Our late June weekend was originally built around seeing BAP in Weert on Saturday, which is why I arrived in Cologne on Thursday evening. The extreme heatwave across Europe, with temperatures approaching a brutal 40 degrees, completely ruined those plans. Going to Weert suddenly felt like a terrible idea, especially after we discovered that heavy construction works on the tracks meant changing trains three times before boarding a replacement bus. Deutsche Bahn saved our weekend by offering free cancellation due to the extreme weather, so we cancelled our train tickets and officially dropped the plan.
Giving up on our Saturday show made the Friday night Helene Fischer concert at the RheinEnergieStadion look a whole lot more appealing. For those of you who do not follow the German music scene, Helene Fischer is the undisputed queen of “Schlager,” a genre of traditional German pop music that is incredibly catchy, heavy on the synth beats, and often paired with sentimental lyrics. It is hard to overstate just how big she is in Germany, which is why Oliver thought it was practically a duty for a German teacher like me to finally learn about her.
The only problems with our new plan were the intense heat and the fact that we had not bought any tickets yet. We spent the afternoon tracking the online reseller sites, but the prices fell way too slowly. It is not always a brilliant plan to head toward a huge stadium show without having tickets, but we decided to take our chances anyway. We grabbed an Uber with the air conditioning on full blast to head straight to the venue, hoping to pick up a pair on the street for a fraction of the original price.
Selling tickets outside stadiums is pretty common and we spotted a few scalpers the moment we arrived. We normally avoid buying outside venues because the risk of getting swindled, especially on a printed PDF ticket, is way too high. The guy we found initially mentioned that he had paid 400 Euros for his pair, but we managed to negotiate him down to just 100 Euros. We agreed on the deal under the strict condition that he walked with us right up to the entrance gates to prove they worked before we handed over any cash. The plan went flawlessly, the barcodes scanned, and we were officially inside.
The tickets we bought granted us access to one of the Golden Circle seating sections on the long side quite close to the stage. The stage was round and placed right in the middle of the stadium floor, featuring two long runways stretching out toward either short side of the venue.
After we entered the area and received our special wristbands, we located our seats. Looking around the stadium, I noticed the crowd looked a bit odd because there was this constant, fluttering movement everywhere. I soon realised that thousands of people were fanning themselves to cope with the heat. Everyone seemed to have the exact same fan in their hand, which made me wonder why we had been left out. I asked the man sitting next to me about them and he graciously fished an extra sponsor-branded fan out of one of his goody bags to hand it over to me.
A while later, I decided to head to the stand to buy some drinks. As I was standing in line, I looked back and saw a commotion happening right around where Oliver was sitting. A larger group of people had arrived and it turned out that two of them held identical tickets to ours. We had to call over a Ticketmaster associate to sort out the mess, but he could not really solve the mystery. After scratching his head for a moment, he simply offered us a couple of empty seats in the row directly behind us. There was clearly something fishy going on with the barcodes, though we didn’t care. We had paid a bargain price and we were still sitting inside the Golden Circle.
Around 8:00 PM, the 20-year career anniversary show officially kicked off. Helene Fischer came flying down from the roof structure of the stadium. What stuck most in my memory from the performance were the costume changes she managed to pull off. She started the night dancing in a red latex outfit, later she switched to a bluish creation so short you could see her buttocks and eventually ended up in a silver glittery jumpsuit. Imagining her handling those changes in the heat is mind-boggling. Personally, I had to struggle just pulling my sweaty denim shorts down when going to the toilet later.
Another standout moment involved a little girl named Luisa who came up on stage to sing Regenbogenfarben with her idol. Oliver managed to snap a great photo of the duet that I have included below. For those of you who don’t speak the language, “Regenbogen” means rainbow in German. The cute little toothless monster had plenty of attitude, even being cocky enough to demand that the band play music when Helene wanted to start their duet completely a capella.
Our plan from the beginning was to leave the stadium early to beat the crowds, so we missed the final block of hits. We packed up our things and headed for the exits right after she wrapped up Atemlos.
So, what do I actually think of Germany’s national treasure, the Schlager Queen? Well, the show was incredibly well put together and, even though it isn’t my kind of music, I genuinely appreciated it. I found it a bit difficult to catch all the lyrics, partly because of the stadium sound system and partly because, despite speaking German, I don’t always pick up every nuance. Even so, I gathered that the songs contained a whole lot of “Schmerz und Herz”. All in all, I had a good time. Seeing Helene Fischer once felt like a worthwhile experience, even if I won’t be making a habit of it.
Setlist
- Jetzt oder nie
- Unser Tag
- Genau dieses Gefühl
- Flieger
- Feuer am Horizont
- Hundert Prozent
- Mitten im Paradies
- Die Hölle morgen früh
- Von hier bis unendlich
- Ich will immer wieder… dieses Fieber spür’n
- Schau mal herein
- Mit keinem Andern
- Te Quiero / Marathon / Nur mit Dir / Vamos a marte / Liebe ist ein Tanz / Viva La Vida / Das Karussell in meinem Bauch / Fehlerfrei
- Warum
- Von Null auf Hundert
- Und morgen früh kiss ich Dich wach
- Spiele
- Rausch
- Wir zwei
- Regenbogenfarben
- Wir werden eins
- Atemlos durch die Nacht
- An meiner Seite
- Blitz
- Herzbeben
- Achterbahn
- Heute Nacht
- Phänomen
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