cimorene

If you follow me or

waxjism on Twitter, you already know that we were in Stockholm to see Adam Lambert (at a small venue, 800 people in the pit) from Mon-Wed evening... and that almost everything that could go wrong did. Let's see, in consecutive order, then:

The snorer. Shared our cabin on the overnight ferry with two strangers. One of them snored giant, epic, possibly-threatening-to-her-life snores. Also one panel in the wall vibrated loudly like a 50-year-old window-mounted air conditioner. I got maybe 2 winks of sleep. With my iPod on and cranked up (because when I turned the volume down to an easy-to-sleep-through level, the snores came through it loud and clear).

Lost credit card. Wax left her credit card on a café tray Monday evening and it got thrown away.

Weather. It progressed from slightly windy to full-on gales (on the way to breakfast) to raining to snowing to epically snowing (all evening) to rain that melted the snow (after the show).

Wax lost her nightshirt. We were at her cousin's apartment in the middle of the day wanting to take a nap and it showed up missing. I guess she left it in the cabin on the boat.

World's Slowest Coat Check. We arrived over 15 minutes after the official doors time, and they had not started letting anyone in yet. We proceeded to wait over an hour and a half in a line snaking around the public square while it blizzarded, because they were letting people in about 2 at a time because there were only 2 people working the coat check.

Cutbacks in the Swedish Welfare State (aka Give Us Our Stuff). In order not to take our bags to the concert, we put them in a locker at Stockholm's central train station, not imagining that it would close. In fact the the bus station closes from 1am - 3:30, the train station from midnight to 4:25. Due to the above lost credit card we walked across town, arriving at the station at 2:15 with numb hands and feet, damp socks and heads.

Lack of McDonald's. I think there actually is at least 1 24-h McDonald's in Stockholm, but not around the middle of downtown. The one a block from the venue was open till 4, but it was an hour's walk from us then. Or more. Everything was closed except 7-11, inside which stood two Finnish fangirls in the back eating sandwiches. It was a block away, so we went there. There were some chairs beside the garbage can, but they were occupied by about 4 off-duty security guards who were kinda loud, so we stood up, drinking tea and eating a pastry apiece. During the half hour or so we were there, three other guys came in and bought sandwiches which they started to eat, and after 20 minutes the security guards left only to be replaced by four more security guards who immediately took the chairs and started chatting equally loudly. Except then the little dude at the register said that in five more minutes "everybody" (meaning, we four small, young, non-threatening fangirls and not the loud security guards or anything) would have to leave because "you can't just stay here for an hour". (The tea was so hot that when he said this I hadn't actually finished drinking mine, and the other fangirls, who had bought big sandwiches, were actually barely done eating.) So we got to the bus station at 2:45 and stood outside it until 3:30.

Mother-In-Law to the Rescue as Usual. Thanks to the lack of credit card and the fact that we couldn't check our account balances for two days, we got to Åbo to find that we didn't have enough money to make a cash withdrawal to pay for the bus and Wax had to call her Mom and borrow some until such time as she gets a new card in the mail. :(

Of course, everything about the actual concert was amazing. I was even pleasantly impressed by the crowd. There was no unpleasant shoving and elbowing, and not even too much screaming during "Soaked". Wax & I were standing dead center, maybe 2m/6' from the stage. I could make out freckles, and the HBIC's glitter-encrusted chest hairs. There was a lot of lulzy dancing, and more importantly, his voice is even more impressive in person, especially in the acoustic set. Melt-your-face-off amazing! It was so awe-inspiring that at points I even stopped grinning my face-hurting grin and was just staring like *_*.