MOZAIK

6

"Oh, they are coming!", I was jumping up and down like a little kid on christmas eve. I pointed in the direction of five guys, who had just entered the arrival hall of the airport, each carrying two heavy suitcases. Vic was  stroking my back to calm me down. I was actually a little excited to finally meet the guys. Okay, that may have been a bit of an understatement. 

The very next morning after the Bologna concert, Damiano had first contacted Achille Lauro to ask him, if he wanted to be our opener. However, he was very busy with the preparations for his own tour, as I had already predicted. Even though I appreciated Lauro very much, I was secretly glad that he had politely declined. So we had come back to our second option, the band Joker Out. 

We had already landed at Lisbon airport half an hour ago and had been waiting for the group at the arrival terminals for the flight from Ljubljana. "Hi, I'm Jure.", Jure said and put down his suitcases to shake my hand. Of course I already knew his name. "Hello, my name is Benedetta, Benni in short. It's nice to meet you.",  I answered in a friendly tone and gave him a smile. I shook hands with Jan, Kris, Nace and finally Bojan, one after the other. Bojan really had the sweetest smile I had ever seen. We then helped them carry their luggage to the minivan that would take us to the hotel. On the bus I dropped into the vacant seat next to Vic. As soon as we left, Bojan immediately told the whole story of their journey to Lisbon, which began with Jan being late for the airport and almost missing the flight. Then Jure had spilled his food in the aisle during the flight and Nace had become nauseous. He rounded out his narrative by thanking us for the chance to tour with us. And that they had all been very surprised about our offer, but were looking forward to every single gig. "You really have to thank Benedetta then, she had the idea to ask you.", said Damiano. "Oh really?", Bojan raised his eyebrows and turned to me: "Thank you so much! That means a lot to us. I'm sure we'll have a great time together.", he said and winked at me. "I am convinced of that.", I replied. I was amused at how open and talkative Bojan was, whereas his bandmates seemed a bit worn down from the long flight. We arrived at the hotel, where we quickly dropped off our luggage and immediately took the bus to our location. 

We quickly got the sound checks over with. There were only 2 hours left until Joker Out would perform. We quickly got changed and I wasn't even halfway done with my make up when it was time for Joker Out to go on stage. Hastily, I applied another layer of makeup and some powder and sprayed some more hairspray into my hairstyle as a precaution. Damiano, Vic, Ethan and I gathered at the back of the stage, trying to watch the performance of the last two songs of Joker Out. Their penultimate song was "Novi val" and they ended on "Carpe diem" as an encore. As far as I could tell the crowd had enjoyed the show. They also seemed to be impressed by our performance, judging by the applause that went on for hours.

When we arrived backstage all sweaty and out of breath, the guys from Joker Out were already waiting for us. They cheered at us and handed each of us a cold beer to toast. "You guys were terrific af!" Bojan enthused and immediately shared an impression of Damiano: "Sono fuori di testa, ma diverso da loro. E tu sei fuori di testa, ma diversa da loro!", he shouted, while he was wildly gesturing and ended up crawling on the floor. We all laughed at how accurate his impression had been. "Why are you all laughing? I appeared on television with this very thing some time ago.", he acted hurt. "That was great.", I applauded. "And no one would notice, if we put you on stage tomorrow instead of Damiano.", I giggled. We then pushed our chairs together to form a circle and talked and laughed together, while we ate the sandwiches that had been provided for us backstage. Vic had connected her cell phone to the speakers and started a playlist of her favorite songs, which consisted mainly of Italian rock and indie songs.  At some point we were all a bit tipsy and when the first notes of "I wanna be your slave" rang out, we all started dancing wildly. Since Vic had put her phone on shuffle mode, the next song that started was a bit quieter and we all stood around a bit lost and confused. 

"E adesso che mi prendi per la mano vacci piano. Che se mi stringi così. Io sento il cuore a mille."

I loved this song as much as Vic and started swaying my hips to the music. Damiano came up to me, took my hand and made me do a a little spin. He then put his hands on my hips and pulled me towards him to slowdance with me. I felt a little uncomfortable with it,  as the others seemed to be eyeing us. "Uh oh, is there someone getting some umazane misli, here?", Bojan teased us, as he noticed us dancing intertwined. Damiano smirked briefly and then went to dance with Ethan. 

The next song Vic chose was "Sesso occasionale" by Tananai, a driving, upbeat song, to which we all danced our hearts out once again. While dancing Bojan called:"Thanks for introducing us to all these nice italian tracks, Vic!"

Back at the hotel we were all very tired and went straight to our rooms. We would only spend one night in Lisbon and continue straight to Spain tomorrow. I shared a room with Vic. All I wanted was to curl up in bed and sleep, but Vic was still rummaging around in her suitcase. "Benni, look what I brought with me, so that we can make it really homey.", Vic shouted in excitement. Vic pulled a photograph out of the case and held it in front of me, before attaching it to the wall. It was a photo of us taken last year at a street festival in Rome.  In the picture we hugged and laughed happily into the camera. I thought back fondly on that day because we had so much fun.  "Vic, you can't put that up there, they're totally watching us sleep.", I complained. "Oh, I think it's even better if someone keeps an eye on us, otherwise I might get some umazane misli, sleeping next to that sexy lady.", she joked and stroked my thigh in a playful way.

I loved, that we already had insiders with the guys from Joker Out, like that umazane misli thing. I was sure that we would all get along great.