The Metal Must Go On

05/31/2024

The Metal Must Go On | Day 5

After that incredibly lackluster day yesterday I woke up at 5am feeling just a little bit better. Sometimes it’s hard to tell in the morning if you’re actually getting better or if its a fake out. I laid in bed assessing the situation. I worked on the computer for a little and started looking in to train tickets for the next day. Glad I checked because turns out you need to have them printed and the mobile ticket doesn’t suffice. Likewise when I had looked in to my train travel from Budapest to Vienna in a few days time it showed that the train ticket would have to be mailed to my place of residence. A secondary option would be to purchase them through a main train station. Also, I decided to look in to the train trip from Stockholm to Copenhagen and that said I could only book that ticket through the train provider. When I did that the pricing wasn’t anywhere near what the price is with the Eurail pass. There wasn’t a spot to plug in my pass number either. Like the option for the other ticket I could buy that ticket from any main train station. This would be a good opportunity to go out in to the world and see if I was really starting to feel any better.

I headed down for breakfast first. I seem to be a creature of habit and had the same eggs, bacon, croissant, and juice. I gotta say I’m not really a breakfast person but it has really been hitting the spot. The restaurant was even more crowded that the other day. It appeared that a tour group had come in and this was their origin city. That might explain the uptick in people. After breakfast I went back to the room and just couldn’t seem to rally like I had initially planned. I laid down and that was it, down for the count. With the second concert this evening felt like rest could do me good and apparently I was right.

Learning from the Friday show I knew that I could show up close to Metallica taking the stage and still get a good standing spot. I got myself up, showered, threw some clothes on, and headed down to the bar in the hotel. I stayed for a beer and chatted with the barmaid who I had met the previous night. She had asked if I was going to the show, which she knew the answer to haha. I asked her if she was going but she said that when she looked ticket prices were over 500 euro for the weekends event and that was to much. Finished my beer and headed toward the metro. I’m still fascinated as to how easy, clean, safe the metro system is in Europe. Like Friday, took two stops on one train, transferred, rode 4 more stops and was at the stadium. Right at the exit of the metro was a beer and food cart and the temptation for a beer was to great. The Munchen Helles beer comes in a bottle with a cork and you could hear cork pops all around. Everyone was stuffing their backpacks with bottles of beer and slowly walking towards the stadium. I got to the check in desk and secured my wristband and ticket. Tonight was a bit different because they had actual hard tickets where as Friday night they didn’t. The America tour I collected all the ticket stubs from each show but since Friday they didn’t have one I just figured that wasn’t a thing on this tour. Was a nice surprise that they did this time so will look to collect as many as I can.

I see everyone has the same humor no matter the country.

The line for the floor was long and everyone was trying to get in as fast as possible. Five Finger Death Punch was about a song or two in to their set and the floor was packed. I finally got down to the floor and walked to the secondary entrance for pit ticket holders. Walked straight through to find more than enough standing room and walked to about 5 people from the front. I stood and watched FFDP and was amused by the older metal heads next to me. He must have been late 60s and was head banging and singing along to all of their songs. Just a dude at a metal show haha. FFDP wrapped up their set and there was about an hour in between them and Metallica. I must have been feeling better because beer was on my mind. I headed out to the beer line and struck up a conversation with a kid in front of me. He lived about 3 hours from Munich and drove in by himself for the weekend. I had met a few other people that didn’t live to far outside of the city and seemed to be a common thing. Scooped a beer, and who knows what it was, and headed back to where I was standing. The guys that were next to me asked me something in German but immediately saw my confusion so started speaking in English. Only one of them spoke pretty good english, Mike, and he is a lead tool designer for a German tool company. His job landed him in Detroit of all places last year and so we had a bunch to talk about. One of the buddies went for a beer run but came back empty handed. Mike said something to him in German and didn’t need a translator to know he wanted to know where the beer was haha. The other friend turned around and a little later returned with beer. Universal language beer is.

Metallica started and the weather this time around was infinitely better. Nothing but clear skies which even the band mentioned. They opened with Creeping Death and when Harvester of Sorrow was played Rob walked down the stairs like he normally does and came right to our area. Everyone went nuts and for a lot of these people it is a dream come true. To actually touch rock royalty is rare. I had theorized that the European shows had a deeper cut of songs played. For some reason America stops get the same type of setlist, but we will see if that stays true throughout the tour. My guess is that they will stick to a similar setlist through all the shows but there is always hope that they will mix it up. After these shows when they post their setlist on social media everyone and their mother comes out of the woodwork and exclaims for certain songs to be played. One being Inamorata. To most people’s dismay they had a first time ever debut and played that song. Everyone went nuts and was a crowd pleaser off the new album for sure.

I had hoped to press through but nope. Finally had consumed enough beer and a bathroom stop was needed. I searched for a bathroom on the floor level but was met with disappointment. The only ones were up the 60 or so stairs on the main concourse. I hurried up the stairs and when I looked around there didn’t seem to be any signage that looked familiar. I ended up asking one of the police officers and she pointed me in the right direction. With disaster averted I contemplated if I should make the journey back to the floor or just watch the rest of the show from the concourse. I reasoned probably best to head back down as we are only here once. Made my way back to where I was standing initially and the setlist went on. Instead of playing Whiskey in the Jar, which I was a bit disappointed about, they played another song that they said they haven’t played in years, Breadfan. When that song was over something happened that I never thought would. Sam, one of the higher up road crew, looked my way along with others and opened the Snake Pit gate and let us in the center circle. Those tickets are INCREDIBLY expensive and will run you about $2500 for the 2 shows. I looked at Sam saying “Sam you’re a true living legend.” I got to spend 2 songs in the Snake Pit. In the inner circle there is no barricade between you and the stage. You can rest your arms directly on the stage, reach out to band members, and if you’re truly lucky James will let you strum his guitar. These are the most coveted seats in the entire stadium. It was absolutely insane and what a way to kick off this tour!

The show had ended and unlike Friday when I left a tad early I knew the commute time home would be substantial. It felt like all 70,000+ people were heading for the metro station. We all slowly followed each other toward the station and like the previous show there was a log jam getting down to the train platform. It seemed like they had police officers let in just enough people to fill the trains and then hold up the rest until the next ones came. Causes for a wait no doubt but at least when you reach the platform you know that you will get on the train. Rode the metro back the few stops, transferred, and rode the next train the other two stops and was back home. Champions bar was still open and had thought to go inside but with a long travel day tomorrow made the responsible call and headed to my room. Did a quick pack and hit the shower then was off to bed. Tomorrow I have a 5 hour train ride to Vienna, a 6 hour layover and then a 20 hour overnight train ride to Bucharest, Hungary. I gotta say I was pretty bummed to be held up in my room for the last day and a half and not get to explore the city as I had wanted. In retrospect if I was to get sick better to have it be on the front end of the trip and in a city I had been to already. Hopefully the rest of the trip will be sickness free. On to Bucharest!