It Was Rare, I Was There: Taylor Swift in Munich, Germany
My two teens and I traveled nearly 6,000 miles to see the Eras Tour. It was stressful, expensive, chaotic — and completely worth it.
Sitting at our local airport terminal awaiting our first flight, an older gentleman struck up a conversation. He was a surgeon, flying to San Diego for a nurse’s retirement party. I told him we were heading overseas, and our first stop was to see Taylor Swift in Munich.
“She’s certainly a marketing genius,” he replied.
“She is,” I said. “But she’s also an incredible singer-songwriter and a once-in-a-generation performer.”
“Well, she sure writes about all her ex-boyfriends,” he chuckled knowingly — even as surely as he knows nothing.
I’ve heard this dismissiveness before, and not just from older men. But there was a special sort of derision in his voice, an invisible eyeroll negating my opinion because, well, Taylor’s a beautiful female pop star. So surely, her work isn’t important, or relevant, to him. And therefore, it’s not important.
Conversation over, I turned back to my iPhone and he headed to his flight.
He has no idea how wrong he is.
Seeing the Eras Tour is like having a baby. Everyone who’s done it has experienced essentially the same thing, with the same milestones. But when you’re the one experiencing it, each moment feels momentous, uniquely yours, magical.
Our show — on July 28, 2024, the second of two nights at Olympiastadiom in Munich, Germany — is the 123rd performance of her Era Tour, a 46-song, three-and-a-half hour set that’s flawless, pitch-perfect every second, with countless videos online to capture every moment.
So what was unique in our story?
We weren’t the only ones who traveled far for the show — though at nearly 6,000 miles, we were probably among the farthest.
We weren’t the only ones unable to buy tickets to past shows — though with three failed attempts via Ticketmaster and one more with a Facebook hacker who stole my $500 deposit, we’ve had our share of Taylor ticket fails.
We weren’t the only ones who Taylor-gated when we couldn’t get tickets — but we’re not unique there, either. Our Munich show alone had over 40,000 fans watching from the hills surrounding the stadium.
So this is my story: of a mom who traversed an ocean with her two teen daughters to finally see Taylor Swift live, and what we felt and experienced along the way.
It’s a Love Story.
Baby, we just said yes.
“In Europe, we wanted to do something extra for Taylor,” Jeltje tells me over breakfast at our hotel.
Jeltje is a young woman from Berlin who’s in Munich for the show. She’s gorgeous, edgy, effortlessly chic as she hand-rolls her morning smoke. She’s also kind and eager to chat with me, a fellow Swiftie nearly twice her age. “We’ve made our own Eras traditions to show how much she means to us.”
I already know about many Eras Tour call-and-responses, as my youngest daughter Nico explained them in the lead up to our trip. It reminds me of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, only at massive scale and ever-evolving.
“During the song ‘Fearless,’ Taylor makes a heart with her hands and the crowd does the same,” Nico tells me.
“Cool, I’ll remember to do that,” I answer.
Nico preps me well. Ahead of the show, I learn the Taylor-initiated traditions, like how she gives away the black fedora hat from her Red set to one lucky fan at the end of “22.” For “You Need to Calm Down,” Taylor initiates a hand-wave that the crowd mimics. And during “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” her backup dancer Kam replaces the “Not Ever!” with a different phrase each show, in the language of the country where they’re performing. You can see Kam and every phrase he said throughout the German shows. For our night in Munich we get “Vergess Es,” which translates to, “Forget it!” The crowd roars their approval.
Even cooler are the fan-created traditions. Nico tells me how during “Blank Space,” the crowd yells their city name after every line in the bridge. During “You Belong With Me,” the audience claps twice after she sings, “When you know you’re about to cry.” For “Delicate,” the audience yells “1–2–3 let’s go bitch!” after she sings, “But you can make me a drink.” (See the 26 second mark here to hear it for yourself.)
Nico’s face glows as she reveals each of these fan-facts. She’s now part of a sisterhood of Swifties who pay their respects to Taylor by learning the lore.
