Got up at
5.30 and felt like a zombie. One of those moments when I wonder what I’m doing!
Around 6 we were on the road back to Amsterdam
again, feeling a bit silly :-)
We were
very lucky with the traffic, only had to stop for an opened bridge that let
through 10 boats (or one very long one with a lot of masts, we don’t know yet)
and without problems, and way to early we arrived at the long term parking of
Schiphol.
The only
thing we were able to arrange in such short time, was the flights, for the
rest, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing, so it wasn’t a nice surprise
when we saw the amount of money we had to pay at the parking, but at least
we’re with 4 to divide it with.
 | |
| Only questions... |
Easy Jet is
one of those budget airlines and that shows, for example at the place where you
check in (in a corner) and also the gate (in a different corner after long
walk) but whatever. First thing the others did was run to Starbucks, but I wanted
to sleep in the plane, so no coffee for me. I walked around a bit, found a
place where they sold grapefruits (!) and then saw I missed 5 calls from
Robert; they were panicking because “we would barely make it to the gate” and
we hurried there, running over these moving belts (whatever they are called)
and pushing old people and other slow traffic away :-D just kidding. (for some
reason we were not allowed to the gate yet and we had to wait where we were)
At the
security check I realised I still had all this stuff in my bag that wasn’t
going to make it through the scanner and I started to throw them out, but the
lady said “just move on, my colleges will see it” so I did, and her coworkers
didn’t see anything at all; my plastic knife and fork, my deodorant, handgel,
sewingkit; safetypins… hmm!!
Ofcourse
when we were through, the others realised we had plenty of time, so we could
relax a bit again.
By then, it
started raining like crazy, and while we were waiting at the gate we saw other
people getting in planes and they all ran, then had to wait in line to get in,
and seeking cover helding their handluggage above their heads. Oh dear! That’s
another one at Easy Jet: you have to get in the plane with stairs, no nice
corridor “slurf” for us! (I think I am making up words here but you know what I
mean)
So when it
was our turn, I put on my raincoat, we all ran outside, but they only opened
one door and we had to wait. When we finally got inside, and the steward asked
my boarding pass, I only could hand him a completely soaked piece of paper with
ran through ink but I was let in.
By then I
started to realize I was about to FLY, and I don’t like flying!!! Everything
has gone so insanely quick, that it only struck me when we were inside the
plane.
The flight
from London to Amsterdam maybe took 45 minutes, and we slept
most of it.
When we
touched down on the airport
of Southend, it wasn’t
raining, but when we looked back at the plane, we saw some extreme black clouds
coming our way, and we realized we had to look for rainboots and raincoats.
 |
Very
quickly we were through immigrations and everything, and when I went to the
bathroom, a woman addressed me about Fogerty and she said she was going too.
We got some
money out of the machine, but we didn’t know the rates. Last time I looked the
pound was about 1,1 euro, Alessio thought it was now 1,4 euro. (it actually was
1,27) We just took some money (thank goodness we still had some) and went to
the trainstation. That was the other thing we found out before we left home:
there was a trainstation :-D
The woman
that sold us the tickets, was the first in a long row of extremely NICE people
we met that day, helping the lost souls we were, strangers without a clue! (we
didn’t even know where we were, found out later that Southend is east of London.) I had feared
that we would pay a crazy amount for the train, but we had a special offer; buy
two, get two free! Wow!! So we had a returnticket for only 11 pound! She told
us in the detail where to go and what to do, and we waited outside in the rain
for the train.
I think the
trip took about 50 minutes. First, I was looking out of the window telling
myself “you are in the United Kindom” all the time, then I felt asleep, and I
woke up again when we already entered greater London. Interesting stuff to see, and all
those old brick building DID look very English to me! Then we passed an Olympic
site, with a futuristic looking stadium and a very weird “thing” that looked
like someone had tied a rollercoaster in a big knot. We still don’t know what
it was but it looked interesting.
We had now
reached Liverpoolstreet Station, and my heart said “John only has to go on at
5, lets run around London, LONDON until then!” Just like I always had in
mind when I thought about going to this concert: come early, do a lot of
sightseeing, taking it easy, and go to the concert and watch in the back, as
you cant beat Bruce Springsteen fans anyway (man those guys are HARDCORE!!)
But my mind
said “we have to go there asap, call the Ticket Fairy asap, sort things out
asap, everything asap!”
