Category: International Travel – Europe

Travel Tools: For The Frequent Concert Attendee

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe

(Editor’s note:  This is not a paid advertisement.  I get no kickbacks from writing about this stuff.  It’s just things that I use regularly and find to be incredibly useful.)

The vast majority of my trips to new cities start with news of a concert that I want to see.  I’ve written about this before, and even listed the concerts I’ve seen in a separate post.  I wanted to write some posts that detail the tools that I use in my travels, and there are two tools in particular that are invaluable for the music-based tourist that I am.

The first tool is the means with which I find my concerts.  In the old days, I would use magazines with concert listings, searches on eventim.de and ticketmaster.de, band announcements, and sheer luck to find my concerts.

In this enlightened Internet age, I mostly just use SongKick.com.  I’m not sure when the website launched, but the iOS app launched in 2011, and the Android app was released the next year.

Here’s why SongKick is amazing-  with your free account, the app will scan the music you have on your phone, and it will begin tracking the artists.  If you use the website, you can have it import artists from your iTunes collection, your Spotify playlists, your Pandora history, or your last.fm tags.  You can also select specific cities to watch.  The site then begins to notify you (usually by e-mail, in my case) of the concert and tour details for the artists and cities that you’re watching.  From that list, you can tag certain shows as “Track This” or “I’m Going” and they’ll show up on your Dashboard on the Website.

aprilsecond
I’ve been to three of these five venues. Can you guess which ones?

I’m currently tracking almost 1300 musical acts and more than twenty cities.  I’ve even subscribed my calendar to the RSS feed of the concerts that I’ve started tracking.

I’ve only found two flaws in SongKick so far.  The first is that there’s no sanity-check in the artist listings; it’s entirely user data driven.  As a result, SongKick was tracking concerts for me from Zero Mostel.  Considering that Zero has been dead since 1977, I can’t imagine that would be a very good show.  (Or, maybe, it would be the best concert I’ve ever seen.  In an infinite universe, anything is possible.)

The second flaw in the SongKick system is just overload:  I now have so many amazing concerts at my fingertips that I can’t see them all.  I simply don’t have the time or money I would need to see everything.  I also haven’t figured out yet how to clone myself to see shows in different cities at the same time.

The second tool I wanted to mention here is a tiny item, but one which is absolutely necessary to really enjoy all these concerts:  a good set of earplugs.  I used to use the little ball-of-wax ear plugs you can buy for a few dollars in Walgreens or Boots, but they get dirty easily, and they block out too much of the sound.   I wanted to find a better way so I did a little research- there are dozens of options and brands out there for high quality hearing protection.  What I ultimately settled on was a pair of V-Moda Faders.

faders
I left the coin in this photo so you could see how tiny they really are.

Faders are little metal ear-plugs with a variety of silicon “fittings” to go with different ear sizes and a little plastic case to keep them in your pocket.  The Faders are connected by a string which can be removed, but the one time I took the string off, I dropped one of the plugs on the floor within seconds.  Now I leave them attached.  The V-Moda Faders claim to drop the volume of whatever you’re listening to by twelve decibels without sacrificing clarity.  I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that I’ve used them now for Cyndi Lauper, Ellie Goulding, and Gary Numan.  For Gary Numan, I was standing right next to the stage, and I could hear everything clearly, without the distortion that high volume usually brings me.  I also didn’t have to spend the half hour immediately after the show saying “What?  What?!” to everyone that spoke to me.  These ear-plugs work perfectly.

Do you have any favorite tools that you use for concerts, games, or other events?

Look up- You’ll miss me if you blink twice.

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe14 Comments

I sleep better in hotel beds.

When I’m in my own apartment, my brain never quite shuts off.  It’s partly FOMO, I think.  Until a year ago, I’d never heard of FOMO-  Fear of Missing Out.  It’s a type of social anxiety, a compulsion and a fear that you might miss something cool happening.  Fear of missing out is why I never fall asleep before midnight, and rarely before one in the morning.    Part of my need to travel is FOMO, I suppose,  but it’s also a variety of some other things that I can’t quite put a name to.   When I’m at home, I never settle in.  I rarely sleep very deeply.  I never wake up refreshed.

In hotels, though, I sleep better.  I think it’s partly that when I’m traveling, my mind shuts off-  I see entire cities in a single day or a weekend.  I walk the breadth of a city,  traverse courtyards, climb up church spires.   I run until I’m exhausted.  I wear myself out, and then I can sleep.   Then I can breathe.

