Month: January 2010

Majdy sent us her story about NOTP. You can also see the pictures taken by Majdy here.

BEING Roxette fan was always a challenge for me. Everytime I always wanted to get something Roxette-related, I had to always try extra harder to get what I wanted. Most of the time it would be so stressful.  But for some reason it was always ended great and by the end of the day it became a good story to tell.

I remember on 1993, I was only 14 years old and at that time still living in a very small town  of Indonesia (now I’m living in US).  At that time, my TV only had one channel, no cable at all.  One of my cousins liked to buy a tabloid which included a TV guide/schedules  for the whole week.  I remember it was Tuesday night, and for fun I pretended that my  TV had all the chanells like in that TV guide,  and I’d marked the shows that I pretended I was going to watch the next day.

Then I was shocked when I read that one of the TV station was going to broadcast a show called “About Roxette”.  I panicked because I was such a huge fan of Roxette, but never in my life I had watched a whole hour show about them. What was I going to do? No one I knew had cable. So, all night I prayed (I really did), that if I couldn’t watch the show, please  tomorrow  when I woke up, that the show will disappear from that tabloid. I couldn’t really sleep of course, and around 5 am I woke up and checked it. It was still there… And now it was only few hours away…

To my surprise, I heard someone knocked on our door and my mom opened it. I  stayed in my room but I could hear that it was my aunt. It was strange for her to visit my mom in that hour. Then I overheard her  saying,” we just installed cable yesterday.” Guess what, I jumped from my bed and went outside right away to make sure that I didn’t misheard. She was telling the truth, she had cable now and meaning I COULD see Roxette!

So, even though the show wouldn’t be on until 3 pm, I already sat in front of the TV at her house since 8 am in the morning. Then hours later, I finally was able to see Marie and Per for the whole hour (well, 30 minutes actually, because there were also commercial breaks) for the first time in my life. No Indonesian subtitles, just English and at that time I only understood maybe 5 percent of what they were talking about, but I didn’t care.

And that’s just the beginning…

Years later, I was still a Roxette fan and my dream was to see them live on stage.  However, things changed when Marie got ill. All of a sudden, my only dream was to see her healthy and happy, even when it meant that I’d never see Roxette live ever again. It didn’t matter as much to me anymore. Then due to work and school, I felt like I wasn’t Roxette number one fan anymore, probably then I was only Roxette number 37 or 38 fan.

Years ago, I wanted to be the first person who owned their latest album, but this time I even waited 3 years before I got Rox Box. But, when Marie joined Per in Amsterdam, things changed again. Suddenly now I was Roxette number 10 fan. I felt like 15 again. I admit I cried when I saw them (through YouTube) on stage again and I started having  a dream of seeing them live again.

Then I heard the news that Roxette would be performing on Night of the Proms. I was trembling when I realized that I might be able to see them. I realized that I had enough money on my bank to see them. I’d been saving money for travelling to a place that I hadn’t decided and now I COULD use that money. Now I had been living in US, as permanent resident but still an Indonesian citizen. I decided to go to see them in the Netherlands. And since this was  my first time travelling outside the US, I decided to call the Indonesian consulate and addressed my question to them. I asked them if I needed a visa to go to Netherland, and they said no. That’s how I made my first mistake ever. I didn’t double check with the Dutch Consulate. I BELIEVED them right away. So, then I bought the roundtrip ticket to Amsterdam, bought one NOTP ticket for Rotterdam show, booked 4 nights room for a hostel,  learnt how the train system works (printing the schedules, etc), even made a trip plan to Roxette’s walk of fame.

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