To leave
the trainplatform, you have to insert your ticket in the gate, and both Anne
and me got refused all the time, and we got a little worried, (maybe first
stadium of panic) until a friendly local behind us told us “that gate is
closed, use this one!” Oh thank you, so that is what “NOT AN EXIT” means??? :-D
As it still
was pouring, and Alessio and Anne didn’t have raincoats (anymore) we ran into a
pharmacy (Boots) and they sold them. They also had sandwiches at reasonable
prices, aaaaaand, a lot of ENGLISH CHOCOLATE omnomnomnom, and FLAPJACKS!! (some
type of oatmeal bar, very good)
Anne and I
looked at the candybars and she said what I was thinking: just EVERYthing
looked different then at home.
 | |
| Welcome to London! |
We didn’t
know where to go, apart from “HydePark” but that’s a very big place. Then we
wanted to know the cheapest way to get there, and we met this extremely
friendly and patient Underground Guy who took at least 15 minutes to explain
everything we wanted to know, while the line behind us was growing and growing
:-)
We left
with one of those electronic cards, you have to scan them when you enter the
station, and ofcourse mine didn’t work the first 3 times, aaa!!!
There’s a
stop called “Hyde Park Corner” , and there was also “Marble Arch”, and the last
one had an Olympics sign saying “Hyde Park” so
after some discussing, and changing our minds 10 times, we took the Central
Line to Marble Arch.
Going
there, we wondered if the Olympics maybe already started. We had been living in
a bubble the last two weeks. We didn’t even dare to ask someone, afraid they
might think we’re form a different planet.
The London
Underground is one of those typical London
things, and stopping at some famous stations, I felt a bit more and more where
we were, but the real sensation came when we stepped in the daylight across the
street from Hyde Park. We were in London! There were red
double decker busses all around, black English cabs, typical English policemen,
and crazy traffic that was about to ran over you from the wrong side of the
road.
I think I
was the only one desperately trying to absorb as much London as possible, well we were there for
John offcourse. We have had these situations before, visiting special places
and don’t have time to see anything, but it felt a bit extreme now, and I had
an idea how it must be when you travel around the world in a band, go to all
these great places, and only see the venue.
Across the
street we saw these big white tents, and we didn’t know if that was the
festival entrance or something Olympic, and we didn’t see anyone to ask, so we
walked around a bit first. Coming closer, it turned out to be the BIGGEST
entrance we’ve ever seen, must have been at least 50 gates!!! We didn’t even
know what the name of the festival was, and went to the ticket office to ask if
this was “the concert” but then we noticed it said “Hard Rock Calling” so we
assumed this was the concert and not the Olympics :-)
We made
it!!! We were there!!! Next step: getting inside.
Then we
noticed: a paper on the window saying “Tickets 70 pound” first I just thought
“that’s not much for such great names” and it took me a while to realise…
It was NOT
SOLD OUT!!! So many people didn’t go because it was sold out, and now it
wasn’t!!! Oh boy, we knew a lot of people would freak out if they heard that!!!
It was one
of the reasons we didn’t plan to go, but we talked about going and trying to
get a ticket somewhere. If we had done that, we would have gone in without any
problems!
Now we were
here, we called the Ticket Fairy, but he didn’t answer his phone, so we asked
where backstage entrance was, and we went to see if maybe the tickets would be
there.
We were
curious about what we would get (if we would get).
Robert went
to ask, and stuck up this thumb; we were covered!! Wooo!!!
We were on
the guestlist :-D we didn’t just get tickets, we were on the effin guestlist!!!
HOLY!!!
We got a
nice wristband saying “guest” ha! And we could get in through the VIP/guest
entrance. Ha!
They checked
our bags, opened Alessio’s coca cola and SNIFFED IT, haha, to check if it
wasn’t booze!
Bringing in
water wasn’t a problem, inside we found out why: several taps with free
drinking water; thank you London!!
We called
the Ticket Fairy back to say we were inside, this time he did answer and we all
screamed “thank you!!!” in his ear.
We were in,
we made it!!
The
festival field was enormous, and not
extremely buisy yet. We had another discussion about whether or not trying to
stand at the front, and I said I was way to tired to fight my way up through
rows of Springsteen fans. (they ARE hardcore!) We did check the stage out
first, there were already quite some people standing there, but we wanted to
look around abit, relax and have something to eat.
We noticed
an entrance for the “guest/VIP lounge” and went in. At the same time, some
others wanted to go inside to but they were stopped, and the guy who stopped
them said to us “yeah, YOU guys are allright, you’re the blue wristbands, you
go in” hahahaha!! Our ego’s kept growing!!
The lounge
contained several foodstands, decent toilets, and nice seats (the only ones at
the festival!)
