AC/DC – Warsaw, Poland July 2015

Well, there has already been one huge music festival that we have attended and it was awesome. But there is one more music event left on our schedule that for me has been a long time coming – AC/DC – the long time Australian rock band that has left many in their dust trails. And I mean that literally. This was going to be one for the books. Stacie knew a friend in Warsaw, Poland where we were going to see the show. They had met in Las Vegas at a former casino as co-workers and now after many years they were finally going to see each other again. How amazing for both of them. I sure know that feeling of long lost friends even if it is only a year gone by. I am always happy to visit my friends in Europe every year. Amazing feeling.

When we arrived in Warsaw, we checked in the hotel and I was very impressed. Here we got a 4 star hotel at a 2 star price. We did get our first rainfall of the trip and that was ok. I mean you can’t expect everywhere to be tropical sunshine. We made a drink with the booze we bought at duty free in Spain and then got online to check emails and what not. After a while we changed and decided to hit the Hard Rock a block away. Surprise, surprise right?

A massive Russian building was directly across the street from us and my curiosity of this structure was arousing. Why is it here? When was it built? We bought 2 tickets for the tour and while we waited for it to start we grabbed some local beers outside at a small café for 1$/each.

The tour was quite fascinating. A young guy was the guide and he was maybe 22 years old. Good for him. He was quite knowledgeable. After WWII the Russians built this monstrosity instead of rebuilding the railroad after it was destroyed. Odd choice to me. But to the Russians, they felt it left a feeling of power in Poland. Showing the mighty power of the Soviet Union of that time. Now the Polish have been building many large sky scrapers around it to hide it. Quite funny I thought. I asked why they don’t just take it down. They replied by telling me that it was just too big and that they wanted no confrontations from the Russians whom have been building up forces around the region. I don’t blame them. But they don’t like this building at all. This also seemed to be where the Polish government met for political reasons as well as leisure. There were rooms for drinking and smoking and also large dinner rooms. Also, all of the marble and stone was brought by Russia on trains. What a task. We also took the elevator to the top where some amazing views could be taken in. One side had a perfect view of the arena where we would see AC/DC. Tomorrow would be the day. We were meeting Stacie’s friend for lunch and then off to the show.

On the way to the show it was raining. We cabbed it so not to lose time with a bus. It was summer so the the gloomy and rainy day wasn’t at all as bad as the Grim Reaper style days they have in the winter.

This stadium was amazingly huge. Not as big as Camp Nou in Barcelona but much larger than the stadiums in the US by every means.

The crowd seemed fun and at ease considering we were about to see one of the most energetic bands in world history! Europe’s culture of drinking beer when you were 12 years old really plays into this – by the time you are grown up and drinking as an adult, the “let’s get hammered and stumble home” doesn’t seem so cool. Please educate the more countries with this wisdom.

Stacie was ready with her AC/DC devil horns and she wore them with purpose – show respect for Angus Young and the band!

But she wasn’t set yet. We had to get our official concert tee’s no matter the cost. Life is short so do it right or not at all. It’s not about what other know think or know, it’s about what I know. Yes, I could have bought some knock off shirt from ebay for 6$ but that would not hold any value to me. Cheap is not always wise when it’s something important that happens only once in your life. So we bought the shirts and headed into the huge arena.

Rock on baby!

They opened with Shoot to Thrill – the rockstar song from Iron Man II. Oh, and did I say that we saw the lead singer at the HRC in Warsaw the night before? I was tempted to have a shot with him but he had just come from the Friday concert. There were 2 shows that weekend. So I left him alone. Lucky him.

Talk about a crazy enormous stage presence. This was insane – we had just did Ultra Music Festival a few weeks before and these fans were older and had more energy. That’s the power of awesomeness!

The singing, jumping, selfies, and all around power of this crowd really charged me and the beers were large and did the job. We had killer seats right above the floor. I can say, I had no complaints.

Of course we ate Polish sausages with the beer and got a few delicious shots of Polish vodka half way into the show. I couldn’t stop singing or jumping myself. And I knew during these actions that my ears would ring way into the late night and most likely the morning as AC/DC has on record one of the highest decibel shows ever( mom and dad please don’t worry about my eardrums, they are used to it from working at the airport). They sung every song I could have asked for. At the end I was a little pissed off as I hadn’t heard Highway to Hell… but wait – Encore! Encore!.. And so I got to hear my favorite song and boy did they kill it!