Huge European Shows & My Toy Gun Seizure in Frankfurt! Whoops

Sometimes when you stay up all night for a flight home from Europe, you aren’t quite thinking straight. Been there, DONE THAT! Just last week to be precise! If you read my last post, you know that I was in Germany & Belgium last week for a short tour with the band playing a few headlining shows and festivals. First, let me tell you how that all wrapped up and then we’ll get to the gun!

The shows and festivals were incredible. Here’s a picture of our crowd at Groezrock festival in Belgium:

Pretty awesome show and opportunity to play the festival. It was a monstrous fest with over 30,000 crazy metal & punk Europeans in attendance! I had a little moment to myself sitting at the merchandise table when Yellowcard was playing “Ocean Avenue” on Main Stage. I loved that song growing up! Apparently their drummer caught our set and told our singer he’s a new fan, and was excited to be seeing us all summer on the Warped Tour since both of our bands are on it. What?! Crazy life I tell ya. I’m so blessed to have any of the opportunities God has given us. & there has been plenty!

Airport mishap…

After the Groezrock festival we had 1 more festival in Germany, then drove 2 hours to the Frankfurt (FRA) airport and got dropped off at 2:30am for an 8:10am flight to Chicago where I would continue on to Omaha and drive home. Needless to say, lots of travel, zero sleep. Sometimes you miss the little things when that happens. For example, say, packing a toy gun, or as Frankfurt TSA would say “A gun replica” in your carry on bag instead of your checked luggage!

The day before we flew from Boston to Frankfurt for these European shows, we hit the Radioshack next to the Fourpoints hotel. They had an iPhone game attachment that was a plastic gun that your iPhone would mount onto, and you download the App. It was actually super fun, and coming from someone who doesn’t own any video game consoles, or have a single game installed on his laptop, I’m generally not a gamer. I’d rather be whitewater rafting, jumping off waterfalls, going out with friends, or just grinding some work away. The gun/attachment was $25, I played it in the hotel and in Europe and LOVED IT! I couldn’t believe how fun it was. It was virtual reality so it used the iPhone camera, would show whatever you’re seeing with it as it’s attached to your gun, and then aliens would pop up all over the place and you would shoot them with the gun. Pretty neat I thought.

Me having a fun game can’t last TOO long though! A few of us had separate flights, so Ryan and I waited in the airport lobby for the United/Lufthansa check-in to open. They finally opened at 6am, which I thought was a little bizarre since they had 8am international flights and they recommend passengers to arrive 3 hours early. We get to the passport & boarding pass check for immigration at 6:15 and were they open? No… They said they would open at 6:30 and didn’t open till 6:40. The makeshift line was wrapping as far as the eye could see. What gives Frankfurt?!

We finally get through and make it to security to go to our gate, and I just got DESTROYED at security! I had a backpack with all of my day-to-day electronics – laptop, iPad, cameras, hard drives, and other accessories. Along with that comes LOTS of cables, and sometimes security doesn’t like it. I also had a carry on roller bag that had some clothes, shoes, an electronic sample pad that I use in the band, and that toy gun.

Both bags had to be re run with everything put in about 9 separate bins. They had all sorts of questions about my iPad and sample pad, like they’d never seen one before…

Then the head security guy came over grabs the gun and they all start shaking their head “nuh uh!”… Uh oh! I was just thinking to myself “ah crapppp”. I’d been up for 24 hours, and just wanted to get on the dang plane and go to sleep already, but instead I had to argue with security in a hesitant manner as to not get in trouble. Didn’t want to be told I had to leave the airport, but I certainly wasn’t excited about them taking my gun! The option was to go back and check my bag with the $700 sample pad in it which I would NEVER check that much value, nor would I make the flight with how backed up security was b/c they didn’t open on time. Other option was to come back within the next 6 weeks and claim it at the airport. L O L! Seriously? Yeah, let me just book a flight back here to pick up my $25 toy.

I tried to reason with them and told them I flew to Germany with it, and they just didn’t allow it. Then I asked for a complaint form very sternly and they literally refused, which I thought was interesting. I don’t think you would be declined a complaint form in the States. I also know that they were just following protocol and things that look like guns aren’t allowed on the plane. Oh well. I took the loss and made my flight on time.

Pretty funny to me now, but at the time I was frustrated! Does this look dangerous to you?
Looks fun to me!

Pretty fun.... for 5 days!

Lesson learned – no gun toys on carry-on’s, even if you did stay up all night!

Have you had an embarrassing moment at airport security? Post about it below in the comments!

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