Rammstein in the USA

Kadri, one of the four people I was able to give concert tickets to, thanks to Webby, has reported back on her Rammstein experience. Enjoy:

Alright, Liebe fellow Rammsteiners, time for some concert rewiews from the concerts in USA!
I was there for 3 shows: Oakland, Los Angeles and Las Vegas (for which I won the ticket from here ). I flew in from all the way from Europe, just to see them in 3 shows, but oh boy! has that been rewarding!!! But let's start at the beginning.
To give you a picture of myself: I am a blond Estonian girl, who has been terrified to go to places I do not know, my whole life. This trip proved to me, that with a good enough reason nothing is impossible. I landed in San Francisco 3 days before the Oakland show and thought to myself, well, let's see some of SF-s sights as well. Hah, it rained nonstop all the time, so my whole sightseeing ended up in couple of shopping malls and many small divebars for some beers. But then... met couple of people, who I got to know (and love) from fan-gathering in NYC in December, and we went out on the night before the show to a have a couple of beers. There, one of them casually mentioned: "oh, by the way, I won 2 meet and greet tickets for the Oakland show and I have a spare one, wanna go?" I swear to god, I almost fell down!!! And it did happen, we got to meet 5 out of 6 band members (only Schneider was missing) just minutes before they went on the stage, got pictures with them, and I got their autographs on my LIFAD CD cover, and a hug from Richard. Happy as a kid in a candy store!!! They were all really nice, although Ollie seemed very shy, and Till looked slightly annoyed and bored. But Richard and Paul were sooo nice, they smiled and chatted with us. After the meet and greet we were escorted to the PIT to see the show, and we ended up in 6-7th row, which was not bad at all. The concert itself was great, as they all are.
The next day it was off to LA, to be ready for the lineup early in the morning of May 20th. I was there at 7 AM, and our group was the second one in line. During the day in the line it turned out, that one of our group members had an extra PIT ticket for Vegas, and I ended up buying it off of him, although I had the ticket won from here, but it was a seated ticket, and if given a choice, I always would prefer PIT. (The PIT tickets for Vegas were so insanely overpriced, that I could not let get away the possibility to have it only slightly over the face value). After looong waiting it was time to run for the first row. Ended up there just between Richard and Till, couldn’t get better than that! Then there was the time for Combichrist, the supporting act on all 3 shows to start warming people up. As I do like them as well, I really enjoyed their act, until… Richard and Paul showed up on the stage to perform “Blut Royale” together with them! What a massive surprise!!! The crowd flipped out! Both Richard and Paul really seemed to enjoy themselves; they were smiling all the time – something, that is very rare for Richard during a concert. After that there was time for Rammstein to enter the stage. They did, with the big black wall with Richard and Paul punching their way through that, and finally Till welding his way on the stage. But, pictures speak louder than words, so I really suggest, you check out the footage from the concerts on youtube. The crowd in the LA show was quite wild, and I got some serious bruises from a couple of crowd surfers, but hey, It’s rock, without some bruises after the concert you will look like a pussy. At the end of the concert I got a high-five from Richard, when he jumped off the stage at the end. WIN!!!
Right after the LA show it was time to head towards Vegas, and after nearly 5 hours we arrived in sin city. We went straight to the lineup, just to see, that we were almost first in line again. Reached he first row again, this time right in front of Richard. And again, the show was amazing! As it was the last show together for Combichrist and Rammstein, then they had prepared a special surprise for the audience for both Combichrist performance (Lacey Conner from “Lords of Acid” and Sin Quirin of “Ministry” performing “Kickstart the fight” and “What the f**k is wrong with you?” together with Combichrist), as well as for the Rammstein (Joey Letz and Trevor Friedrich from Combichrist joined Rammstein on stage for “Ich will” and “Sonne” – there were 3 drumsets on the stage – it was INSANE!).
So to make a really long story short: the trip was soooo worth travelling around the world. Would not change anything, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.