It’s important to Nico to be prepared for our show. And she sees educating me as part of her readiness. So I listen, and I watch how my child’s adoration of this singer has made her research, to pay attention. It’s made her feel part of a community. It’s made her want to keep up.
I’m honored she’s sharing it all with me. It makes me want to keep up, too.
I see Nico’s earnestness reflected in Jeltje, though she isn’t a starstruck 14-year-old. She’s a composed young woman, but she’s got the same fire in her face as she shares the Euro-Swifties fan-added traditions.
Jeltje tells me how during “Lover,” everyone brings paper hearts and waves them during the chorus. And during “Willow,” as Taylor and her dancers pass glowing orbs onstage, the audience inflates yellow balloons and lights them with their phones. “These trends started here in Europe and they’re growing with each show,” she gushes, her eyes alight.
I think I’m starting to get it. Taylor gives so much every single show, leading by example, showing her audiences what’s possible. Her fans learn the lore and then create their own to reflect back that they understand the lesson. They appreciate her greatness by adding to it and making it even greater.
I can’t wait to see it for myself.
I may not get all the moves right. But I’m going to try my best.
We’re in line for four hours outside in the Olympiastadiom park, which is gorgeous and very, very hot. We’ve brought no food or drinks because that’s what the venue website advised us to do.
It didn’t say anything about the four-hour wait ahead of the show. But here we are.
We’re standing behind four German women, who we learn are a mom, two sisters, and a friend. They’ve arrived with a bagful of snacks, which they graciously share with us. We don’t yet know that the food and bathroom lines will be untenable at the show, especially with our general-admission floor-tickets. Those cookies and crisps possibly saved our lives, or at least our blood sugar levels.
The younger women are decked out in their Taylor-finery, and especially the friend, who’s dressed head-to-toe in Midnights-era attire and makeup. She and Nico exchange bracelets, and then a young woman walks by in a perfect Lover-era outfit, sparkly in pale pinks and blues.
“Hey,” the friend calls out to the Lover woman. “I made these sunglasses, and I knew I’d find someone here who should have them.” She pulls out a pair of bejeweled sparkly sunglasses. “They’re for you.”
The young woman looks dazzled. “For me??” she exclaims, trying them on. “They’re beautiful!” They are indeed a perfect match, and I’m sure provided relief from the blazing sun.
She walks off with the gift, and I’m amazed. The magnitude of the Eras- fashions and the generosity on display here are blowing my mind.
You’d think a stadium in Germany would have a sense of decorum, adequate signage, and would be able to handle the 74,000 attendees if not with ease, at least with order. But you’d be wrong.
We enter the stadium to unabated chaos.
Mobs of fans crowd the unmarked entries, unsure of where to go and desperate to get inside. I cling to my kids to not lose them in the throngs, a harrowing experience anywhere but particularly in a foreign country where one doesn’t speak the language, and exponentially so when the language is German and one is Jewish, as I am.
I glance at the bathroom and food… well, I’d say lines, except they aren’t linear. Hundreds of people swarm around the limited bathrooms and food options. There’s no way, I think to myself.
Our general admission tickets also present a challenge. My youngest — at 80 lbs and barely five feet tall — can’t see a thing. She spends opening band Paramore’s set distressed, and I’m panicked. Did we invest all this time, money, and effort, only for Nico to not see the show?
We move toward the light tower, which has a view of the stage for those standing up against its railing. A German mother and daughter sit there between sets. As the girls exchange friendship bracelets, I ask the mom: “Would it be possible to let Nico stand next to you so she can see?”
The mom eyeballs Nico’s small stature. “Yes, I think it would be possible,” she answers. Is she aware her terse, pragmatic response means the world to my child, and therefore, to me? I’ll never know if she got the magnitude of her generosity, but I’m forever grateful for it.
Nico moves up, and I take a deep breath. Our bellies might be empty and our bladders halfway full, but no matter. Food and facilities can wait.
It’s time for Taylor.
We’re ready for it.
