music event travel logs

last updated: 20 oct 2024 (added the lil list of stuff i might wanna log)

2024:

04-08 apr, roundtrip

the log (writ apr 23 + rewrit jul 23 2024)

ok so! first of all, it was rather funny to leave for the trip on a day where my hometown saw ridiculous impromptu snow but while ams+ldn already had decent spring, but then return to spring weather having arrived to my town too.

travel stuff: adult-accompanied young kid (maybe 5 idk) saying bye-bye airplane upon disembarking the plane in london which i found so cute. also what's the deal with both occasions i've booked a cheaper-end hostel in amsterdam not having shared kitchens?! kind of on me for not looking out for that fully but, feels so disorienting lowkey to me. but the london one i stayed at did have one, got some nice cooking in. bacon, some kind of pasta, pretty nice combo actually. and had some cute lemon tart type things, from some store, i forget which. i might add pics to this one day.

okay, london first. on the day of tp, before it rolled around, i mostly just passed the time really. the vegyn album had come out that day, april 5, was riding on the tube for a little for its own sake. i randomly found myself driving past angel, and went like wait hold up hold up... turned out that yes vegyn sampled the 'angel' in makeshift tourniquet from the announcements for the station. fun discovery!

got to hang out with some friends + friends of friends at trance party :-) a couple friends of friends were chatting at the smokers' at one point about having gone to some scientology convention recently as of then, amusing times. and of course talked a little about oli xl w another friend. standard!

also got to give paper cranes, to most of the lineup lot too, including evian and seretide too finally! to cute reactions, but i'm unsure how many of the lot really absorbed the cranes into their belongings! room 2 had cool-ass lasers going on at least during that nite. i floated between rooms during some of it, wanted to catch some of the room 2 action too, faery was quite nice at least from the bits i caught, quite deep (sound-wise).

fast-forward thru a nice springy sunrise walk back to london hostel (some trees in full bloom) and more of passing time, ambience enjoyment margin, etc etc... hauled my ass to amsterdam, had a pizza for brunch the day of the pw show, and got candy from some candy store afterwards. a pro-palestine march passed by while i was waiting at the pizza place...

i got to meet a friend of mine and some Related Person Of Theirs (friend? significant other? unsure!) before the show, but it was seated and we were seated separate, and they had to leave the show before the end, so we only got to hang out for a little prior to the show, was still nice enough!

the part from the patrick wolf solo show that's lingered in my mind the most was the lil cameo from the towans (the hidden song at the end of land's end - have to look the name up sometimes), performed differently than it appears in studio ver, was rly cool to me cos that's one (two?) of the songs that's been slightly more at the forefront for me from his discog. i didn't record it, i hope someone did and uploaded that. but yeah in general was pretty cool to hear the recontextualizing of the early discog songs, in addition to the newer stuff! and the occasional lil stories between songs haha

as for my flight back, my cheapest way at the time of having booked the flights was an absurd four?-hour layover in london luton, i don't even remember now how i spent the time. ultra ambience enjoyment margin. least i flew into tallinn! i enjoy tallinn airport... plus way better connections between it and my town than with riga.

28-29 mar

the log (writ apr 23 2024)

2023:

18-20 nov

the log (writ nov 25 2023)

guess i could blurb about last weekend's trip to berlin... it was a nice enough time
(though i sort of wish i would've gone to this friday's natural mind event of mechatok's in london instead that had oli xl, ecco2k and tohji in the lineup too, it seemed to have a cuter energy... ehh it is what it is really, and i'm glad i got to see the slagwerk lot perform, i liked otis's set a bunch, and found oli's rlly cool despite being a lily4 adjacent set beholding veteran at this point haha it'd simply been a year since i last saw any of oli's lily-adjacent sets and there'd been some evolutions to it since)

i flew out via tallinn which i was glad about, as it'd been some while since i last touched thru it, i like its comfy vibes... i had to spend the night there once again cos of having had a ridiculously early morning flight (5:30am or whatever it was), but i was okay with that. and also i had a westward window seat! the sunrise gradients cast that way were pretty. i hadn't got very much sleep at the airport, so i also caught some winks at the berlin one on some bench after i landed, before heading into town at a more reasonable time than 8am.

