Organized Chaos

I recently attended a sold-out concert at Ancienne Belgique (AB) along with a German friend  (Tom) of mine who traveled from Bonn for the show. AB is a nice and very popular mid-sized venue. It's small enough to see the performers well from any location and the sound is always excellent. But, there are a couple quirks to the place that I would not have noticed had Tom not pointed them out. 

First of all, when you walk into the building, you first enter the lobby/lounge/bar area. This is great, because you can buy your drinks, should you so desire, before you go plant yourself in the concert area. To buy drinks, you first need to buy jetons, which are little coin-like tokens and then exchange your jetons for drinks. This is normal at any event in Belgium. The idea is that you only have to exchange money once, then you can quickly get your drinks from the bar without anybody worrying about change, dropped cash or whatever. The only problem here is that there is only 1 place from where to buy the jetons. The line is haphazard and the queue is slow. Again, this is normal in Belgium. But, it's apparently not normal in Germany. The lack of organization drove Tom nuts. But, he got his beers and we saw an excellent show.

Then it was time to leave.

Crowd control is non-existent and it took us a good 20 minutes to make our way out of the rather small venue. This put Tom over the edge. "This would never happen in Germany!" He's right, and it probably wouldn't happen in the United States, either. If there was a fire, we'd be dead. As it were, we were shoved, nearly trampled and almost got in at least one fight on the way out. 

As I mentioned none of this would have crossed my mind as being unusual or dangerous had Tom not pointed it out. Maybe 6 months or a year ago it would have, but not now. I think I might actually be adapting to the nonchalant Belgian mentality. I don't know whether to be scared or relieved.