STARS and other travel thoughts

i am blogging to stay awake!
for yes, i have returned from the land of only technically illegal marijuana. amsterdam. and i'm quite tired. thoughts on amsterdam? well, it's quite low-key, but i suspect that had something to do with the odors wafting off of every person we walked by. in any event, it was the best weekend ever!! which had pretty little to do with amsterdam and a lot more to do with Stars.
for one thing, this was the first time i have ever completely planned my own traveling. my momma does most (read: all) of it for me, which i find wonderful because it stresses me out. but you know what? i planned this trip and it was a huge success, so i'm pretty happy to know i can do that. i even drew maps about how to walk from the bus station to the venue (a rather long 3 miles) in professional ball-point pen scribbly goodness on the back of a notebook. and we got there, and we saw stars!
a word about stars: they must not be as well-known as i thought they were, because the venue was TINY. which is AMAZING. as such, we were in THE EXACT FRONT ROW. as in, leaning on the stage. and as such as such, we (my new friend nate and i) had some very personal experiences with several of the band members.
these included: (a) we were ogling amy millan backstage before they came out, going, "is that really her?!" and she waved at us! and we waved back: nate sheepish, me beaming. amy can be seen here:
(b) after the concert, the guitar player (apparently new to the band) walked right up to me and just handed me his guitar pick! i am not even kidding! he then threw a couple others into the crowd. i think he singled me out because, well.. i was sort of the only one REALLY dancing. tom and kat can attest to how much i enjoy a good dance party, especially at concerts, and they also know how much i love stars. well, i wasn't going to let an immobile crowd of dutch people stop me. so i flailed about in all my "i'myournumberonefannnn!!" glory, and i think perhaps the guitar player appreciated this. it was a small room, i don't think you could have missed me, to be honest. and the guitar player didn't. he can be seen here:
(c) i got the set list!!! woot! (well, nate got it for me.) the setlist can be seen here..
(d) the drummer came right up to me and nate and we got a fist pound!!! the drummer can be seen here..
(e) torquil was DIRECTLY in front of nate (about a foot and a half to my 2:00) so we had some quite intimate eye-contact-while-singing moments. torquil can be seen here..

so yeah, all in all they are FANTASTIC live. very dramatic and intense. torquil (who may have been a bit.. well.. let's just say he seemed to really appreciate amsterdam) was not at all what i expected. but clearly their music means the world to them. here's torquil singing to amy:

so. what else. well, on the bus ride on the way there i made an awesome friend. he was dutch, but had been living in CPH for about a year. since he was also learning danish, we discussed at length the hilarity and absurdity of the language (no offense, danes. but come on...). he said a sentence to me in danish and i understood it! and he was a vegetarian and had been to america a bit and was just generally fun to talk to so we had a lot to talk about. to give you a picture, without actually having one, let me describe him: between 25 and 40 (i really have no idea), with no hair (shaved? bald?) except for 4-5 dreadlocks from the nape of his neck down to his waist, this guy is wearing a black trench coat over a tshirt with a scary skull on it. and he sleeps by leaning his forehead on the seat in front of him. we exchanged a hug when we parted ways. i think he's my new best friend. it's sort of my first extended experience with conversing with a european (as sad as that is. my main exchanges are with the man who sells me the vegan pastries almost every day. and the danish consists of him saying like two words to me and me saying "what" and him laughing because he knows by now that i don't speak danish). anyway, so richard (that's my friend) and i had great conversation and he was quite nice to me. that made the first bus ride a lot more bearable, i must say.

a word about why this was such a great weekend for me. i mean, concerts are some of the most fun i can have, to be honest, so that's no surprise. but i realized, also, this was the most time i've spent just enjoying the present. if you don't know me well, i do not appreciate the moment very much at all. i'm always looking forward to other things. and i have to admit, i spend a LOT of time here going, "oh this is cool, i can't wait to go home and email my friends about it." and not really appreciating the moment. i think the times i've appreciated so far have been (a) the last night of bornholm, dancing on a rock by the seaside by moonlight, (b) all times in the graveyard, i love love love the graveyard (pics to be taken soonish)... oh my gosh is that it? that might be it. you know, DIS gave us the advice, "don't stay in your room talking to your friends on Instant Messenger all the time." and everytime i get on the computer, i think "am i spending too much time doing this?" and the answer is a resounding "probably." but i can't help it, i miss my friends, and i like telling them about my experiences. but anyway, it does make it so that i'm always looking forward to telling them about what's happening right now, instead of enjoying what's happening right now.
the moral of this story is that this weekend has been just about enjoying the hell out of one of my favorite bands--going to ridiculous length and expense to see them, challenging me to plan and execute the weekend, and not letting anything get me down. so, yes i reeked of smoke, yes, i spent 26 of the last 40 hours on a bus, but the whole time, all i could think was, 'HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME.'
i think that's a big success for me.

so i think i'll end on that. there's more to say, but it can wait.