Pink

On Saturday, I heard that Pink’s Funhouse Tour was coming to Freiburg, which is the next big city to us (about 30 min), and her concert was on Monday. I was SO excited, you have no idea. I have loved Pink ever since her first album, when she was signed with LaFace. Going to a Pink concert, awesome, but going to a Pink concert in a foreign country, awesomer. The website said the tickets were sold out, but there were bound  to be some at the box office, right? And there were bound to be some scalpers there, right? Or somebody with an extra ticket, extra 2 tickets, right? At first, we weren’t going to go. Spud wasn’t going, then Andaiye pulled out, so it was down to me and Vic. We were both pretty broke, and there was no guarantee that we would get tickets, and we tired, but we said, “forget that crap, we’re going. AND we’re gonna get tickets.” So, we headed out, looking good, smelling good, and thinking good, humming Black Eyed Peas, “I can feel it…that tonight’s gonna be good nite”.

We get to the venue and find a random off to the side parking spot, until we can scope things out. First, we go to the box office, Sold Out. “Are there any tickets…” “No.” “Well, is there a time when, if people don’t pick up ti…” “No” “Is there any chance…” “No”. Oh, ok. Thanx box office lady. Try not to smile so much, you might hurt yourself. Okay, Plan A gone. Then, out of nowhere, this man comes up to Vic and rabbles off in German, “what?”, then this Grade A biyotch jumps in front of Vic and says, “yes, how much” in German of course. And it turns out the man was trying to sell us his extra ticket because his friend wasn’t coming. D@%#! Nooooo. What a biyotch, she just swooped right in and out. She’s lucky we didn’t see where she went, because we probably would have jumped her. On to the next plan. Neither one of us knew enough German to ask incoming fans, if they had an extra ticket, so the hunt for scalpers was on. Possibly the easiest hunt ever. Subtle was not a word in their vocabulary. The scalpers were skulking around in the shadows dressed in all black, knit cap on, hood up, hands in pockets. If this was the D, they would have got shot just for looking THAT suspicious. I saw one put up his hand with a ticket in it, but by the time I went to strike he was gone. We knew we had our work cut out for us. We walked up and down in front of the stadium, freezing (the wind was blowing something vicious) and looking for tickets. Then we met the tag-team scalpers. Two friends that, so boldly, asked every group of people entering if they had extra tickets. We asked them if they had any. They said no, but said they would find some for us. Very hesitantly we said ok. We knew there had to be a catch, but we didn’t know one. But these guys were good. Within about 5 minutes, they had 2 tickets between them. The catch, they were 20 euro extra. We thought about it for a hot second, but then said, “You know what, it would be stupid to turn back now, we’re seein’ this concert” and bought the tickets. The moment we had them in our hand we were bouncing up and down with joy. Before the tag-team disappeared, we went to one of the ushers to make sure the tickets were legit (they looked very different from each other), didn’t want to have to give somebody the beat down. We asked him about re-entering, and he said no, once they ripped the ticket, that was it. Then we looked at Vic’s ticket. It had a perforated edge, and looked like something had been ripped off. (GASP) Then the usher said, “No, ripped here in the center” (and exhale). YES! We went to move the car to a better, safer spot, dancing, skipping, and singing the whole way. We were well chuffed that we actually got tickets to this concert.

After getting inside, and throwing bows to get closer to the stage, we hit a road block. A fence that divided areas. Well, that was as far as we were going, but it was cool anyway, because the place wasn’t that big. But, we did find ourselves in the lamest section ever. It was filled with parents and half-hearted fans. From the moment we got in me and Vic were dancing around and singing, loudly and enthusiastically, the pre-show music. We got a couple odd looks, but they didn’t realize that this was only the pre-show of our antics too. Once Pink came on me and Vic were mental. Jumping around and rocking out proper to every song. We must have looked crazy in that land of zombies. But Pink was AMAHZING!!! There was no way I could stand still. I always knew she was the ish, and she had pipes, but she blew that concert up! She sung everything from rock songs to her slow ballads, and she sung the most emotional and beautiful “Family Portrait.” She actually made me cry. You could tell, she was still hurt by whatever drama she was singing about. She was jumping around in heels, dancing like crazy, doing acrobatics and circus tricks, that girl was killing it. But the best part about the whole thing was that she seemed like a normal person. Even though there were thousands of people there, she found a way to make it intimate…a glimpse of her. She was crackin’ jokes, talking about people in the audience, and just being real. It was SO refreshing and cool to see. Money very well spent. Me and Vic drove home on a cloud.

