I’ve finally come home! I’ve never had this much trouble on a journey before, but that’s because of this terrible snowy winter weather… I should have come home at midnight, but it was too foggy when we were going to land at Bromma airport, so we had to go on to Arlanda airport instead. So I missed the bus to Örebro yesterday evening and had to stay another night at the hostel, and then I went home by bus today instead.
But the trip itself was amazing!! I arrived in Brussels on Wednesday afternoon and met my friends at Zuid station. Then we went to the concert arena to see what it looked like outside. There were more than 90 tents there already – at 4 pm the day before the concert! So we went home to T, she lives in a place called Halle. We got to borrow her Mum’s car to be able to get to the train station early in the morning to go to Brussels. The villages in Belgium are really sweet, with all those stone houses, brick houses and narrow streets. But it’s no fun driving on those narrow streets! And this particular car was particularly difficult to drive… But I managed to get us back home to her place and back to the station in the morning – and I’m very proud of that!
We went to bed early on Wednesday, because we would be leaving Halle at 5 am the next morning. I overslept a little, but managed to get up at 4:15 am to take a shower. There was no train leaving for Brussels that early in the morning, so we had to take a bus instead. We arrived at the arena just after 7 am.
As usual there was no organized queueing system… After a few hours some security staff came to place railings – straight across the area in front of the arena, through the crowd. Very smart… They meant for all people with numbers written on their hands to be on one side of he railings and all people without numbers to be on the other side – but of course that didn’t work out. I’m sorry, but if you want a system like that to work out, you need to prepare it BEFORE all the fans arrive. As the situation was now, there was a lot of fighting, and there were some fans who were particularly aggressive. It’s sad when that happens – we’re all there for the same reason, to see our favourite band live.
But eventually the days was pretty good. As usual it was very crowded and we had no room to sit down. Around lunchtime me, T and E managed to get enough space so two of us could sit down at a time. During the whole day I was sitting down maybe for 30 minutes. It was raining now and then but it wasn’t very cold. Compared to Sweden it was almost like summer! No snow, several degrees above zero – almost 7-8 degrees Celsius during the day, I think! That was wonderful for me – I’m used to one metre of snow everywhere… In the afternoon, when time almost stood still, I picked up a book from my bag. Reading made me forget about my aching back and legs…
When they let us inside there was the usual chaos. Somewhere behind me a girl almost panicked because all the pushing made her not being able to breathe. I just focused on standing up and getting to the gate in one piece… On the other side of the ticket checkpoint the only thing that mattered was speed – down the stairs to the basement to get to the space in front of the stage. I threw my jacket and bags on the floor between the first and second sections and hurried to get a spot beside T. 8th row on Georg’s side, maybe 5 rows away from the “runway stage”. A perfectly okay spot! Then I managed to get to 4th row during the first part of the concert, without pushing actually. There was no pushing at all on Georg’s side, not close to me anyway. That was really nice – I could enjoy the concert much better that way.
And the concert was great!! The stage was cool, the music was great (I love how they’ve changed some of the songs!), it was sooo fun to see Georg and Tom playing other instruments than they normally do (synths and piano), and Bill’s stageclothes were actually cool. Kind of silly in a way, but cool at the same time. I think he’s the only one who can pull that off! And the motorcycle was also cool.
I’m not sure which part of the concert was the best. Georg playing the synth, Zoom Into Me where Tom played piano (which caught fire in the end) – so beautiful! – or maybe Dogs Unleashed with Bill dancing on and around the motorcycle, or the mixing of Screamin’ and Monsoon, or the video they played during one of the breaks showing the guys when they were younger, or World Behind My Wall… There were so many wonderful moments! I can say without a doubt that those 11 hours outside and 2 hours inside were sooo worth it!
I will soon post some photos and videos.