Happy (early) birthday to me! A somewhat creative and embellished account of an evening in Berlin…

One fine, albeit it slightly drizzly and cloudy Berlin afternoon Anna and I decided to tour around the Olympic Stadium. This great stadium, as you may be aware, was origionally built in 1931 when Germany was awarded the Olympic games. It was commissioned by Hitler, who intended to use the stadium both for sporting and propaganda events. Incredibly, it survived WWII, but fell into disrepair until 1998, when it was rebuilt while maintaining much of the traditional architecture.

We, being the naïve tourists that we were, thought vaguely to ourselves that it seemed awfully crowded on the U-bahn for such a tourist site, neglecting the possibility of any event that might actually have been taking place in the stadium that night.

As we got out of the train, we were immediately herded like cattle up the stairs and towards the path leading to the stadium. One particularly daring “cow” was straining against the masses—much like a salmon heading upstream I might add—waiving tickets and shouting something in German. Not wanting to miss any excitement, I merged over towards him and asked, in my best broken German, what event was going on. He promptly, of course, didn’t understand me and told me that he was selling his tickets for 170 Euros each!! He never did say what the tickets were for, but I was able to glimpse the letter and numeral of our evening: U2.

‘No way!’ I shouted to Anna as we were pushed up the stairs. We were fans of the band and Anna had tried to purchase tickets as a birthday gift for me for this very concert but was turned away because of the price. We had forgotten their arrival date to Berlin and now found ourselves unwittingly moving towards their performance.

Our excitement mounted as we saw dozens of scalpers selling tickets they had already purchased but had, for whatever reason, decided to part with. So, we formulated a financial plan. We determined the highest price we were willing to pay per ticket and then did the most painful thing—we left. We left because these masses were pouring in two hours before the concert. So, we decided to come back after the concert had started, to see if any scalpers would be desperate enough to meet our price.

As we left, we looked in amazement at the piles of people packed into the public transit station headed towards the stadium that could house 76,000 people.

We left the apartment two hours later for the concert. When we arrived, I immediately saw several scalpers—who I like to think looked more desperate than when we had last seen them. I walked up to the nearest scalper, saw her tickets and named my price. She consulted her special someone, who—I’d like to think—nodded his consent in admission, sadness, and relief.

With great excitement, we took our tickets and followed the herd--that was now our pack--and made our way onto the floor of the stadium, where we were left standing for the next four or so hours during the concert. We met some great English speaking people…all of whom asked us our ticket prices and then blushed in shame at what they had paid. And above all, we heard some great music, saw an incredible performance and had the time of our lives. It was one of the best birthday presents I have ever had!