Welcome to my annual end-of-the-year chronicle. Here I reflect on the passed year, the media I’ve consumed, the trips I’ve made and other personal stuff and oh boy, was this a busy year! This post took forever to write and in the end I had to cut a lot of things out just to get it done.
Blogging
My first focus is this blog: Stray Bullet. This year I have published 28 posts, which was significantly more than last year. Most of the posts were travel journals, short tales if you like, from the travels we did when seeing 22 shows of the #SpringsteenTour23. My blog achieved more attention than it ever had. As of now 500-1,000 people regularly read my blog. A few times this year total strangers approached me on the street (outside some venue) to comment on something I had written or to tell me that they like reading my blog. I really appriecate to be recognised like that.
The most popular post by far was the Copenhagen 13.07.2023 post. It has been read more than 4,200 times. The second most read was Oslo 30.06.2023 with 2,300 wiews. Interestingly enough, both those posts describe disappointing experiences and were promoted with strong headlines as I published them via social media. They also generated some negative responses. A handful of people seemed upset and personally offended by the fact that we’d had a less positive experience in their hometown or at their favourite show, although I always meticulously emphasise that what I illustrate in my blog are my own personal takes of different events. My instilled knowledge from this is that if I want more people to read I also need to have a sharper pen, learn how to write more catchy headlines and stop caring wether people might get insulted or not.
Next year I will continue writing about music and travelling for music. We have another 9 Springsteen shows scheduled, but also plan to see other artists/bands such as Anna Ternheim, Zack Bryan, Depeche Mode and Coldplay. We are also looking to see the final event of the ESC (Eurovision Song Contest).
Music and travels
As year 2023 started I was standing on a hotel roof top in Malta with my friend Eden and my boyfriend Oliver. Apart from celebrating Eden’s birthday and the birth of a new year, we also spent six days exploring the country by foot and by car. We saw the capital Valetta with its narrow streets and interesting exterior. We visited a prehistoric temple (Hal Tarxien), the silent city Mdina and small fishing villages. We also chased numerous sunsets.
In February Oliver and I saw Ane Brun in the Gothenburg Opera. It was a show called 12 Songs+. In the show Ane Brun had, together with the choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström, created a mix of her singing and dance cascades in collaboration with the Gothenburg Oprea Orchestra and the Gothenburg Dance Company. It was not at all what we had expected but still a unique and beautiful experience.
On April 8-15 it was time for our first three Springsteen shows of the year. We flew to New York, where we stayed in Jamaica, which is a somewhat iffy neighbourhood in the New York City borough of Queens. Click on the links on the timeline further down to read more about the shows in Belmont Park. After the first two shows we relocated to Newark, NJ for the third show. On the days between the shows we were sightseeing in NYC and Asbury Park. We also attended a concert with Andrew Bird in the Prudential Hall in Newark.
Two weeks later (28.04), we flew to Barcelona for the opening of the European leg of the Springsteen Tour. We arrived on the same day as the first show and only had time for a quick bite before we headed to the arena. As I had already heard, the Spanish crowd was very energetic and that contributed to the overall positive impression of the show. It was the debut of the use of subtitles to certain songs and during Glory Days Springsteen was accompanied on stage by his wife Patti Scialfa, Michelle Obama and Kate Capshaw, who were in town with their husbands.
It was my first visit to Barcelona, a city that I found very pretty. Between the two shows there was some time for sightseeing and other activities such as a visit to Camp Nou where we watched FC Barcelona beat Real Betis with 4-0. Well, we didn’t actually see the whole game. It started raining so we left at halftime, since we hadn’t brought any umbrellas or rain jackets. Still, it was pretty cool to experience a football arena of that magnitude.
A couple of hours before admission of the second Barcelona show a heavy rain started leaving people soaking wet. Luckily we had our rain gear and managed to stay resonably dry. The most memorable thing about the concert was the “Tom Hanks incident”. Click on the link on the timeline to read more about it.
In Dublin we had to do the queuing and the roll calls to be sure to be in the pit. We saw two of the three shows in the RDS Arena and thanks to the ever so friendly and well-organised staff of Aiken promotions and the Irish and international volunteers the queueing experience was easy-breezy. Our friends Ann-Sofie and Jennifer were there and we also ran into some locals, the lovely Bronagh and Lilleth.
