Music|“The hatred of two men can take away the joy of hundreds of thousands of people”, laments Finnish Milla Linnervuo, who had been waiting to get to the gig for years.
Pop star Taylor Swift’s the cancellation of the Austrian concerts planned for the weekend was a huge disappointment for fans, as many have been waiting to see their idol for months, even years. Swift’s concerts were canceled on Wednesday due to a terrorist threat. He was scheduled to perform on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
According to the news agency AP About 170,000 tickets had been sold for the Vienna gigs.
HS asked the Finns who were going to the gig about their experiences.
By phone Reached from Vienna Johanna Kiesiläinen-Riihelä says that he flew to the city on Wednesday, because on Friday he was supposed to go to a concert together with his 13-year-old daughter.
“He has been waiting for the gig like the rising moon! Shocked, we read about the planning of a terrorist act in the evening – luckily we are alive. Of course, the daughter started crying, but she understood the cancellation of the gig and said that the trip can be taken as a language trip,” Kiesiläinen-Riihelä said.
“The worst would have been if my daughter’s biggest dream had turned into a massacre.”
Kiesiläinen-Riihelä says that she went with her daughter to Corneliusgasse on Thursday, where a large group of Swift fans from around the world had gathered, because the American pop star has a song of the same name (Cornelia street).
“The daughter wanted to put on the concert outfit and go change the wristbands,” Kiesiläinen-Riihelä says.
Swapping wristbands with other fans is part of the fan ritual at Swift concerts. The daughter had made 70 bracelets, all of which she exchanged with other fans.
“There was an extraordinary atmosphere there. The street was full of fans and everyone was singing their hearts out to Taylor Swift. Many cried and were completely shocked. I talked to a lot of people, and they all agreed that this [keikkojen peruminen] was the only right solution,” he says.
The terrorist threat has shocked Kiesiläinen-Riihelä.
“I myself am really shocked by how advanced those plans were. In the morning, I was still wondering if I would dare to go to the city here, when I knew that they were looking for creators there. But there are policemen on the streets, and I’m not afraid anymore.”
On Thursday, Taylor Swift’s fans gathered in the center of Vienna on Corneliusgasse.
of HS who also answered the survey Milla Linnervuon canceling the concerts was a good decision.
“I feel a sense of unfairness that is not directed at anything other than radicalization and evil,” he says.
Still, the feeling is a bit inconsolable.
“The hatred of two men can take away the joy of hundreds of thousands of people. London is the only remaining concert city in Europe, so the wait of many years may continue even longer,” says Linnervuo.
“I simply couldn’t believe it to be true that an artist, who is known to have never canceled a single gig in his more than 15-year career, is canceling the very one for which he himself bought the tickets.”
Swift will perform five days in London next week, but Linnervuo has no chance of trying to get there.
“I’ve heard that it’s really hard to get tickets there. I’ve been working all summer, and I asked for this time off at the beginning of the summer. I have a seven-day work schedule next week, so it wouldn’t be possible for me to go to London,” says Linnervuo.
20-year-old Linnervuo says that he has been listening to Swift’s music for ten years. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he could consider going to a gig himself.
“Taylor was supposed to have a tour in 2019-2020, but then the corona came, and this was the first concert that I would have been able to attend in ten years. The tickets for this gig were reserved exactly a year ago, so there has been an intense wait ever since.”
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