been a little manic on the road, and I’ll do my best to keep up better!

Jake and I got back from Tokyo, and with a day’s respite I began the European tour in Margate at the beautiful Winter Gardens. I have been to Margate a number of times, all of them singing related. I had been there with my old school choir and slept on the floor of the parish church hall floor for a week. I have also done two concerts close by to raise money for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital’s Cancer Care Appeal. It was great to be back here and although some of the town was looking a little worse for wear it was clear that a well earned rejuvenation of the area had begun. The Winter Gardens was a lovely place to start the tour, and there were quite a few of Julz’s family there as they come from various parts of Kent(Julz’s Mum is one of 17 children, so no shortage of Aunts and uncles!). 

Following the first date, we headed to London as I was to record a theme tune for a Korean TV show. It was a beautiful, if sad tune with a very haunting introduction. Once I had finished recording, it was time to catch our flight from London’s City Airport to Amsterdam. It was a short flight and we got to Amsterdam in good time, although it was a very wet day in the City so we didn’t get to explore very much. The venue for the concert in Amsterdam was a stunning one, called the Carre. To my amazement it sold out inside a week of the tickets going on sale, and is a very popular theatre, so we had booked it a long time in advance and could only get the one night. It was one of the most beautiful theatres I have ever performed in!

We left for Antwerp the following day for my first ever concert in Belgium in another fantastic venue close to the Central Station, it was a great audience here as I have found everywhere, I am humbled by the audiences reception of me. We then had a long, long overnight drive on the tour bus, involving two boat trips on the way. We slept through the first one, but the second one wehad to be up for as it was the longer one. Julz always loves the boats. Well to be honest, she doesn’t! She always feels like she is still on the boat for a few days after. We arrived in Malmo where we had a day off to recover from the journey so we had a bit of time to wander around Malmo again. The weather was still not on our side though so we were dodging showers a lot of the time.

After a great show in front of a very receptive audience, it was time to leave for a town close to Stockholm called Uppsala. It was a lovely little town with a beautiful Cathedral. The venue was a great one, very modern, but the feel of the hall was great and it was wonderful as ever to meet so many people after the show. 

After the show we drove into Stockholm and I stayed at my favourite hotel in the city, very close to the Royal Palace and the Parliament building. On a non show day I had been invited by a very successful artist called Carola Haggkvist who has represented Sweden at Eurovision many times. 

We woke the next morning to take a short walk down to the studio where we were recording a duet of the beautiful Christmas song, O Holy Night. The studio we were using was one owned by Benny from Abba, and was where the soundtrack for the film Mamma Mia was recorded. Carola and I strolled down and then spent a few hours recording the song together. As it was her birthday we had a piece of birthday cake, and then we made our way back to the hotel after we had finished recording. We had another marathon trip to do, this time to Aarhus in Denmark. It again involved travelling by tourbus and boat. 

This year we have tried to get to cities that we didn’t do last year and although I had been to Aarhus once before for only a few hours this time I got the opportunity to have a wander around the town and explore a bit. It has a beautiful town centre which was very busy. Another great audience was at the venue before we left for the beautiful city of Copenhagen. 

I have generally been very fortunate with weather in Copenhagen, and this time was no exception. We were blessed with good weather and so we walked around the city, and around Tivoli Gardens which is like an oasis in the middle of the city. Another fantastic audience in the Falkoner Theatre, and it was time after the show to head for Germany. We hadn’t been able to get a place on a ferry that cut the corner a bit to shorten the drive, so we had to take the same ferry that we had taken before, which meant that we didn’t arrive into Berlin until lunchtime the following day. It was a fairly damp day when we arrived in Berlin and after a brief rest Julz and I took a stroll around the city.

The next day, the day of the first German show, the hotel very kindly arranged a personal tour of the city, and we saw many places that we had not seen before like Kaiser Wilhelm Kirche which is a beautiful juxtaposition of a modern building against an ancient church shelled at the end of the Second World War. It was a beautiful day and we took in all the major sights like Brandenburg Gate and drove along some of the site of the Berlin Wall. 

It was soon time to head to the venue, so we thanked our driver and headed to the Tempodrom. This was a beautiful venue and one I enjoyed performing in immensely. The acoustic of the venue was perfect for the show, and it was one of the most enjoyable shows so far. After the show, it was again fantastic to see so many people at the signing, and we then headed back to the hotel before resting up for the journey to Oldenburg. 

More of that in the next few days, where the journey continues through Central Germany and on to Austria and Switzerland…