One of the hightlights of the Dublin trip wasn’t actually the Springsteen shows, but the concert that The Seeger Sessions Revival played in the Button Factory in Dublin on May 6. In a two hour long set they delivered a high energy set of songs from Springsteen’s iconic Seeger Sessions. They energy from the audience in the packed venue was massive and we had a really good time singing along to the well known songs.
In the middle of May we flew to Paris for another Springsteen show. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing, but I got a crash course in French from the taxi driver 😅. The pit queuing was an exhausting experience because we were moved around like cattle in the glaring sun.
At Pentecost we went to Amsterdam. Oliver had already seen the first show on Thursday, but I had to skip it for work. I flew in for the second show and we stayed in Utrecht, which is an adorable town just outside of Amsterdam. It had the archetypical canals and the beautiful buildings you can see in Amsterdam, but it wasn’t as crowded as the capital normally is. The most memorable part of the show was when Springsteen took a tumble on-stage.
On June 3. my friend Ann-Sofie and I went to see Patti Smith in the Konserthuset in Gothenburg. It was a nice and intimate concert.
On June 21 SpringsteenTour2023 reached Düsseldorf, Germany. Düsseldorf had a pit that was divided into two areas. We were in the back of the front pit and what I remember most from that show is that Oliver brought two collegues, none of them had seen Springsteen before, and it was so much fun to watch them enjoy the show.
As the Springsteen tour moved to my hometown Gothenburg for three shows it got really busy. I had a friend sleeping over and we also decided to try and get a spot up front on the second shows so we snuck out early from the first show to get a good number and then we were required to show up for roll calls on both Monday and the show day. Standing in the front of the pit with my friends Alexandra, Jennifer and Ann-Sofie sure was a fun experience. However, it was also very demanding to do the roll calls. On the evening before the last show we hung out with a few other fans in a pub outside the band hotel. It was a really nice evening and we also got to meet some of the members of the band. We also went to a book signing and got to meet Nicki Germaine, photographer of the photos displayed in the book “Springsteen Liberty Hall”.
On the morning after the last Gothenburg show, Oliver and I boarded a bus to take us to Oslo, the capital of Norway. We stayed in a hotel room that was the smallest we’ve ever stayed in so far. The bedroom had room for a bed, but that was about it. At the concert we were a bit shocked by the eating, drinking and littering habits of the Norwegians. The morning after Oliver left Oslo for work. I stayed and was later joined by my friend Ann-Sofie, who had come from Gothenburg. We went to the venue “Gamla” to see Little Steven & Wicked Cool Record Showcase. It started with a live Q&A with Steven van Zandt and was followed by live performances from The Cocktail Slippers, Ramona’s Tea Party and The Yum Yums. The day after we saw Springsteen again.
July was the busiest month of the year. I saw nine concerts (includning Coldplay in Gothenburg) in six different countries AND I also had time to celebrate my 50th birthday. Most noteworthy in a negative way was our experience of the shows in Copenhagen and the chaotic Hockenheim adventure. The most positive memory was the surprise appearance of Oliver on my birthday and the ultra fast sightseeing tour of the beautiful city of Vienna.
Since 2007 the festival Way Out West has been an annual occurence in Gothenburg. It is a three-day, multi-genre festival, which is located in the idyllic park of Slottsskogen in the middle of Gothenburg. Some of the hightlights this year were Tove Lo, Devo, Blur, The Soundtrack of our Lives, Sam Fender and Håkan Hellström.
In September Oliver and I went to Hamburg for some sightseeing and a concert. Hamburg is a beautiful city with an impressive harbour, cranes (I love cranes), inland lakes and channels. We saw the Norwegian band Madrugada perform in the historic Laeiszhalle. The post from that trip was actually my last post for 2023. There were other things I wanted to write about, for example the Anna Ternheim concert in Potsdam, Frank Turner in Gothenburg, my friend Rickard’s concert with his band Rickard och Juvelerna and the three “The Live Series” releases, but I ran out of steam. I’m guessing that you are about to run out of steam soon too. This post is already very long and I haven’t even mentioned the films I’ve seen, the books I have read, my new favourite podcast (E Street Café Podcast) or anything about my training or my persistant shoulder injury, but I think it is time to round things up.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my blog and I hope you’ll stick with me for another year. As I mentioned in the beginning, there are more adventures on the agenda includning nine Springsteen concerts in eight countries.
Over and out! //Anna
Stray Bullet 
WHAT…A…YEAR!!!
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One of the best years in my life!
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