Day 266: How I Got You To Love Me

When I was working in Sweden in 2000 I used to visit the local CD/DVD shop quite often in my lunch break to see what the average hip young Swede was listening to. I noticed a cd called Hagnesta Hill by a group called Kent that seemed to be making its way up the charts. I was particularly struck by the cover and even though I had never heard anything by this group and didn't even know what sort of music they produced I ended up feeling compelled into buying it just because the cover was so good.


Eventually I bought it, and remember having mixed feelings when I first listended to it. I really liked the first song, but wasn't so sure about the others. But I persevered and it grew on me bit by bit. I'm glad I did as I still regularly play it - in fact I listened to a few tracks from it today while on the treadmill at the Gym, until the treadmill suddenly stopped going round about 3 quarters of the way through my program, so I went and had a sauna instead.

Since buying Hagnesta Hill I have bought most of Kents other cds. I think they have got better with each release and their last one (Vapen och Ammunition) is one of the best cds I own. I have bought quite a few Swedish cds since working there as it has helped me with learning Swedish and keeping it current as I don't get much chance to practise it these days. The trouble with liking Swedish Groups is that they don't tend to play in the UK so the only way to see them is with a trip to my favourate land, but that is not possible as often as I would like. In fact the only concert I have been to so far in Sweden is Sting, who last time I checked, wasn't a Swedish Singer. That reminds me that I haven't written about that weekend yet - I'll save that for a different blog entry.

Anyway back to the main story. In the last few years I have manged to see Roxette in Brussels, Björk in Brussels and The Kings of Convenience in Glasgow and Edinburgh. So, of these only Roxette is actually Swedish and they sing in English. The list of groups I really want to see include: Eva Dahlgren, Marie Fredriksson (solo not with Roxette), Shirley Clamp, Lisa Nilsson and Kent. When I was working in Sweden I noticed that an album called The Best of Marie Fredriksson came out and got to number 1 in the charts and I also noticed she was going to perform a big outdoor concert in Stockholm, but at the time I didn't know who she was and hadn't heard any of her songs so I didn't bother going. But the concert was later released on DVD so I bought it and really regreted not going. On a later visit to Stockholm, Kent played a concert but I was unable to go as I was there on a short trip with my familly and on another ocassion Lisa Nilsson was playing a concert right next to our hotel at a venue called the Cirkus, and again I wasn't able to go. This Lisa Nilsson concert also came out on DVD so at least I was able to see it second hand.

But, and here we finally get to were all this rambling on is leading to, a couple of weeks ago I got my usual weekly email from BiljettDirect Ticnet to find out that Kent are doing a tour of Scandinavia next year and tickets were going on sale on monday 22nd november. So that monday I went straight to their web site and went through the process of booking them to find that only customers living in Sweden were able to book the tickets online. If you wanted to book them from another country you needed to ring the line. This caused me to break into a bit if a sweat as on the one hand I could use it as an oportunity to practise my Swedish, but on the other hand I felt sure I would make an idiot of myself by getting into a situation were I couldn't say what I needed to. So I kept beginning to dial the number, but then stopping as I chickened out. By lunch time I thought I had better just get on with it so I went outside, away from prying ears, and rang the number. I was presented with a message saying all the lines were busy, but I could book tickets by visiting www.ticnet.se instead and was promptly cut off. That was no good because I couldn't book the tickets at www.ticnet.se.

So I kept trying and getting the same message, but eventually in the middle of the afternoon I got a message saying I had been placed in a queue. Now my heart began really beating fast as I was listening to the lift music in the background - at any moment someone was going to answer the phone and I was going to go "umm.....". Eventually the fatal moment came and someone answered the phone. In the panic I didn't hear a word of what she said, but I managed to come out with "Kan Jag köpper två biljetter för Kent i Stockholm nästa mij?" and then added "Jag bo i England". She seemed to understand the general drift of what I said and came back at me with a string of Swedish, of which I managed to latch on to the single word "skickar" which means "send". So I came back with "Kan du skickar dem till mij?" and the responce was "Ja" so that was the first bit of the transaction done and dusted. By now I was in a real panic about how to procede so I said "Kan du taller Engelska?" and she replied "Ja" again so my final bit of Swedish was to say "Min Svenskt är inte så bra" to which she replied "I thought you Swdish was very good" which made me feel really good, but deep down I knew I had bottled it.

The remainder of the transaction was performed in English, but I ended up with 2 tickets booked for Saturday 28th May. The only complication was that I could not pay by credit card I would need to transfer the money into their bank account in Stockholm. I remembered that I had had to do this for the Sting concert I went to and knew it involved filling in complicated forms at the bank that usually involed havaing to go back to the bank a second time as I didn't have all the corect information with me the first time. And true to form, that is exactly what happened this time. So the money is currently in limbo between my bank acount and that of the ticket agancy and I am hoping they won't decide I'm not paying and re-sell the tickets before the money gets to them.

All that remains is to find a travelling companion, and that may already have been resolved by Adrian, who so kindly accompanied me to the Sting concert mentioned earlier.