My suitcase is still open on the bedroom floor since Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium, because there just is no point putting it away. Monday morning it’s time for the next destination: Thessaloniki, Greece.

Music has given me good reasons to go to places where I would probably never have gone otherwise. I get to see so much stuff, just because I’ve planned my journeys around some kind of music event. :-)) In this case, it’s the STOP THAT SOUND 2310 festival, featuring JUDAS PRIEST, WHITESNAKE & FIREWIND.

 
“This is big news: The first-ever music festival in Thessaloniki… hosted in Thessaloniki’s largest stadium, the Kaftanzoglio!

There was the U2 gig at the harbour in 1997 with at 50.000 crowd and that was it. OK, there have been gigs of Deep Purple, The Prodigy, Iron Maiden, Scorpions – but all these were in rather small venues (Theatro Ghis and PAOK Arena). This time it is big – at the Kaftanzoglio, Thessaloniki’s largest stadium with a capacity of about 35.000! And the city feels ready for it!”

The stadium:

That’s what it says on the Thessaloniki info guide for us tourists. :-) Of all the trips I’ve done so far, this one somehow feels the most exotic. Maybe because I’ve never been that far south, maybe because the letters are different and the language doesn’t resemble anything I know or recognize. So, it might be a challenge, but then again, maybe it will be a lot easier than I think. :)

Too bad in a way that I’m going on my own, seems like a city that would be fun to explore with a friend at least. But when you are out there travelling on your own, you get to meet people that you probably wouldn’t even have talked to if you had been travelling with someone, and sometimes you make new friendships. It’s all good, I’m used to it.

Two days I’ll be in Thessaloniki just touristing, and I don’t even know exactly where I want to go or what I want to do. I usually improvise because, if you make too many plans you only get disappointed if things don’t turn out the way you planned.

Being in a new city means that everything you see is new and exciting, simply because you haven’t seen it before! Even going to a grocery store in a different country is an experience, because there’s all this stuff that you don’t know what it is. :) 

The day after the festival in Thessaloniki, I’m going straight to the airport to fly to the next destination – London, UK. Spending one night there before taking the train to the Stevenage and the Sonisphere Festival. Got my accreditation papers last week. Only attending a few hours to see Firewind and Megadeth first and foremost, then taking the last train back to London and then from there somehow back to Heathrow to get on the first early flight home to Copenhagen – Malmo.

It will be exhausting and I just realized that I’ll be walking around with my luggage at the festival because I won’t have a hotel to keep it in that particular day, haha! Holy shit, this is going to be VERY interesting!

So yeah… all of this requires a lot of pre-planning just for the….uh….logistics. At this point, with everything going on down in Greece, I’m happy to just get there and get home without too much trouble. I have a feeling it will be alright. :-)

[Pic: Stole this one from Gus G’s page]