For those not in the know, “Eras” refers to each of Taylor’s 11 albums, and the different songs and aesthetic that imbue each. Many have a favorite. Many others, like me, appreciate different elements of each era and have a hard time choosing just one (though if I must, it’s Folklore or Red, or Reputation, depending on my mood, and yes, I realize that’s three).
Each show is as identical as a Broadway production — and at least as large in scope. On Saturday night, my eldest and I were doing laundry and ran into one of the tour truck drivers. He’s one of over 100 truck drivers who haul the set, the merch, the lights, all of it. I can’t express enough the magnitude of this production, and with what absolute precision Taylor and her band, dancers, and backup singers pull it off, every single night.
So how to review the 123rd show in a series of flawlessly executed, identical shows?
Well, because it’s not identical. Each audience member brings her own — yes, I said her; the audience was easily 90% girls and women — experiences, favorites, and impressions to each performance.
My kids and I were no exception.
“Don’t tell me what to say, and don’t tell me what to do.” The bombastic refrain of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” fills the stadium as a countdown timer marked the final two minutes till showtime.
Nico turns to me. “The show always opens like this, with this song during the countdown timer,” she says, ever my Taylor tutor.
What an absolutely killer choice and homage to the feminist shoulders she stands upon, I think, giddy with anticipation of the show, endlessly relieved my youngest child can see, but a wee bit sad my eldest has darted off into the crowd to get closer. I don’t blame her — she is my child, after all — but somehow, after all this time and distance traveled, I feel like we three should be together. I let go of my expectations and ready myself for this show that we’ve been waiting for nearly 18 months to see.
Just before the timer runs out, Nico turns back to me. “Thank you for taking me here,” she says. “I’m so happy right now.”
My heart swells. Then the countdown timer finishes, and it’s show time.
My eldest bounds up to us, all smiles. “I had to come back for the start of the show,” she says.
I’m choked up as Taylor kicks off her show with “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” the first of five songs she’ll play from the Lover album.
“It’s you and me, that’s my whole world,” I sing along, looking at the backs of my kids’ heads.
The Eras Tour then moves through eight “eras”— nine if you include the “surprise songs” during the acoustic set, which we’ll get to later — so she performs songs from one record before moving on to the next. She merges her two 2020 indie-folk releases Folklore and Evermore into one set, and she omits her debut self-titled record, which is fully relatable, and otherwise covers each record of her career. Full costume, set, and even microphone changes follow each era, aligning with the colors, themes, and general vibe of each record.
Like good storytelling, the Eras Tour doesn’t move in chronological order, nor does it commit equal song coverage per release. The set instead commits to the trajectory of her career and in doing so, acknowledges how some songs need to come forward more now, in different orders, than others.
Taylor was prolific just before and during COVID. Since she couldn’t tour during peak COVID years, Eras serves as supporting tour for her five — yes, five — most recent records: Lover (2019), Folklore (2020), Evermore (2020), Midnights (2022), and The Tortured Poets Department (2024). Two of these won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Each of these releases deserve its own stadium tour. So the Eras Tour leans heavily into these records, leading with Lover and closing with The Tortured Poets Department and Midnights.
A mere mortal artist would’ve picked a couple tracks off each, maybe performed some medleys to cover more terrain.
But Taylor is no mere mortal.
She doesn’t have to perform 46 songs each night. Her fans would still show up for far less. But she does it — I think because she loves her songs so much, she legitimately enjoys performing them all. And more importantly, it’s because she loves her fans so much.
She wants to show them what’s possible.
I look around me and it’s clear we all see it. Her efforts elevate and unite us all.
“All Too Well” is the song that really put me over the top for Taylor — not in its original 5:28 format, but with the Taylor’s Version re-release of Red, where she unleashed it in its 10:13 glory.
This song is about an ex-boyfriend — hello, dude at the airport — Jake Gyllenhal, specifically. But it’s so much more. It’s a glorious song about a short-lived love affair and its demise, weaving in the betrayal, the longing, the age gap, the despair, and ultimately, the emotional acceptance of it all. The song takes place over a season, starting in autumn and ending by winter, just as the love affair presumably did. But “All Too Well” isn’t a vindictive tell-all. It’s an exorcism of sorts, a reckoning and a coming of age.
