Date: 6/24/98

Right. So we'll tell the good part first, since thatUs how it happened, although even the bad part has an OK ending. We hope. Thats what our tickets say.

On Saturday I flew from England to Milan to meet Treasa. We had heard on the internet about a music festival in Imola, Italy at which Tori Amos was playing on Sunday, and were going to try to go. We didn't know exactly where the town, Imola, was, where the festival was in the town, or whether we could get tickets, but hey, uncertainty adds excitement to life. We really weren't sure how big the festival was. It was the "Heinekin Jammin Festival", sponsored by the beer maker, and had a bunch of bands on both saturday and sunday. The festival was being held in the Dino and Enzo Ferrari Autodrome, site of formula 1 races.

Last night, Treasa's flight got in 3 hours late, but it got in and she was on it, so that was all good. We went from the Milano's Linate Aeroporto to the Stazzion Centrale (if you can't translate that italian, you are pathetic), and found a hotel room. It was quite a nice room, well mirrored, and with the common european amenity of a bidet in the bathroom. It was 10:30PM by the time we finished checking in and cleaning up and could go out to dinner. Most places were closed, but we headed toward the center of town, and eventually found a large hotel, where we asked if their restaraunt was open. It wasn't, but they directed us towards a nice place that was. It was very good and fairly expensive, excellent italian food. It was rather late by the time we finished, so we headed back.

We turned in, and in the morning, went to the train station. We asked a travel agent-ish place about tickets to Imola, confidently hoping they would have heard of the town, and they had. It turned out to be a 3 hour train ride. No problem. So we got to Imola, and it looked as though an awful lot of the people getting off the train were young, hip, and pierced - the sort of people you'd expect at a music festival. Perhaps this festival was a big deal to the town? It quickly became obvious that all these people were here for the festival too. Wow. We found a baggage check and had some trouble at first communicating with the porter. We wanted to know how late the check was open. We eventually found someone who spoke english, and it turned out (after a long, long discussion) that the baggage check had been created specifically for the festival, that there were special train stops as well, and that we could claim our bags at any time before 5AM, after which the baggage place would close until September. This seemed fine, as we were planning to leave after seeing Tori, so we headed toward the festival.

Fortunately, it was not sold out. Unfortunately, we didn't see the ticket window, and we walked another 15 minutes to get to the main gate, only to discover that there were no tickets there. It took us a solid hour to go from the train station to the entrance, back to the ticket area, and back into the festival, worrying the whole time that Tori would dare to sing without us present. The festival was huge, there were several thousands of people there, perhaps even tens of thousands. Our tickets were only 25 dollars or so, not bad for a day of a music festival. We went in, and headed for the main concert area. There were a few shops and such, lots of Heinekin beer stands, and even a Magic: The Gathering promotional tent, at which you could play. Yes, Magic. You may all retch now.

We sat around the concert area - no one seemed to know when Tori would play. Natalie Imbruglia and Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals were also scheduled to play, before headliners The Verve. There was a piano on stage, so we figured Tori would be first, and she was. She was pretty awesome, she had an amazing voice, which the sound system did pretty good justice too, and was very intense (and a bit sexual) on stage. The huge display screen stopped working after about 15 minutes, which was pretty annoying, it had had some great close-up shots. Actually the screen seemed to work fine, but it stayed on one zoomed-out shot for 45 minutes, and all the cameramen we saw were just sitting around, so maybe the video mixer was broken. The songs we recognized were "Precious Things" and "Cornflake Girl", the rest were probably from her new album. Anyway, she played for about an hour.

We didn't have any interest in Ben Harper, who played next, or any of the other people, who we had vaguely heard of, so we wandered around for a bit and then left. I hope it doesn't ever turn out that I like Natalie Imbruglia or The Verve, and regret not staying. We headed for the train station, reclaimed our luggage, and decided to just take a train to Bologna, which is just northwest of Imola, and try to figure out how to get to the French Riviera (our planned next stop) from there. We got to Bologna, and our troubles began.

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