In my early twenties, a girl I dated saw this trait in me.  Even then, I had the wanderlust, the need to keep moving.  Even when I was stuck in South Florida with no passport and no money to speak of,  she saw that I was discontent.  When she called me out on it with her typically insightful way, she referenced a single line from an Alanis Morissette song:  “Why are you so petrified of silence?”

It was an excellent question then, and it’s an excellent question now.  I think that maybe I like Adventure Steven far more than I like the silent version of myself that visits whenever I’m at home for a long time.  Living on a continent that isn’t your own is a distinctively lonely experience.   Sure, I visit with my friends here-  we share meals, or go to the pub.  That covers a few hours, or an evening.  Then I go back home, play around on the computer, chat online, watch far too much Netflix, and fail utterly to fall asleep.  The loneliness and isolation sets up a lively card game with the discontented restlessness, while boredom puts some good tunes on the record player.  Mild insomnia tends bar.

I’m still lonely when I travel to new cities, but I feel it so, so much less when I’m in motion.

I can always breathe a little bit easier when I’m in motion.  I sleep better when I’m on the road.

That’s why I travel.  That’s why I run.

run

Currency

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe8 Comments

One amusing side-effect of traveling the way that I do, is that after a while, your junk drawer starts to look a little bit like Doc Brown’s binder of different currencies from Back To The Future 2.

currency1

Most of the places I travel are on the Euro, but not all of them.  The amount of Czech Crowns I have left would barely buy a glass of beer here, but I store it because at some point, I’ll be back in Prague.  I try to use up my currency before I leave, but I don’t always succeed.  I use paper CD sleeves to store them so I can see easily what I’m dealing with.

currency2

What’s the most interesting currency you have put aside?

298 Days

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe2 Comments

My residence permit expires at the end of October, and I’ll be heading back to the US around that time.   October may seem like a long way off, but it’s really not.   I have less than three hundred days left in Germany.

I wrote a 500 days post back in June, after I passed the halfway mark of my time here.  It listed a number of the things that I wanted to accomplish before I leave.  Between June and December, I finished five of them.  Here’s an updated list of things that I really want to do before I go.

I want to see the Tulip Festival in Holland.  This will likely happen-  My partner-in-crime Jenny and I are planning on trying to make it out, but you can’t really plan that too far in advance.  The tulips don’t bloom on a set schedule and if they’re not blooming when you go, it’s a wasted trip.

I kinda want to see Mini Europe in Brussels.  I’ll probably pair Brussels with a visit to Luxembourg-  they’re in a straight line, more or less, and they’re all on my Geographic to-do list.

There’s a bunch of other places in Germany that I want to see.  A selection: Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  Oberhaus Fortress in Passau.  The Tomb of Charlemagne in Aachen’s Palatine Chapel.  The Auto Technik Museum in Heidelberg.

I’m going to see Carnival in Cologne.  I already have my hotel room reserved for the events of Carnival Sunday and the Rose Monday parade.

I’m attending a wedding in July.  I’ve wanted to write a post about weddings here for a while, but I haven’t been to a wedding in Germany yet.  That’s going to change though:  Over the holidays, Jenny and her boyfriend Robert got engaged!   Jenny is my best friend on this continent, and  I’m wildly happy for them both.  I’m sure I’ll be writing about this happy occasion several times this year.

We’re going to Drachenstich!  I found out about this too late last year to make it happen, but I’ve already got tickets for this August.  I’m really looking forward to this!  Drachenstich is a festival in Furth Im Wald which is kind of like Medieval Times, but with a giant robot firebreathing dragon!

furtherdrache2010

Here’s a trailer thingie so you can get a sense of the festival.

I need to visit more countries.  I haven’t been into Poland, Romania, Turkey, or Croatia yet, and I’d like to.  And maybe Greece, if there’s time.  There’s still so much to see!

If you only had one year remaining to live in your current country, what would you want to do before you had to leave?

At The Closing Of The Year

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe7 Comments

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, or Silvester to the locals. They’re not directly analogous. Silvester is a religious holiday, the Feast Day of Pope Sylvester I. They both fall on December 31st, though. It’s traditional at this time of year to take a look back and see what you’ve accomplished over the last twelve months.

I visited these places that were new to me:

I repeat visited a few places:

  • Frankfurt a bunch of times.
  • Mannheim
  • The United States twice, once in March and once in November.
  • London twice.
  • Nuremberg and Munich countless times because they’re the closest large cities and neat stuff happens here.

I saw some great concerts and shows:

I had some new experiences:

I had some other things happen that were interesting:

Did you have a good year? What’s the most memorable thing you did this year?