Sunday

Jeannette
The flight left on Sunday morning early. We knew that we first had to take a shuttle buss to Milan Central Station from where a train would take us to Modena. By a miracle the trip went very well.
Having arrived in Milan, Bianca and I immediately noticed that what we in Holland were short of, was plenty in Italy: warm weather. So I decided to change shirts in the train to Modena. Probably Italians are not used to see a train passanger taking of her shirt and putting on another, as apparantly I took too much attention of the other train passangers.
I decided not to change pants because of this :) .

A taxi driver took us from Modena train station to our hotel. "Ofcourse" he didn't speak English and he misunderstood the address of our hotel, which nearly meant that he dropped us off at the wrong hotel. When we finally got at the hotel it was about three thirty in the afternoon. The hotel was quite far from the centre of Modena. In fact, it wasn't even in Modena itself, but just outside, about 10 kilometres away.
The hotel seemed to be closed. We tried all sides walking around it with our suitcases; Bianca making a lot of noise as she had a suitcase on wheels which must have disturbed everyone's siesta, because of the gravel parking place. The hotel was quite nice and as we knew we would be there with 14 people in total, we realised that we "owned" the hotel for the next three days.
After we freshened up, we decided to go to Modena town to see if we would bump in to people. We knew that Kris and Cornelia had arrived one day before us in "our" hotel and that Jewel was there too...in another hotel somewhere in town.

Bianca
When we arrived at the hotel on sunday afternoon, most of our friends hadn't arrived yet, and others were out. After installing ourselves in our room, we decided to check out the city a bit before the rest would arrive.

Kristine
The first two days in Modena were not as fun as I had imagined! It was weekend, so everything was closed! And I mean EVERYTHING! We got almost no food and no drinks! Of course, I was more concerned about drinks! Still, Cornelia, me and another fan from Latvia, Ramona, managed to enjoy ourselves.

We got friendly with Pavarotti and the team, including Phil Ramone. We had a pleasure to meet Phil Ramone and tell him how much we enjoyed "Songs From The Last Century".
And Cornelia, you were right, of course, I messed up saying Buena Sera to Pavarotti that early...

And then The Hunk of modern pop arrived... ;) Enrique Iglesias of course looks amazing up-close. Some how I can't get rid of the feeling that he reminds me of George some many many years ago... The early stage of Faith. I couldn't resist snapping few pics. I think he was more surprised to see us than we were to see him... Older faces among teenagers screaming their heads off.. LOL... We must have been standing there, with that all un-impressed look on our faces... ;) The fact is, we were kinda bored. The hopes that George would arrive were fading, and we were already getting ready to leave for a walk. And then another one of those Pavarotti and Friends official cars arrived, and all the security run outside to meet the car, and all the press were on their toes suddenly... You know, any of these 1000+ cars could possibly be carrying George. We waited, all smiles... and - BIG DISAPPOINTMENT on our faces every time it was NOT George! lol... "Oh, it's just Enrique! Bad luck again!...

Jeannette
How do you get to Modena town on a Sunday afternoon? A big problem!
We know now that busses had a very strange time table: they drove until 11 at night only and not on Sundays and you had to have a special buss ticket, which you could only buy at Modena buss station...in town. So there we were...10 km outside town and no buss to take us there. No cafe or supermarket open to get ourselves a drink. And it was really hot!
We decided to hitch-hike ourselves to town. Not knowing that hitch-hiking is forbidden in some parts of Italy. An old woman (about 400 years old, we guessed) tried to tell us something, but was deaf for the fact that we don't speak Italian, which made Bianca to talk back to her in English, although we knew she wouldn't understand us. The woman must have been trying to tell us that we are breaking the law or so...
Hitch-hiking wasn't a succes: cars were giving light signals, but noone stopped. Finally, two young boys stopped and after explaining to them in French that we wanted to go to Modena train station in town (which they didn't understand...they didn't speak French after all), we got ourselves to Modena town. Pff...

First we tried Jewel's hotel, to see whether she had arrived already. She hadn't and we left her a message.
We walked a bit in the centre of Modena, which was really nice because it has a car free zone. Modena is quite old and has picturesque streets. Too bad all the shops and cafes were closed.

Bianca
We didn't even plan to go there, but on our way back to find a place to take a cab to the hotel, walked upon the Novi Sad Park. Well... since we were there anyway, and rehearsals were going on we decided to stay a bit. No George there (hmmm... would he need less practise than the others?), but it was fun to hear anyway.

Jeannette
Suddenly and by coincidence (I think we were lost) we bumped into Parco Novi Sad, where the concert would take place in two days. When we decided to take a look, we noticed that there was a fence around the park and entering wasn't possible. We climbed on a cement block to have a better look over the fence and there we saw the stage and seatings that were already there two days before the concert.