i'd been relying on plans of accomms from a friend but those plans ended up falling thru, fortunately i managed to book a decent and cheap enough hostel the day before so once i got into the city i headed into the hostel, at around 12:30pm, dropping by a nearby lidl for some food, and ate (cheese roll, protein pudding, pistachios i had with me) as i waited for check-in time at 3, and read the book i had with me a bit.

some while after checking in i went to another of the nearby grocery stores, ended up getting leibniz kunterbunt cookies to bring back home, some cupcakes, and a dragon plushie on a wholeass whim from near the store check-out haha, white with pastel pink detailing, and apparently it quite looks like falkor from the neverending story, though i don't know of the franchise myself but some people from a server i shared pics into pointed it out to me - i just really found the dragon's lil cow ears so cute, and its fur is so soft too.

did fuck-all at the hostel for some time, and then headed out to meet up with the friend i went to the event with, at an italian restaurant he'd sought out that was pretty much equal distance from both of our accomms. boccacelli am winterfeldtplatz, it's named. and there ended up being this whole ordeal with his phone being on low battery, and he lost the charging cable for it in the uber whose driver ended up no-showing at his lost-item request, and i didn't have a lightning cable on me with my power bank setup, etc...

ended up giving up on the uber, and proceeded to the restaurant. we ended up getting such a nice waiter - turns out he was from new york haha which gained some xtra points on him w the friend who's lived in the us for a while too haha -, and he offered to take the friend's phone for the duration of our stay to charge it for a bit too after we'd asked for that. i forget now what the friend had but i ended up ordering some spaghetti carbonara and tiramisu, the spaghetti was sooo good and rly pleasantly creamy - and the waiter ended up giving us each a shot on the house too haha and chatted with us a little during a break after we'd finished our food. overall it was rlly nice.

by that point it was late enough that we had just about enough time to drop by the friend's hotel room by uber and then head to the event by public transport. was a whole little journey, i mostly led the way with my phone map though my gps stopped working properly a couple times for some reason? and then (cos i'd not thought of the free shuttle directly between the venue and the nearest u-bahn) we ended up really confused on the final stretch of bus to the venue, so we ended up simply walking that 20 minutes' worth.

lo and behold... a late night (grocery etc) shop caught our eye. we went in, the friend asked if they had charging adapters (of which he had none on the trip) and cables. they actually did! 21€ for a set and a really lifted mood on the friend's behalf haha

so, to the event. we arrived just as a round of the free shuttle also did haha, and we saw a bigass queue at the venue, but the bigass queue ended up moving super smoothly, and the bag checks etc were only superficial. the snacks the friend had remained safe. we remained in the room the slagwerk folks had their sets in. bambinodj, money lang, otis, golin (live), oli xl. the friend ended up dipping from exhaustion during nunguja's set, at 4:30-odd am, i during europa's around an hour later...

sidenote: wait sorry hold on i got distracted, obsessed right now with a snippet from the aforementioned natural mind event, this snippet, oli baiting during his set with the long-known collab track of his and ecco2k's that currently only exists online in full via a full recording of ecco's dec 2019 tokyo live set (song timestamped, 25:50, has been dubbed rest my eyes by fans), apparently it's super likely to be on oli's upcoming album... gonna be so crazy, and either way the bait is so fucking funnyyyy

okay, well, this one having been boiler room though most of the sets are gonna be broadcast online in future too... except oli's apparently! i guess maybe he wants to air lily mix 4 in a more radiomix-type format eventually? i'm glad the rest are being uploaded, as i said i really liked otis's set, and will b glad to hear the entirety of europa's cos of having been way too exhausted to stay til the end (i was genuinely falling asleep, squatting leaning against a wall, a couple passers-by checked on me asking if i'm ok, bless that)

