Red Hot Chili Peppers – Gigography
Live in Indjija
The trip was comfortable. I took my mp3 player with us so we’ve been listening to Red Hots on our way to Indjija. My roommate was not a big fan of the band but she was eager to learn. She even wrote down some of the lyrics on paper and I’ve been trying to help her remember those. It’s been fun. She’s been giving her best to memorize the words and recognize the melodies. What a commitment! I liked that a lot, even though it’s been hilarious and I couldn’t help laughing. We’ve been quiet for the most part of our 30 minutes’ trip – like there was nothing to talk about and because my roommate was constantly trying to fall asleep. I liked the scenery. I don’t think I’ve ever traveled in this direction before. For me, Indjija was an unknown town before this huge event, and I knew about it only what I read in the newspapers. It’s been described as a city in transition with a lot of potential – to sum it up in one word: a sprawling metropolis. Well, don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. They tend to exaggerate (especially if it’s something positive, they have a huge need to make it even more positive, I guess that’s due to the lack of positive things to write about here in Serbia. Well newspapers take everything to the extremes anyway.). Having no knowledge about what to expect out of everything only added to the overall excitement and feelings of thrill that grew inside me as we were getting closer. Highway was pretty much deserted. Everything was so calm and peaceful. Not a slightest sign of a heavy traffic they’ve been talking about. What about those 10 000 visitors that were supposed to be in Indjija by 4pm? Well, there were not a lot of crazy people to wait ‘in the line’ for so long, I thought. That was the only reasonable explanation, and it did make a lot of sense; it was Tuesday, working day… Maybe we will be the first ones to get there after all!
The bus entered the station. I checked my clock: 5am. We hurried down, looking around, hoping to see the place where the concert is about to be held. I had no idea which way to go, so we asked a passerby who told us: ‘you can’t get lost if you take this road, but it’s pretty far away’…I, myself, had no idea how far away the stage really was. I have seen some maps on the internet, but that just didn’t seem good enough, and taking the risk of either getting lost or getting there late simple wasn’t worth it. I do like to have control over everything that’s going on to me – because I believe that’s something I can have influence on. So, we’ve been sitting at the station for some time, a couple of minutes to be precise, pondering over the endless possibilities – well in our case… not so endless. No wonder, the best one showed to be the station itself. How wise one must be to come up with a solution like that, eh? We were at the right place so making up our mind wasn’t really hard. We’ll simply ask one of the employees at the station if there is a bus that could get us to the concert location any time soon. People here probably know about the concert, right? I wasn’t sure as it was so peaceful here, like the city was still asleep and, to be honest, you wouldn’t expect anyone could sleep before such an event! Actually it was more like that kind of the calm before the storm. Storm? No, I didn’t mean it literally…
I felt one more astonished look coming our way – and that wasn’t really strange anymore as we got used to it already. The women took off her glasses and almost laughed in amazement. Yeah, I could almost read her mind ‘you girls are crazy’. Well, tell us something we don’t already know. But anyway, we learned our lesson some time ago – a couple of hours ago to be precise – at that taxi cab. And we decided to play the role they gave us – without our permission or acceptance though- the best as we could: we’re two weirdos, crazy for Red Hots. Playing that role wasn’t hard for neither of us; it’s been actually a lot easier than pretending to be normal. So, apart from looking at us as at two complete freaks, the woman that worked here has actually been very pleasant.
She tried to help us as much as she could, while still trying to talk us out of going this early.
-I can’t believe it! No one will be there this early – she almost shouted in excitement – It’s going to be one hot day, you girls better drink a lot of water so you don’t pass out. As for the bus… there is one, but its station is after the location of the concert so you’ll need to go by foot for a while. Or you could always ask the driver to stop right there for you two… but – she bent out towards us, in secret motion and like she was going to stick her head out of the small window, added quietly, almost whispering – don’t tell him I told you that!
I could totally say that she had made my day. Seeing someone so positive, and in such a good mood for a talk, so early in the morning, wasn’t something I was used to. I would have expected to see a sleepy, depressive, tempered old lady that would have had a hard time looking at us… not to mention talking to us or giving us any kind of information. Well, we’re some good 30min away from Belgrade so I made a conclusion that people just might be somewhat different here in Indjija – in a good way, of course.
Yeah, none of them has been planning to go to the concert. It seemed like this event has disturbed their daily lives and they didn’t like that at all. So, instead of changing by the flow, they decided to do things they would usually do on an ordinary Tuesday. Yeah, what’s so different about this one? They lived here longer than we could imagine and they had no intention of changing any of their daily, boring life habits just because of one concert. While riding on the bus, all we could see was one street, a narrow one, but there were people on it. A lot of people and they were all crawling toward the stage like annoying ants! I got a little bit nervous, seeing how many of them is about to arrive soon. But, hey, we were the ones on the bus, not them! We’ll get there before them – that was something I knew for sure. The feeling of happiness flooded my heart and a thought rose inside my head ‘it’s a good thing we decided to wait for the bus instead of going by foot.’ That certainly gave us a deserved advantage. And all this reminded me of that movie Rat Race which brought a big smile to my face – It was important not only that we get there first but to stop and slow down everyone on any possible way. (No, that’s not the way I was thinking, I was just giving you a short synopsis of the movie!). It didn’t take us long to get to the location, maybe some 15 minutes, maybe less than that, I’m not really sure as time is a totally subjective dimension; if you’re not wearing a clock that is. The bus driver stopped and waved over to us to get out. It was the time. We were there, but it looked nothing like in my imagination and if it wasn’t for the bus driver I would have been sure that we took the wrong way. My roommate and I crossed the street in a hurry and stepped onto a rocky, muddy ground covered with some pebbles (rather rocks different sizes and shapes) and some sand… It looked dirty. I turned around and as far as my eyes could see there was that same uneven, rocky ground. The overall look and feel was that of a desert.
-Oh my god – I screamed, pointing my hand in one direction – I can actually see the stage from here! Let’s go!