While we were standing there, we heard music and singing. For some reason I didn't expect the artists to rehearse in the park, because it's open aired and everyone can hear from a distance what's going on. So when I heard an opera voice singing, I dumbly asked Bianca: "...but what is this what I'm hearing??", because it sounded like Pavarotti. "well...", Bianca laughed, "what do you think?". I really didn't expect to hear Pavarotti rehearse there! Then we heard Pavarotti sing a duet with someone and Bianca and I immediately heard that that was Enrique Iglesias.
Knowing that the artists would rehearse in the park, we realized that George was going to rehearse there too! Good opportunity to have a taste of the actual performance...

Kristine
I enjoyed meeting many other fans around Novi Sad park on Sunday and Monday (many of them people outside our "little" group... who would have thought we are not the only crazy ones! lol). There were so many of them! Felt like NetAid, when just about every person you ask said they are here for George! People around the Novi Sad park were in high spirits (well, most of them), cause when it is an open-air venue, no one can forbid you from hearing the rehearsals! All the surprises were spoiled, of course! But I am not complaining!!!!

Jeannette
Bianca and I got in a conversation with another girl who was there. She asked whether we were George Michael fans and then said that she had been talking to George Michael fans earlier that day. They were from Latvia and Germany: Kris, Ramona and Cornelia, we knew. While Bianca stayed on the block, I circled the park in order to find Cornelia and Kris. I found Cornelia sitting on the pavement right in front of what I know now is the main entrance, which is the university entrance. Kris was there too, trying to have a peek through the gates, which were open bared gates but showed a reasonable view on the stage. They said that they had heard the band rehearse George's songs and that Chris Cameron had been stand in for George as a duet partner for Pavarotti.
I got back to get Bianca to the main gate. While the four of us were standing there, we suddenly heard the sounds of "Brother Can You Spare A Dime". But again, the singer wasn't George, but a fellow we didn't know. Later on we heard his name was Rob Mathes and that he was member of Pavarotti's house band. It sounded quite good though...not as George ofcourse, but nice enough.

Bianca
And surprise, surprise... we ran into Kristine and Cornelia there. Well, that had to be celebrated (we take any reason for celebrating when it comes to wine.. lol) and before heading back to the hotel together we decided to catch up a bit with a nice bottle of wine.
They told us all about their discoveries of Modena so far... little things about the hotel, bus schedules, but also how they read about the rehearsals at Hotel Fini in the paper... and of course the subject we talked about most was George! :)

Jeannette
As it was getting really late, we decided to have something to eat and to contact Herma, Nicole, Paulette and Sonja. They were travelling together by car from Holland to Italy and would arrive on Sunday too. We didn't manage to get us all together and the four of us (Ramona decided to stay near the park, just in case...) had "dinner" at a cafe in St Carlo's street in town. While we were chatting about all kinds of subjects (and not very silent) we suddenly overheard a piece of the conversation of the two men sitting at a table next to us. The words that got our attention in their conversation were "george" and "michael".

Bianca
Basically we were just having a great time doing the things we do best.. talking, drinking and laughing a lot. Then suddenly we couldn't help but overhearing a phone conversation of the guy at a table next to us.. he was saying something like "George Michael will arrive tomorrow". Complete silence at first... lol, then we started whispering, still trying to overhear the rest of the conversation. Who were these guys?

Jeannette
As if we had agreed upon, we suddenly stopped talking and without getting attention of the two men we did our best to overhear that conversation. They were obviously in some way involved in the concert. At first, I thought they were journalists, as they didn't speak in Italian (as I guessed Pavarotti's people would do), but in English. We wanted to start conversation with them but couldn't find a reason. Luckily, one of the men started talking to us.

Kristine
A week that I had already spent in Italy had taught me that flirt works (not like I didn't know it before...lol). Just about everywhere. No matter what it is you're after... ;) Love those Italian men... :) ! Just work your charm on people you meet. And we did meet some people.... :) They turned out to be British. ;) At the beginning we thought they are from the Sun or something like that... ;) Spoke that cute British English we all are trying to speak but fail.... ;) Cornelia, Bianca, Jules and I had a dinner at a place in the centre of Modena Sunday night. (ok, let's face it... it wasn't a dinner. We were just drinking... lol I already hear some voices saying, "speak for yourself"... ;)) I think it was the only place open in the whole Modena! And ... If you haven't been anywhere out with us, you wouldn't know... But we drink a lot, laugh a lot, talk a lot and normally we are very loud... And of course we speak English, cause it's the only common language. In a word, people around us are pressured into hearing us. That evening we had even more wine than usually... And discussed George, sex, George, our families, George, relationships, George, wine, George and sex again.... We were too loud and too obviously George Michael fans! ;)