didn't really get to talk with oli this time, which is alright - he seemed overwhelmed by the amount of ppl or something, and in my hyped state (and being a little bit cocky with my handmade light-up wings a la the winged helmet on my hat i hope he didnt mind that haha) i didn't fully have that in mind haha so just a brief exchange, after having helped a couple ppl take a pic with oli just cos I Was The Nearest Person At That Moment, and over loud music, of is it ok to hug i was too shy last time - i would like some privacy ... i got so humbled from that, immediately said sorry and pulled away but i rly respect it. shoutout to boundaries

so... i reached the hostel before 8am so at least i managed to sleep a more decent amount before heading homeward. though i had to stay a night in riga too cos of flight times - flew to riga evening of the 19th, and took the bus home on the morning of the 20th, reached home by 2pm, it was really nice and sunny, hadn't seen the sun at home for a couple weeks or so.

once i'd got home i decided to head to the local spa and sauna centre for a couple hours after eating a piece of the biscuit cake the kids and my mom had made, that i'd requested they leave a bit of for me. had some sauna time, some chill in pool time, some mind emptying in the water and hot air. a nice end to the weekend vacay.

11-15 oct, roundtrip

the log (with pics; writ oct 16 2023)

went on a goofy condensed music event catching workbreak trip.... 3 events in 3 days and 3 meager hours of sleep after each of them but it was very worth it hahaha

saw vegyn live in london on thurs, oli xl dj in berlin on fri (didnt know i would be feistily catching it UNTIL WEDNESDAY when he + the venue announced it), and club zero event with some bunch of ppl dj+live including ecco2k dj in helsinki on saturday… was really cool

enjoy some selection of pics i guess just cos i feel like it!

close-up of burger menu, with the text ASS on the spiciness indicator frog keychain atop yellow jacket bunched on a plane seat fisherman's friend pastilles, but the first two letters of its name covered up by my thumb so it says sherman's friend

ended up losing the frog in berlin but it's ok cos i found leibniz kunterbunt cookies...

my stretched-out leg and a couple of butterfly cushions alongside regular cushions, on a hostel sofa pigbaby live set, the backdrop visual saying 'pigbaby' in stylized doodled text vegyn live set, with more involved glitchy visuals than pigbaby's

rogue intruder soul enhancer reference at the hostel...Just Kidding. pigbaby set was neato, vegyn's was really sick.

a wooden door with text scribbles and floral painted illustrations me holding two packs of leibniz kunterbunt cookies (squares with chocolate covering and sugar-coated dragées atop) at a grocery store big circular light installation up on a wall, with LED lights in three tiers around a non-lit-up center, shifting in colour and brightness

thought to myself how kwia's light-up wall installation looks like an eye, cos it lights up mostly from the centre and the non-lit-up very centre resembles a pupil this way. and oli previewed some tunes off his upcoming album during his allnight set, and the album's named lick the lens. and oli's dj-ed at that venue kind of plenty by now. kind of funny!

from-the-floor view on the dj setup on a table draped in cloth with wobbly checkerboard pattern a glass mug of tea, two cocktail glasses and a wine glass snug around a fake candle on a wooden block on the floor oli xl at the decks, sitting as he tweaks something on one of the cdj-s

had only one sweet ginger tea, while waiting for oli to appear. should've got another during, would've been really cozy. he tucked the few lick the lens tunes among other songs, was like a silly little guessing game, but i got good feeling from the tunes :')

eye-rolling cartoonish face painted within black squiggly lines on a yellow wall, in a corridor the crowd at the club zero event, blurry, a few with phones up trying to catch footage of ecco2k rui ho at the decks, several bottles atop a large speaker, a couple people in view looking on

