Europe – The Thein Way to Live

This really wasn’t the “tour” part, this was the travel part from the UK to the Netherlands. But I will say I got to see a lot of the world… through a double-decker tour bus. If you haven’t been to Europe, you figure out really quickly, that a lot of these countries are very close. Driving through to the UK, to take a ferry to France, then the drive to the Netherlands, you hit about 6 countries just within that drive alone. However, you do get to see some neat scenery from the cliffs of dover, to the great big large ports on the coast.

While you sleep a lot on the bus, because what else do you do on a tour bus with 11 other people, you kind of just watch the world roll by. It’s a beautiful thing to watch the scenery as you drive to your next destination. As we get off the buses in Tilburg, everyone, everywhere is riding a bike. If you know anything about me, I love public and eco-friendly transportation. Tilburg is about an hour outside from Amsterdam, a cute little tiny, just making fresh food and coffee. It made me realize staying in this city that we really can do things better in America. From food, to work life, to transportation, there are better ways and things can always be improved. One of the many cities I’m lucky enough to experience that I may never go to again.

The show in Tilburg was great, a small cute venue I would love to go back to again. However, the city struggled as it reached record temperature highs, and they don’t have AC. My favorite part of my show was my runners, I can’t do my job without the runners, and they really help me out. Harold and Max, if you are reading this, I’ll give you recommendations any day.

Fun little fact about the Netherlands, it has the best tap water in all of Europe to drink!

Then we made the trip to Denmark, and I wish we had more time to spend in Copenhagen. From unique buildings and structures, the history, and the diversity of food is outstanding. The venue we were at was well designed, easily one of the best venues I’ve been to and the venue staff is very accommodating. I wish I could have stayed longer there, but I guess I’m very excited to see where life takes me next. My plan is spend more time in Copenhagen, I have a really good friend from there, I know there’s more to offer in Copenhagen!

To say I wasn’t nervous about going over to Europe, would be a big lie. I’ve been working in events for about 11 years now. It’s always growing and changing, so you have to keep up with the times. Since I haven’t been to Europe on tour, I didn’t know what to expect. I was worried that accents would get in the way, culture/work habits would be a problem, or even just being American working over in Europe would get in the way. I’m extremely hypersensitive to what is going on in the world and how the world views the states. It’s not an appearance thing or vanity for that matter, I just don’t want people to take me as a joke. I’m here to work, I’m open-minded and I want to adapt to the situation I’m in as best as I can.

There are always problems in the events world, and our job is always to have a solution to those problems. Of course, the first thing that happens when we get over there, KLM lost 14 bags including my own. 14, that’s a pretty big number, and I knew we weren’t alone in that! Of course, there was/is a shortage of workers, and I’m sure there was a strike going on, but what I tell everyone, if you can’t handle the workload, just don’t take it on, and that includes airlines. So it wasn’t a good start but the very next day, our luggage finally made it to the UK.

We are very lucky and found an awesome work crew to travel with us, SoundForce Crew, if you ever need extra hands on your tour, these are your guys. Urban was the leader and a true leader at that. It’s great working with people that have the same type of work ethic as you do. The last thing he said to me was, “you are truly good at your job.” What he doesn’t know is I feel the same exact way, and I think he’s amazing at his job. Hiring those guys if you can while you are working in Europe. They made our first day go by very smoothly and let me handle other things like finding luggage.

Glasgow was the first start to the tour, and man what a day it was. From trying to understand accents to try to get everyone’s luggage, it was a very interesting start. I learned very early on, Europeans are a little bit more relaxed (I should have known that from my travels over there before), maybe it’s just the midwestern in me that’s always “Go Go GO” but it made me take a step back with my runners, and think “OK this is how they work over here.” It’s not a bad thing, just a different pace of work.

The biggest issue I had in Glasgow was the accents. Man, did I have a hard time understanding all the venue workers. Literally, my biggest fear on my first day on tour was not being able to communicate with them. They speak English for crying out loud, and I still had to ask them to repeat themselves 100x over. However, they all made me laugh so hard, that I cried. I needed that on my first day on the road in Europe. I even made a dog friend over there! I can’t wait to go back… but this time with my luggage.

With all the hiccups and such we made it through the day. However, we had to take a ferry overnight. I stupidly slept through the ferry which you are not supposed to do, but needless to say, the rest of my guys got up and they were very tired going over to Ireland.

Dublin is everything you imagined and dreamed of. It’s the place of music, art, and culture. It was fantastic and I can’t wait to go back. We had great burgers for after-show food and gathered lots of great information about Dublin and the history behind it. And of course, people were thrilled to see the boss man on stage. I couldn’t have asked for a better second show in Europe.

The thing that stuck out the most to me in Dublin, was the number of tourists. Where I’m from in Milwaukee, we have a huge Irish community, a lot of people migrated over to that area from Ireland. When I was able to sneak away, my runner was great and answered all my questions. I’m always curious and will always take the opportunity to escape when I can. With all the different things you can do in Dublin, I was able to go to Stephen’s Green. It was packed and full of people. People were everywhere drinking coffee on the grass, sitting in rounds playing music, and just enjoying the little sun that Ireland normally gets. With much history involved in the park, it’s no wonder why it’s one of the main places to go in Dublin.

Image result for big park in dublin ireland — Stephen’s Green

My runner was great and showed me all the buildings, the bridges, and all the neighborhoods in between. I had to ask him, “people are so proud of the Irish heritage, even in the states. Why is that?” He just said, “We are proud people, with a lot of history, but we are about a culture of who you know as well. That’s why we spread far and wide, we just know people!” Which in the end, totally makes sense, if you know anyone who is Irish in the states, they proudly say, “I’m Irish”.

Overall, I hope to make it back to the UK sooner rather than later.