We went
back outside, wanted to see the merchandise, ran into Martin from the
merchandise, and looked around for food and a drinkingwater tap that worked.
What did I
see?? A fish and chips stand!! My
decision was made! I ordered one, and it was good, but also it was soaking in
grease, so when I was finishing it I had a small vision of how I would experience
the concert from a porto potty.
Robert
found pizza, ordered “a whole pizza” and came back with something the size of a
7” record. We thought it was the funniest thing ever, especially after that
ridiculous BIG pizza in Norway
earlier, but he was really pissed off that they charged him 8 pounds for that!!
I got a personal escort to the watertap + demonstration by a staffmember.
Slowly we
stepped int the crowd in front of the stage, and tried to get as close as
possible without problems. It was quite a struggle to get there as everywhere
there were people sitting on the floor and we really had to zigzag through the
crowd, trying not to lose eachother or step on someone going “sorry! Scuse me for
that! Sorry! Oh was that YOUR beer?” all the time, and we stopped around row
15.
3 and a
half hour to go, and I got a bit desperate. That’s a long time to stand on your
legs if you’re tired. After a while we sat down, but it wasn’t easy, or very
clean. Directly on my right were 3 people sitting on a blanket with 3 big bags
in the middle, I parked my bag against theirs so we had a bit of space. We
watched other people struggle to get through, had others climb over us just
like we had to climb over others before, but everyone was very polite. They all
said “excuse me!” and then “thanks love” so cute :-) we helped a few getting
through by letting them a hand while we were standing, it was al very friendly
and polite and relaxed. People just tried not to step on you, and if they
accidentally kicked you, you got an immediate excuse and because it was so
relaxed it was never a big deal.
The first
band started, forgot their name, but the music didn’t make a big impression on
us anyway, we cheered politely and thought “oh god, 3 hrs to go, we’re never
gonna make it!!!” boredom and exhaustment seemed to beat us!
At some
point, I don’t know when, Arnold
joined us. I don’t know how we found eachother, probably called him a few
times. One of the funny things to watch was when people called friends and
tried to make clear where they were standing. The Italians on our direct left
were calling their friend and waved at him when they found him, he waved back,
so we all started waving at him too :-) Others were holding something in the
air, like a book, backpack, pizzabox, stools, anything unusual (so no umbrella’s
or caps)
“I’m
holding a green polka dot inflatable chair, can you see me??”
Next
artist, Tom Morello, never heard of him. On the stage a guy with an acoustic
guitar appeared, with a banner in the back saying “the nightwatchman”
I cant
really say when he caught my attention, but the next 45 minutes went by just
like that, and everyone in the audience was on his feet.
We were the
only ones that didn’t know that Tom is the ex Rage Against the Machine
guitarist, but that didn’t matter. He turned out to be a great punk/folk or
whatever you wanna call it singer/songwriter, and extreme leftwing. He was only
singing political songs, and got most of the audience support on most of them.
I dreamed away listening to his speeches about a better world and got touched
by his lyrics about the wrong stuff that’s going on in the world. Turned out it
was Woodie Guthries 100 birthday, he
said WG would be a big supporter of the Occupy movement and sang one of his
songs. At the end he brought a firefighters team on stage that was on strike
for better wages and sang a protest song together. Everything was brought with
a lot of humor and a lot of f-words :-) and so all of a sudden time had flown!
 |
| Tom Morello on the screen |
Between the
shows, tweets were shown on a big ticker, and some of them were funny or cute,
but the one that made everyone on the field laugh out loud, was one going
“Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!”
it just kept on going, loved it. Bruce fans have the habbit to yell “Bruuuuuuce!”
and it sounds like “Booooooo!” really weird at first.
Third
artist of the day was Lady Antebellum, I thought they were a cool soulband I’ve
seen on Facebook the other day, but they weren’t. They were probably very good,
and professional, but they lost Anne and me halfway the first song, and we sat
down again because now we were even more tired and bored. I didn’t feel bad
about it cos the band didn’t see us sit down anyway. I sat down cross-legged,
held my head in my hands and even managed to FALL ASLEEP!! Anne was getting a
new hairstyle from Alessio and Robert was just being bored and tried not to
fall down.
Finally,
finally they were done and we got up again. Crowd was getting denser and we
watched Johns crew getting everything ready.
We already
noticed that there were people from all over the world, as flags were shown on
the big screens, fans from France, Sweden, Mexico, Peru, Spain, even Friesland
:-D
We agreed
to meet at one of the big towers holding speakers, “delay 5” if we would get
lost. There were lots of them and they went up to 10 at least.
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