Bianca
They had an english accent, so we were assuming they were from the Sun, the Mirror or whatever english tabloid we could think of... As much as we wanted... we didn't really have the guts to intrude and approach the guys, but luckily we didn't have to as they started talking to us. :)

Jeannette
Meanwhile we had been drinking lots of wine and we had hardly eaten all day, and the effect of this caused that we must have been talking so loud. The Pavarotti men must have heard us talk too, we realised. Because no one of us four was English, we all spoke with our accents and that must have been one of the things to get the man's attention. It's so funny that when people ask where you're from (we weren't English obvioulsy, despite our "English-English"), they are really surprised to hear about our many nationalities.
Our group in the hotel consisted of Italian, Canadian, German, Latvian, American and us Dutch. But I'm wandering now. :)

Kristine
Just to illustrate for you the mood of the night..... We ended up going to a cab station drinking wine from a bottle... Some of us ended up laying on the ground at the cab station... ;) That's how we met with people who in the end of a day invited us to the rehearsals. It took some big smiles and someone even had to show off her legs by putting them up on a chair (or was it a table already??? Things we do for George... lol)

Jeannette
The men appeared to be working for Pavarotti. We chatted for a while about the concert and then they left.

Bianca
They told us they were working on the show, and we told them all about our different nationalities, how we travelled up for this show, mainly for George of course, but also just to be together again and have a great time! We had to say goodbye to them though, as we were supposed to pick up Ramona and take a taxi to the hotel where the others were already waiting for us. We found ourselves some more bottles of wine and celebrated our first night together...

Jeannette
Later on, we joined Ramona on our way to central station to get a taxi back to the hotel. We took the bottle of wine that we just ordered with us, in case we got thirsty ;-) The walk to central station was quite funny, as both Bianca and I...eh...well, let's say "felt" the wine. We felt as if we could walk back to the hotel (10 kms!) instead of taking a taxi. We had too much of a good time and I'm still not sure whether that was disadvantageous to get us a taxi. We were with five ofcourse and we had to wait a while for a taxi big enough. Waiting for the taxis didn't happen standing up, but laying down on the pavement, as standing without moving was too difficult :)
When we got back to the hotel (it must have been over midnight), Nathalie and Jen and the group driving from Holland (Herma, Nicole, Paulette and Sonja) had arrived too.

Herma
After arriving we freshened up a bit and tried to catch up with the others already there. That didn't work out and since we were really hungry, the four of us decided to go out to dinner, which was rather complicated, since most places are closed on Sunday nights. Strange, but true. We found a place, chatted all through dinner...:) We are never bored when we are together. Eventually we met at the hotel with the others. So good to see everybody again! More chat, with wine... the rest seemed to be a few rounds ahead, so they were all very cheerful :). I am amazed we didn't get any complaints from the hotel at any night :). We are quite a loud bunch, but then we did have the whole floor to ourselves.

Kristine
The others arrived Sunday afternoon/night and the fun began. I really missed all my friends! We got together in a hotel room and even though everything was closed (including the hotel itself, cause we had to enter through the back door), we had a full access to wines! The hotel was packed with George fans, I think we occupied all the rooms they had. Apart from me, there was Cornelia, Ramona, Jen, Nicole, Herma, Jules, Nathalie, Bianca, Sonja, Paulette, Ludo, Stefan, Holger and Holger’s friend Andy. Cornelia flew in from Germany, I took a train from Venice, Jen and Nathalie arrived by train from Florence, Ludo drove from Genova, Bianca and Jules flew in from Holland, Paulette and Sonja flew in from the States to Holland and drove all the way from there to Italy together with Herma and Nicole. Holger and Andy drew from Germany. Ramona took a bus from Latvia to Italy, and believe it or not, hitch-hiked all the way back to Latvia! In a word, the company was fun, as usual!

It was kinda late when we went to sleep, and of course it was early when we had to get up… It ALWAYS happens that way when we get together! We just don’t have time to sleep! We had to discuss several things, among them, why George did not rehearse as all the “normal” artists, for several days, is he going to do the altogether song, are we sure he will show up for the show at all and the most burning question of them all – is he bigger than Pavarotti (and you can take that any way you want…). Not like we found any answers… ;) But we had a good laugh! Yes, we ARE bad!

Jeannette
We decided to go to the rehearsals the next day: first in the hotel where Pavarotti rehearsed with the other artists and later on Parco Novi Sad.