it's funny, i didnt see ecco a lick cos i was too deep in the crowd and with friends but can't get everything i want cos i did get a 5hour oli xl set hahaha; ecco played fifths by ingrate and bby by overmono back to back which made me happy lol but overall it was just sorta fun; got to chill with friends at the event tho (as implied) which makes me rly happy

a ship at sea, with some clouds in the sky, seen from a window of the ship i was on late dusk, with some clouds peppering a barely lit and gradiented sunset sky, seen from a bus window

maybe it's good i didn't have the reflexes to request cartoon smile from oli right after he wound down his set - it resonates with me deep (it's become like an onion of cute moments/times of connection within my heart to me), i teared up over cartoon smile like 3 times between the helsinki event and getting home, no idea what effect it would've had on me at kwia on 3 hours of sleep with oli himself nearby!

oh also its rlly funny cos i ended up getting a cheeseburger meal from hesburger, mcdonalds and burger king on this same trip... (respectively riga railway station, in london post-vegyn near the venue with the friend i was with, and on the ferry home)

2022

07-16 oct, roundtrip

spanned my whole workbreak in the end! kind of funny.

the log (writ aug 24 2024)

oct 07: bus to riga, flight to amsterdam, landed in the evening.

hostel with steep fucking stairs and no fridge/kitchen. still went to a grocery store to pick up a bit of stuff, then went to a burger and fries place next to the hostel. i'd got in this inexplicable pitbull mood upon departing from riga, listened to i like it by enrique ft pitbull, and the fucking burger place ended up playing it too while i was waiting in the queue there, it was so fucking Funny to me.

oct 08: pleasant sunny warm amsterdam day - met with a friend living there, had a nap, headed to the event in the late evening.

some of my grocerylike stuffs would've been more ideal in the fridge, i ended up storing them on the window sill cos my bed was right next to one. met up with the friend at a nearby park, walked around, dropped by some music store, went to vegan junk food bar for lunch. i ordered rainbow fries, but the sauce choice was more giving transgender flag! then i had the friend fill a friend diary of mine at the park :,)

slagwerk event: good shit.

i got humbled by the camera stickering, but me having had a phone case i ended up simply removing the sticker with ease and lowkey recording all the same some time on... floated between the two rooms mostly, cept i was present for most of oli's set :-D and nothing was happening parallel to the end-b2b2b2b. pebblle's set was fun from what i caught, i remember. and oli of course. and the b2b2b2b was cute. at one point mechatok dropped clumsy by oli xl while oli was away from the decks, and he ended up appearing from crowdside to jokingly dramatically thumbs-down at him 🤣🤣

i gave paper cranes to everyone, naturally. except oli but i gave him a paper frog haha he was like nooo i'll lose it i just shoved it in a lil pocket of his bag. i lingered for a little, before heading back to the hostel.

oct 09: pleasant sunny lazy amsterdam day - slept pretty late i think, then went to meet with an i-guess-online-acquaintance who was in town, for dinnerlike. then i walked around the nearby-hostel park.

went for nachos in the end cos vegan-friendly enough (for the acquaintance, i'm not strictly vegan myself). saw some ducks at the park, and other nice stuff.

oct 10: absurd early head-off for london. extensive walking around with a friend, with another joining in for a bit. evening check-in to hostel, zzzzz.

walk route: borough market -> tate modern -> tate britain -> some crosstown location. was cute to hang out. ended up sleeping like 10 hours after all this.

oct 11: lazy london day, bare solo explorations.

was at the hostel for most of day... headed out for a bit, for solo walking explorations, walked past bermondsey street and felt compelled to listen to bermondsey street by patrick wolf upon there 😂 then got another bun from a different crosstown and dropped by some shop to get a bunch of candy. lazy lazy day.

oct 12: flight to rome, got there in the evening.

not much really. window seat for the flight. confusions with the hostel admin that was in at that moment cos they barely spoke english. they wanted me to pay for shit in cash, but i ended up being able to pay with bank transfer in the end. moody weather.

oct 13: lazy day, getting my footing.

