Day 268! Well, today I read a ton… and not much else UNTIL I went out to a concert by myself later in the night. I ended up meeting some really nice people and had a blast at an interacting DJ set…

After a pretty decent nights sleep, they are getting better, I got out of bed and headed downstairs to make breakfast.

I made some oats with peanut butter and toast, a nice cheap and filling breakfast!

It was another chilly day, but it wasn’t raining. So I went across the busy street outside of the hostel and popped my ballot into the mailbox. Hopefully it makes it all the way to Illinois!

I then spent the rest of the morning reading my book. My goal for the day was to surpass 400 pages. By the end of the day I had gotten there, but before I did, I went to the gym.

Immy told me it wasn’t busy… but when I showed up, it was. I guess everyone got the text from her and decided to come!

Today was a light day in the gym. I stretched, did some rowing on the erg, and then did a lot of foam rolling. I’ve been super sore since starting to workout again…

Afterwards I headed to Aldi to pick up a few groceries for the rest of the week. I got some chicken, beef sausages, and some more bread! And with that, it was time for lunch.

I made another round of one of my favorite meals, quesadillas. Not as pretty as last time, but equally as tasty.

During lunch, I spent a lot of time chatting with the group of French travelers. They’re all super friendly, but they mainly chat in French. I’m fine sitting and listening… and I’ll pick up a word here or there, but they were still including me on the conversation every now and then.

I then went back to the TV room to read more.

It was nearing my time to head to the concert, so I made a quick dinner.

I had some chicken fried rice. The fried rice was an instant rice that was pretty subpar. Oh well!

The concert tonight was a DJ set by Tash Sultana. I wasn’t really sure what this was going to entail.

Tash Sultana is Melbourne born solo artist that uses a loop peddle to create songs with multiple instruments by herself. I saw her at the music festival Bonnaroo in 2022 and was super excited that I was getting to see her in her home city.

But the label DJ set, had me thinking it might not be a normal set of hers. Either way, I was still going to go and I set out into the cold night on a 30 minute train ride to the Jewell station.

The event was at the Howler, which is a bar that was made out of a warehouse. It was a cool intimate venue and by the time I showed up a number of people were already at it.

I plopped myself in the middle of the already forming crowd by the DJ stand and bopped to the music the first DJ was already playing. Going to a concert solo is always hit or miss on if you’ll meet people… most people have already come with their groups, but I was keeping an eye out for anyone that looked like they were there by themselves as well. But it didn’t look like there were any.

I was pretty content with enjoying the night by myself, but as the hours dragged on, the show still hadn’t started yet.

So I started conversing with some people around me, joking about how the event wasn’t going to happen, or how much longer it was going to be.

Eventually, I started chatting with a group of people from Spain! They were all super friendly and welcoming and instantly let me join their group. One of the guys in the group, Dan, was from Melbourne. The other three were from Spain, with a super chatty and nice guy named David. Apparently Dan is doing his doctorate right now and one of his friends introduced him to David and their friends. So now they all hang out.

We chatted till around 9:30pm when the show finally got on the road.

Tash Sultana threw down a 1.5 hour long DJ set with songs from all over the place. She said she remixed a bunch of them herself and even remixed a few of her own songs. I really enjoyed the vibe of the music she was playing, but she’s relatively new to DJing, so the transitions between songs were not the best.

I think most people at the show were hoping for a normal Tash Sultana set, which includes her jamming out on the guitar and saxophone. But she only played each one time and for a very short amount of time. At least she still did in the end!

Eventually she started playing random sing along pop songs, which was an interesting vibe change to the night. Our group still danced and sang along and enjoyed anyways, even if we all were a bit confused and maybe a little disappointed that it wasn’t what we had expected.

The show ended at 11pm and the group invited me to hang with them more. But I was exhausted and didn’t want to have to walk home because of the trains ending. So I grabbed their WhatsApps and we chatted about hanging out again soon!

I made my way back home and then called it a night… I could feel a little bit of a cold coming on and I was hoping it wasn’t the case. But one has been going around the hostel, so it may just be my time to have it.

– Elie