It was cold and we played

Blog

Last night we went to our first concert in Zurich.

Venue: Hallenstadion, about the same size and setup of Key Arena.
Artist: Coldplay.
Method of transport: Tram#14, total commute time all of 20 minutes in a full, but not crowded tram.

We arrived, checked my coat for only 2CHF, quite a deal. We thought we might have to bypass the beer because the lines were so long downstairs, but we started walking towards our seats and found a beer vendor with only 4 people in line. Bryan and I had a nice drink out in the foyer (you can bring your beers in during the concert by the way, but we didn't). We then went in to check out the opening act, which started early! We were loving the punctuality.

Seating plan of Hallenstadion

We were in section I1 and could not even believe our seats. We seemed to have scored arguably the BEST seats in the house. I had just bought tickets on a whim at a ticketmaster-type site online 2 weeks ago. The concert was sold out days after tickets went on sale, but somehow they had released more tickets and I just happened to go to the site at the right time. We were in the first row on the right side of the stage. The angle was perfect...at one point Chris Martin went to the edge of the right side (his left I guess) and we were probably no more than 30 feet away from him. We thought there had to be a mistake and we kept waiting for someone to come kick us out.

Goldfrapp opened and they were a blondie-ish type of band, heavy on the bass, kind of a clubby sound. I recently saw them on Top of the Pops, a weekly top ten chart show, and so I was definitely interested in their performance. I liked them, Bryan...not so much.

During the break, we went out to get another beer and talk about what everyone was wearing. Boots over jeans are big for the ladies right now. I can't stand the look, personally. Looks a little too cowboy for my taste. But I do like the high boots and skirt look, so yesterday I bought my first pair of high boots I've ever owned in my entire life. Anyway, not to stray from the concert topic, but fashion was on our minds since there were so many people dressed back up in their fall fashion attire. We were trying to decide if we would know we weren't in the US if you blindfolded us and dropped us right in the middle of that scene. Could we guess we were in Europe when the blindfold came off just by the way people were dressed? We both decided that we could be in a trendy US city and therefore probably wouldn't be able to tell just by the clothes.

Like idiots, we didn't even attempt to sneak in our camera, so we didn't get photos of the people or of any part of the concert.

The concert itself was incredible. I've never had that good of seats before. Since I'm such a shrimp, even floor seats really suck for me. So this was perfect AND we didn't have to stand up if we didn't want to since we were in the first row. We also got to see the floor crowd go absolutely insane during Square One, Clocks, Yellow, Speed of Sound and many other favorites. Also, they played GREEN EYES acoustic-style!! They also worked the crowd by updating them on the Switzerland vs. Turkey soccer match. People were going crazy. I'm not even sure what the significance of that particular game is, but people were very excited.

Bryan and I both decided afterwards that this has to go in the top ten of concerts. Neil Diamond is way up there on the list though. If he ever came to Zurich, Bryan and I could dress up as nuns and scream our heads off.