A Rocking Good Time -- Torino, Italy (#1)

Turin/Torino
This city was the first of four Italian cities hosting Tokio Hotel’s performances. Each of us will share our perspective of the concert. Annette has the platform for Part 1 of her 4 Part review:

Pre-Show In The Line
The NTO posse got to PalaTorino about 5:30pm. This is after a HARROWING drive from Milan and all over Turin. As soon as we arrived at the venue, we understood why the Italian Fanclub had advised a warning. It wasn't really in the best area and the gypsies selling non-official Tokio Hotel merchandise have commandeered the entryway up to the back of the line. Fans were already lined up all the way from the front of the venue to the back of the wall where the gypsies were stationed. We found the end of the line and stood and waited for 2 hours in the rain. Not just spritzing rain, constant coming down rain.

Luckily I had purchased ponchos for us all to wear. Other fans had umbrellas, which due to the sardine-like quality of the line, a couple of us got caught under the cover. This was both good and bad. Good because you got some extra rain protection. Bad because if you weren't standing in the right place, you found yourself a runoff deposit for the rain coming down the umbrella, so in essence you got double the rain. Great, huh? It was cold and we only had on shirts and sweaters, so we got drenched. We did the Tokio Hotel line dance, as we now call it. Fans screamed as the group in front of them gets let it; and then you shuffle shuffle forward a few feet, jammed up to the person next to, in front of, and in back of you; and then you stop. This occurred until we got towards the front of the venue, climbed over heaps of garbage, and finally got in.

Pre-Show Inside Venue
The venue is larger than it appears from the outside. A big floor with seats at the back and then a 2nd level with a ton more seats. We had seated tickets which put us in this 2nd level. We were on the floor on Tom’s side pretty close to the barrier but decided to go to the seats, since at Padova we had just general admission tickets. BAD, BAD, BAD idea. This is what an agonizing drive from Milan on concert day will do to your brain. Result is stupid decision making. We should have just stayed where we were and seated ourselves on the floor like other fans were doing.

Instead we made our way to the 2nd level and got seats in the 1st row so we could grab hold of the barrier at our level. We got some food, water, one beer to share, tons of free makeup and some flashing Tokio Hotel light thingy, waited, and tried to find the official Italian Fanclub booth. After about 1 hour and seeing the venue not really fill up, Patricia and I decided to go for the floor. We went downstairs and got 11 heads from the barrier on Tom’s side about 1/2 way between center stage and the stands. The fans around us were nice. Some Italian girls had a "we love Georg" poster. Other fans had backpacks which they used in a defensive way to jockey for position. The fans were mostly college age girls, not very many young teenagers or boys, and a couple of other Italian NTO's.

Every time anything remotely indicating that the show was about to start happened, the crowd screamed. Curtain moved, equipment testing, light guys (4 of them) take their places, etc. Pre-show music played and there was some singing. World Behind My Wall Remix was INCREDIBLE. Why hadn't I heard this before? I had World Behind My Wall German, English, video, acoustic. Patricia and I sang along to the music and bopped as much as we could in the sea of squished together fans.

Come back for Part 2 of the 4 Part review.

Feel free to ask questions about the concert or the Torino leg of the trip.