Sara Parkman’s current concert tour, Aster, Atlas didn’t include a stop in Stockholm. Uppsala was the next closest, but the date didn’t work for me, so I made the trip to Örebro to see her.

The concert was rockier and louder than the ones I’ve gone to before. Those have taken place in churches; this one was at a club/bar. Even songs I was already familiar with had gotten makeovers. Maybe not quite what I had hoped for, but still good.

Rock concerts start later than church concerts. I had well over an hour to kill after dinner, before the doors to the venue opened. I ran across a game hall, with pool tables, shuffleboard, darts, and board games. It was very nice to have a space where I could just hang around for an hour, without having to deal with the noise and crowds in a bar. The atmosphere was straight from a 1990s youth centre, with a hand-written price list, Pago juice in the fridge, and hard, wooden chairs. Nostalgia.