got pan di stelle (cute cute cookies), some tortellini, a can of cat food from the grocery store, for bringing home. i stayed in a uni area in the city, so i ended up getting a margherita pizza + supplì (lil crusted ball filled with rice and stuff) + soft drink deal for a whole 4 euros. the weather was a little rainy, so i didn't really do much.

oct 14: rome exploration day, and the event in the evening/night.

walked around a bunch. saw the colosseum from outside. planted a lonitseera (estonian band) sticker somewhere nearby. saw some sort of "raccolta differenziata / diversified trash" labeled trash container. me i'm diversified trash.

the rome event i was going to seemed to me like it'd need some kind of membership card, so i traversed around to find answers to That - verdict was i would've got it at the event, but in the end didn't even need that, could just buy the event ticket from the door too. still was nice to see the mundane rome.

after that traversal i went for some hot dog at a different place near hostel, then got a gelato :-D i ordered a large but they somewhy charged me for a medium, accidental(?) bargain. mango, strawberry i think, and pistachio, with cream on top. good from what i remember.

rome event: didn't understand a lick of the book presentation, but the arssalendo live set went hard and the oli set was fun too.

the book being presented was about like 21st century iconography or something if i remember correctly off the top of my head. seemed cool. i was still present from the start even tho i didn't understand shit.

when i dropped a little paper crane for arssalendo before his set, with oli present too tweaking some stuff at the dj decks, oli waved at me, prolly recognizing me off the rainbow pant. I Will Never Fail.

arssalendo set really did go hard, and i didn't even record a couple of the bits that made me go like !!! haha, i ended up wanting to get just the tutti ammassati senza affetto cd, but i only had a 20€ bill on me and the merch stand person had no change for that even after consulting the bartenders, so i ended up getting the cd + merchshirt for 20€ instead of what would've been 25€ 😂 and sometime during the oli set i ended up setting the shirt down somewhere on some table near decks and it ended up drenched in beer someone had spilled haha

at one point during the oli dj set, when he was seemingly threatening to end the set, someone requested go oli go from him, which he did play too :,) and the set went on for long enough that i was looking at alternative flights at one point 🤣 cos i had another early as fuck flight, but ended with ample time, a little after 2am.

heading back to the hostel i felt lonely, cos of the language barrier really, some people at the bus stop also waiting for the night bus that'd been at the event were discussing something and one of em played iglooghost from their phone speaker at one point. i didn't wanna all rudely englishly butt in. but as per that one quote, loneliness is still time spent with the world or some shit. i still had to walk some of the way to the hostel, which was still nice. saw the moon and stars and trees and everything.

[p.s. the hostel also had fucking bedbugs but i never ended up notifying them of it... and i fortunately only hauled one male bedbug home, that ended up trolling me for the following 4 months, until i caught it red-handed once]

oct 15: absurd early flight to riga, nap, met up with 3 friends for pre-sigur-rós show hangouts, then the show itself, then post-show hangouts.

hate catching early flights after bare sleep coming from some hostel or such, as opposed to straight from event, but tbf no flights would've been early enough for pulling this. still was cool to see some lil mountains at a distance. i had a mediocre cheeseburger and a nice enough mcflurry from the ciampino airport mcd's. the airport as small as tallinn's, but nowhere near as cozy.

got to the riga hostel in the afternoon, checked in, had a nap. then headed out to meet the 3 friends to go to the sigur rós show with, we ended up going to a hesburger in true hesburger fashion 😂 and just walked around, and went to venue. the show was alright - sigur rós is several obsessions past for me, didn't really have the same effect on me as they would've in 2013 at my peak obsession time, and they didn't play yfirborð (one of my Fav tunes of theirs) but some other stuff did gather my ass a bit. festival (the song of theirs) !!!!

subjected one of the friends' car's aux to dnL by oli xl after the show. and went to some pubthing for drinks, the two of them (one left cos sleepy) and me.

oct 16: Going Home.

by bus. all's well that ends well.

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