One of my colleagues at work was asking people, quite randomly, what their plans were for the weekend. He got replies along the lines of “I’m just going to take it easy...”, “I’m going out with a few friends...” – then he turned to me and went: “So, Daniela, where in the world are you going THIS weekend?” with a big grin.
Guess it’s been like that back and forth since I ran out of vacation days. I’ve had to do everything on weekends!

Athens, Greece the first weekend in January (for Firewind), New York City two weekends later (for Steve Stevens and Sebastian Bach on Iridium, Broadway), Tampa, Florida for just one day to see Van Halen… And probably some European dates inbetween that I already forgot about. 

I didn’t do this a few years ago. I guess that the general opinion is that you “can’t” do crazy shit like going overseas for a weekend, unless you’re a millionaire with nothing better to spend your money on.
But then I realized that you CAN.

Maybe it’s crazy, but really, the only “crazy” part is the short time-frame. Nothing else. And if you think about it, it’s not that crazy at all, because usually HOTELS cost a lot more than the actual trip, so going for a weekend is SAVING money, not the opposite. Two hotel-nights equal a flight ticket, most of the time. For that, you get to visit more countries instead of just one. :)

And going several times a year means that you don’t have to squeeze in everything you want to do in a few days and then think that you’ll never come back. You do what you need to do – well knowing that you WILL be back, and probably pretty soon too. :-)

There are different ways of making it possible – apart from living on crispbread and noodles.
I just applied for an American Express card with flyer miles. If you get approved, you get 20,000 miles as a welcome-bonus, which is enough for a roundtrip somewhere within Europe. With my 10,000 current miles on the bonus card, that makes 30,000 miles which is enough for an upgrade to business class. Never flown business class but always wanted to – and so for my next overseas-trip I’ll use the miles for that! :-)

The best thing about a credit card that offers miles for everything you buy, is that it’s effortless! I need food anyway, I will buy concert tickets abroad and trains, flights, buses, whatever, every 100 SEK gives 20 flyer miles (100 SEK equals 1 loaf of bread, butter, milk, a piece of cheese and a pack of chewing gum – now you do the math how fast you get to collect miles to get free flights!).

 But for now… A “regular” vacation in Split, Croatia. Three weeks of getting pissed off at crappy internet-connections, no car, no cable TV (just regular, standard TV which is like 4 channels I think….) expensive phone, so I can’t call friends anywhere else in the world like I’m used to. And most of all – no rock’n’roll. GAAH! It’s going to drive me NUTS!

The highlight last year was hanging with this dude – the only person I got to talk music with during my stay in Split last year. I hope there’ll be an opportunity to hang out this year as well. Was nice of him to travel all the way down to Split eventhough he lives in the north part of the country, I think maybe about 4 hours travel or something like that.

[A Justin TImberlake-song never sounded this cool, lol!]

I’m just not cut out for “regular vacations”. If it doesn’t include music in one way or another, I’ll most likely not going to enjoy it. Maybe a week, tops. 

Was checking tour dates for Ozzy, Steel Panther, Billy Idol, Firewind, Lita Ford, and wrote them all down in my calendar. And all the festivals of course. That’s the only way to keep track of the bands I want to see. Otherwise I have no clue what day it is, yet alone who plays where!

But I’m getting pretty good at this, I get away with the travelling fairly cheap, simply because I’ve learned how. I wrote a few tips last year, but I might write a little book about it someday. :-)

Here are the travel-tips blogs from 2011:

http://lita77777.posterous.com/the-rocknroll-travellers-best-tips-part-1

http://lita77777.posterous.com/the-rocknroll-travellers-best-tips-part-2

http://lita77777.posterous.com/the-rocknroll-travellers-best-tips-part-3

An internet friend e-mailed me the other day asking if I was going to see Ozzy in Dortmund, Germany in June, cause she wants to go and figured we could split hotel costs and go to the show. It’s never difficult to persuade me to something like that. :-)

I wanted to go to that gig anyway because it’s at Westfalenhalle, a venue that I remember from my very early days, beeing a teenage rocker in 19something….. [mumble….].

Ozzy, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard…. Those are only a few of the bands that were playing there back then, and it was aired LIVE on TV at the time. It was a big deal when something was aired live back in those days, so I remember it as a big event. 

[Def Leppard back in the day when they were really cool:]

As it’s only two days from the Ozzy-gig in my home-town Malmo, I need to know when my friend Bianca who’s visiting me for THAT, is going back home, so I’ll have to wait before I book any trains or flights. I’ll probably take that whole week off and go to Germany and then to Sweden Rock Festival two days after THAT. 

Yeah, the madness is about to begin. Soon. Very soon. :-D
I love my life. :)