Miss Euro Blogger - Bursting the Bubble

Growing up in a very small village in the Austrian countryside, going to a concert was a logistical challenge. Even more so because I didn't have a car. And I lived a 45-minute walk away from the next train station. And the buses stopped running at 6 PM. Just listing all obstacles is exhausting... I saw REM in Vienna when I was about 17-years old and my friends and I spent the night hiding out in a train carriage waiting for our 6 AM train to go back home. We thought we were so adventurous and such outlaws! Living in LA opened a lot of concert opportunities. In fact, it was hard to keep up. EVERY band played in LA. Some bands never even came to Austria but in LA it seemed like they were competing over venues. I was so excited to go to my first big concert, which was U2. They played in Anaheim, which was over an hour away but I was sure it was going to be worth it. My concert experience up until then had been crowded venues with lots of drunk people and me trying to dodge elbows a...

For the past nine years or so, there has been a music festival in the desert near Palms Springs called Coachella. (I have no idea where that name comes from). This year, I went for the first time. My friends and I  rented a house about 10 minutes from the festival area - pool and jacuzzi included :).   The drive from L.A. to the desert took about 3 hours - 2 hours for those with a faster car. The drive is not a scenic by any stretch of the imagination. Bare hills, shopping malls, a giant casino structure, windmills... but oh was it worth it! Most of us shared a room with 2-3 other people. My roommate whacked our other roommate with a pillow when he wouldn't stop snoring... We drank Jack in the jacuzzi and BBQed us some burgers (shrimp for the non-meat eaters like me). It was a blast!  Over three days, more than 30 bands and DJs perform on 5-6 stages set up on a polo field. Some of the stages where in tents, some outdoors. The tents were all named after deserts - Gobi, Sahara, Mojav...