It’s Me Guys

The Black Forest strikes again. Here we are thinking we have a handle on this whole thing, and our Nav steers us in the wrong direction. The magic of the Black Forest is all dandy on the outside looking in, but when it’s killing all technology, it’s not so hot. We’re driving to our morning school for out performance, and our Nav starts going a little wonky again. We talked to the teacher last night, so we have some idea of where we’re going, so we’re trying to stay alert and kept our eyes open. All of a sudden we’re being tailed, very closely, by this car. It flashed us a couple times, and we thought, “what a jerk, just go around”. After a few minutes, the car finally went around us. It then pulled over, and the driver got out of the car and started waving his arms around. Steve continued on and passed him. Then we started to think, hmmm, “you think he wanted us to stop”. We couldn’t imagine why, so we slowed up a little, but didn’t stop, to see what would happen. Sure enough, the car came zooming up again, this time it pulled up next to us and rolled down his window. We did the same, and then he said. (in the most chipper, deeply german accented voice) “it’s me guys!” (a sentence that would keep us laughing for a while). It was our contact teacher for that morning. It turns out we were way off course, he was coming from home himself, and happened to stumble upon us. Thank goodness for that. Who knows where we would have ended up.

Give Thanks

This is the 3^rd Thanksgiving in a row that I’ve missed, and it’s not getting any easier. This year I decided to call home first, before my sister called me and rubbed it in my face that she was having a plate-full of my Mom’s one of a kind mac n’ cheese (my favorite food in the world, and possibly the best mac n’ cheese you will every taste). It was good to know that everyone was doing well and feeding their faces. I told everyone they had to eat for me, because there would be no feasting over this way. Instead, I decided to drown my sorrows with shopping. We went into Freiburg, and set off to pick up something new for every dish I was going to miss…and I think I did pretty darn good for myself. I didn’t even spend that much money. I was all over those clearance racks. I got some sick stuff from my mothership, H&M, and they had a Jack&Jones store, which is one of my favorite brands. I was too geeked as the day came to a close. So what I didn’t have a Thanksgiving dinner, I didn’t need the extra gut anyway. Instead, I was giving thanks for having a good job, and being able to spend money.

We found out that Freiburg had an ice-skating rink in the “park”, so we decided to go. Now, I haven’t been ice-skating since sophomore year of Uni (it was actually one of my classes, briefly), and neither of the girls could skate, so this was bound to be a laugh. We got our skates and headed onto the ice. First up, Vic, she waddled onto the ice holding on to the side rail, then Andaiye stumbled up onto the ice, joined Vic on the side rail and scooted along. Then, I got onto the ice and glided, ever so gracefully, past them. Then did a little spin-of-a-turn around to face them, and the looks on their faces were PRICELESS. Vic: “What?! You’ve got to be kidding me” Andaiye: “Hate.” Me: “What? I had rollerblades. It’s basically the same thing.” And took off again down the ice. After a while, they both started getting used to the ice and we were all out there skating around and having a laugh. And then it happens. I swear that working with kids give us some scent that other kids can smell. It’s like, no matter where we are (in the store, on the street) they know that we work with kids. All of a sudden, one of the little boys on the ice tosses snow on Victoria, then hits me with a little snowball. Now, of course, any other adult would have been upset, reprimanded them, or found their parents, but oh no, not us. What did we do? We armed ourselves with snowballs ourselves and retaliated. And then the war between the kids on the ice and 3 grown a$$ adults commenced. The parents were in stitches. Not only at the fact they we were playing along, but that all the kids skated better than us. After a massive and epic fight, we actually started chatting with one of the parents, and he had perfect English. And it turns out that all the kids we were playing with spoke English also. It was so weird though. We’d only “known” these kids for 2 hours, and already they were sitting in our laps, hugging us, and carrying us around. After treating us to some authentic German malt wine, that tasted like warm spiked apple cider, one of the dads invited us out to cocktails at the happy hour of a nearby restaurant. His son, who was the main culprit in the snowball debacle, spoke very good English, for his age, and was so excited to talk to us. At the restaurant he was talking non-stop. I mean, he only breathed about twice. And the majority of his talking revolved around Star Wars. Telling him that we knew it did not stop him from recapping all 6 films in his broken English. It was so funny. I felt like Nemo’s dad, Marlon, talking to Squirt, the baby sea turtle, “Look, you’re really cute, but I don’t understand a word you’re saying.” They treated us to drinks and we talked a long time before going our separate ways. We swapped contact info, and he told us to make sure we called him the next time we were near Freiburg, because he wanted to take us out to dinner. It was a pleasant surprise ending to a very good day.