Welcome back for the third and, for now, final instalment of Mànran’s Touring Tales. We’ve just come to the end of a three-week stint in Germany and it’s been a cracker.
The final week of the tour began down in Bavaria in what is perhaps one of the most beautiful venues any of us has ever played in. The Parktheater Göggingen near Augsburg is seemingly the last remaining fully operational cast-iron and glass theatre in Europe and forms part of a complex that dates back to the 1880s. Built much in the style of a spa town ‘pleasure garden’, the buildings were commissioned by a local aristocrat (and ‘miracle doctor’) to provide respite and orthopaedic medical care for the well-to-do (including German empresses) as well as crippled Bavarian children living in poverty. Even back then, there was a great interest in the curative powers of music and, as such, a theatre with regular musical entertainment was deemed an essential part of the treatment. It certainly seemed to do the trick the night of our gig anyway.