Traveling through Europe with U2 and ONE

Jul 29th, 2009 2:03 PM UTC
By Weldon Kennedy

Phew! The U2 360 Tour has been fun, exciting, and a ton of work. As you know I’ve been traveling with the tour from city to city signing up ONE Members, coordinating volunteers, sorting out logistics… and “Kissing the Future”.

After the tour’s launch in Barcelona, we headed to Milan, Italy where lots of volunteers turned out to help sign up concert-goers to become ONE Members. One really cool thing about the volunteers in Milan was that it really seemed to be a family affair, with parents showing up with kids in tow just to help out. It was great to see different generations coming together to work as ONE. Some of the youngsters were pretty shy at first, but I found the trick was to get them out of their parents’ shadows, and then they really started to get into the fun. As more and more concert-goers poured in, I found the inter-generational dynamic of the volunteers actually perfectly reflected the make-up of the crowd, with people of all ages coming to enjoy the music and—assuming we did our job right—learn a little about ONE.

After Milan we headed to Paris for a couple concerts at the Stade de France. Stade de France is that it’s not only the biggest stadiums I’ve ever been in, but one of the biggest structures I’ve ever stood in, period. It was absolutely huge. While an awesome sight, this also made coordinating ONE volunteers that much more difficult. Security was also an issue, not leaving us with much room to catch eager U2 fans as they made their way towards the stage. Fortunately on the second night we went TO the crowd waiting in lines outside the Stade and signed up hundreds of ONE Members.

From Paris we headed south to Nice, which ended up being a bit of a trick in terms of transporting all of our tabling kit. I ended up enlisting the aid of a crew of men in the middle of the night to help me push a cart of equipment back to my hotel, then hired a van with a faulty petro meter to drive down to Nice. But once I was there, it was amazing. Informally referred to as U2’s “second home town”, The crowd there really treated U2 as one of their own and the atmosphere was very warm, pun on the 34 C weather not intended. Just as the other stops along the tour, lots of music and lots of sign-ups.

From Nice we went to Berlin (which Carola was kind enough to write about here) and then to Amsterdam for another two concerts. There we set up kiosks inside the stadium as there was absolutely no space to set up our tents outside. Interestingly, the security there asked that we not sign people up to become “ONE Members” but asking that they sign a “petition” was perfectly okay. With a little finessing, everything worked out. I also followed the old rule “when in the Netherlands…” and hired a bicycle for my stay in Amsterdam. While I normally have to take taxis to freight my equipment from place to place, I managed to load most of it up my bike and cruise around on the beautiful bike path between my hotel and the stadium. It turned my otherwise stressful commute into a peaceful morning and evening ride.

All in all, a very successful tour so far, with over 16,000 sign ups by the end of Amsterdam. I’ll have more for you from on the road soon!

-Weldon Kennedy

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