We all have dates that marked important moments. Mine was on July 13, 2023, because it was the beginning of an unexpected adventure: my migration.
That day I had a Google Meet video call with my friends: Isabella from Madrid, Aki in Tokyo, Marianna and I in Caracas. Three different schedules to achieve a goal that we felt as a great epic battle: get tickets for the only “The Eras Tour” date by Taylor Swift in Madrid.
The concert would be May 30, 2024.
Two million people were recorded in Ticketmaster to obtain the coveted code for the sale of tickets. And we were fortunate: we got one, which translated into an opportunity. Would it go well? Would it go wrong?
By consensus we decided that Isabella would be in charge of making the purchase. She lives in Madrid and had a credit card to pay tickets. And at the time of doing so, he shared a screen so that we could see the process.
Nerves
At 1 in the afternoon, Madrid time, 7 at night Tokyo and 7 in the morning Caracas, the sale began. Ticketmaster threw us into the virtual tail and the first stressful scenario occurred: “In an hour you will enter the page, you have 26 thousand people ahead”.
Each person in the virtual tail could buy up to four tickets. That meant that every minute that passed, we lost the possibility of being between 72,400 swifties that could attend the Santiago Bernabéu stadium. From that moment, we pray to whoever it was to get them.
While we were in that trance, I thought: “What madness is this pod. I am here because I took the floor to Isabella when she told me: ‘We are going to try, then we manage with silver.” I was worried that my salary was not loose, but something happened: I put aside that anxious loop and returned to the present with my friends.
As the minutes passed, the people we had ahead in the virtual tail were decreasing, until our moment came.
There were two options: general entries and VIP. The general tickets had been exhausted, we all remain silent. Isabella said: “Do I get into VIP tickets?” We answered yes, we had planned that stage and we were going to take the risk, because we only had 10 minutes to buy.
Suddenly, Isabella started telling us about the tickets. Marianna, Aki and I told him that the screen had frozen. From there, our friend was in charge of being the narrator, as a sports journalist commenting on a football game in the decisive minutes.
“I got tickets, 389 euros each. Does the card pass yes or no? ”Said Isabella. In unison we shouted yes, without thinking much. And we succeed.
After the ecstasy of our victory passed, I thought: “Shit, Where did you get $ 430 to pay the ticket?”, But I remembered my friend’s words and calmed down.
I do not remember if it was Aki or Marianna who spoke, but one of them said that now the next step was to gather money for plane tickets. I laughed and told them: “Girls … I have an expired passport.” They laugh and tell me that this will also be part of our priorities for the trip.
That day I only had two options: to regret the purchase and ask Isabella to reimburse my ticket, or attend the call, as Bilbo Bolsón in the hobbit when Gandalf appeared at her door
I became Bilbo Bolsón: I responded to the call without having an idea of what the way would be like. I put aside the limitations and focused on getting the money to pay Isabella, gather for the renewal of the Venezuelan passport (which at that time cost $ 200, one of the most expensive documents in the world) and for the plane passage. As for the stay, we were going to stay at our friend’s house.
I was 10 months old to achieve the next phase. I got another job, I was able to pay him the entrance with the first salary of the second job and for several months I kept me like this, then he followed his passport without inconvenience.
And on an August morning, while I took my sugar -free guayoy seeing the Ávila from the courtyard of my house, these words came to my mind: “It’s already my time to go to Buenos Aires”. I attended the second call of the adventure: now I had to connect my journey from Caracas to Madrid to the south.
One of my greatest dreams was about to free himself, as well as Taylor Swift’s masters: emigrate. Since I was little, I would not live in Venezuela, that I would be in one of those big cities where extraordinary stories occur.
For many years, that dream was beaten and trampled by the harsh reality we already know. So, as a defense mechanism I stopped dreaming to survive.
And when we managed to get the tickets, something was lit: the spark of the adventure. I was not afraid, I only had my eyes on the great goal.
What had begun like An episode delulu in the WhatsApp chat of four friends, became my migratory plan. I managed to get everything, even the passages of the long journey. I left Venezuela in May to enjoy my first concert at a Colossal Stadium with my besties.
The day arrived: May 30, 2024. We would no longer see the concert through Lives from Tiktok pixelated, either in a movie theater. We were going to witness it with our eyes, we prepared to exchange FRIENDSHIP BACELETS With other swifties.
The positions that Isabella got were a dream come true: we had the view of the whole stage and nobody covered us, we could also see when Taylor Swift entered the iconic cleaning cart.
At 6:45 in the afternoon Paramore was mounted on the “The Eras Tour” stage. The American band was in charge of opening the singer on the European tour, with a set of nine songs. For 40 minutes I revived my adolescence, and I pleased the 18 -year -old Gretta who could not see them in the parking lot of the Tamanaco Commercial Center (CCCT) in Caracas of 2010.
Then, minutes before 8 pm, Lady Gaga’s “Applause” song rang, the swifties already knew what was coming: the clock with the countdown to start the concert.
It took me 16 years to see the blonde chama who started playing country and who listened to full volume in my room when I was a teenager. Thanks to the euphoria of my friends and switfies I returned to one of my passions: the concerts.
Each one dressed in the era with which he felt most identified at that time in his life. I decided to build an outfit inspired by 1989 Taylor’s version, because that re -region made me connect with reinventionand Taylor herself mentioned it in the dedication of that album, also the concept of the album is to start a new life in another city, to have fun with the friends and I was doing it since I left my country.
Music was the push I needed to overcome the limitations and fears that they eaten away for years that I would never achieve a different life from what I was up to 32 years old.
When Taylor sang “It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well”, by “All Too Well (10 minute version)” on its network set, I felt a knot in my throat, because I had succeeded. In Madrid the afternoon fell, the stadium became red and oranges like autumn, it was different and special, because in other presentations she played that song at night.
I was with my friends, with your eyes, singing with more than 70 thousand people in one of the cosmopolitan cities in Europe, witnessing one of the historical tours of the 21st century.
The days in Spain flying, and finally came the date I never thought it would come: the trip that gave way to my migration.
This new stage of my life began in a morning of June, on the way to Barajas airport in Madrid. I was alone at the Uber with the driver, while contemplating the city and said goodbye to her, with the promise to return, my mind immersed himself in an epiphany.
“It had to be so,” music has accompanied me in the happiest and most decisive moments of my life. “The Eras Tour” by Taylor Swift was my jump of faith: throwing me in a vacuum to try when the environment said it was impossible to achieve it.
They say that each city has a soundtrack. When the plane landed at the Ezeiza International Airport in Argentina, in my head it began to sound “It’s a New Soundtrack, I Could Dance to This BeatThe Lights Are So Bright, But They Never Blind Me “, by” Welcome to New York (Taylor’s version) “of 1989 Taylor’s version.
Now that I am in Buenos Aires when someone asks what was the reason that made me leave Venezuela, I replied: “Music took me out of there, I just followed the melody.” As well as Bilbo Bolsón attended Gandalf’s call.
