crowded weekend: episode 1

I spent my weekend navigating crowds:

On Friday night, for the first time in my life, I made an effort beyond wearing green to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. I went out to see Irish music. The Orthodox Celts are a local band that play a mix of traditional and contemporary Irish music. (The Celts were the first people to settle what became Belgrade, back in the BCE. It's quite a migration they had.) The music was fun, the musicians were skilled, and the crowd was really into it. There's nothing quite like a room full of Serbians singing traditional Irish music in English. One of my concert-going companions went through an Irish music phase a few years back. Every so often, he would turn to me and say "I can't believe they know this song!" Apparently the band (and the crowd) knew even the obscure songs.

At the end of the show, I volunteered to get my party's coats. Generous of me, but an offer I probably wouldn't have made if I had know what was involved. You know how every so often there is a news report about people being trampled to death at a supermarket opening? I never understood how such things could happen before Friday night. Now, I get it. The crowd was so packed together that I could have stuck out my elbows and picked up my feet and not have fallen. At one point, my purse was around two other people's arms. But I managed to get the coats and fight my way back through the scary crowd.