And most importantly, it’s a young woman refusing to let an ex-boyfriend — or anyone else — reframe her narrative or deny the depth of the relationship. We’re so quick to dismiss stories as superficial when they’re told by young women. But just because the protagonist is a 21-year-old woman doesn’t make the story any less universal or true. The repetition of “It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well,” is Taylor, standing her ground, reclaiming her recollection of the relationship and all it meant and was as the truth.
I get it. I’ve had men try to deny the significance of relationships. I’ve had others dismiss me when I’ve spoken of my heartache.
Their views didn’t make the relationship or my heartache any less real.
What could be more universal than this feeling?
Tonight Taylor introduces the song with a nonchalant, “In case you have about ten minutes to spare,” to the laughter of the audience. Then she’s raised on the platform, alone with her guitar, with her band and backup singers out of the spotlight so our focus falls entirely on her — a preternaturally talented, beautiful woman, now older and wiser but effortlessly recounting her heartache. Her red spangled floor-length coat sparkles as she sings.
“Fuck the patriarchy!” we all shout back during the third of six verses, because we know she needs to hear it as much as we need to yell along.
It’s what Swifties do.
Jeltje isn’t wrong about the new European fan traditions. During our four-hour wait before the show, a couple women approach us. “Do you need yellow balloons?” they ask. They don’t explain what for; they don’t need to. A tradition that three Swifties started during the July 4 show in Amsterdam just a few weeks earlier is now officially a thing.
We take the balloons, and I marvel once again at the preparedness and generosity of the Swift fans.
As the opening notes to “Willow” begin at dusk during the merged Folklore/Evermore set, we’re ready, we all are. Balloons inflated, we lift them up and place our iPhones underneath to illuminate them, and the entire stadium fills with their golden glow, mimicking the orbs that Taylor and her dancers carry onstage.
And oh, it’s glorious.
No Eras Tour show is complete without the acoustic segment, between the Tortured Poets and Midnights sets. Here Taylor plays alone on her guitar and piano, and plays deeper-cut “surprise songs,” ones not on the set list. It’s the one part of the show where the audience has no idea what’s coming.
For her guitar songs, she plays “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” x “I’m Gonna Get You Back.” The former song was written for the “50 Shades Darker” movie, and while Swift co-wrote it, it was performed by Zayn, featuring Taylor. “I’m Gonna Get You Back” is one of the anthology tracks from The Tortured Poets Department.
On piano, she treats us to “loml” x “Don’t You.” “loml” is a fan favorite and one of the original tracks from The Tortured Poets Department. “Don’t You” is an older track, from the Fearless Taylor’s Version vault, and our show is the first and so far, only time it’s ever been performed live.
These fun facts all brought to you by Nico, of course.
I’d like to think everyone has their moment at a show like this, where it finally feels real. I asked both my kids, and both said for them, it was as soon as the countdown timer ended and they saw Taylor onstage. They both teared up at the time, so that checks. For me, it was during the song “Lover,” one of my very favorite Taylor songs and the fifth song in the set.
The opening notes begin and like muscle memory, I’m back in the parking lot outside Lumen field in Seattle the night of her show a year earlier, when we didn’t get tickets. When “Lover” began, I could hear only echoes of it, leftovers spilling over the stadium walls, mere auditory crumbs. I savored but also lamented them at the time. It hurt. We were supposed to be inside.
Hearing those same notes in the midst of the 74,000 fans in the crowd is the moment I truly feel the enormity of what I did. I moved the three of us nearly 6,000 miles in order to experience this, the performer of a lifetime in her career retrospective to date.
I feel the gravity of loss I would have felt, had I missed this experience with my kids.
The expense, the planning, the time, all the work: it’s totally worth it. I’m overcome with the rightness of it all, that I’d heeded that call to action and gotten us there.
“This is our place, and we make the call.”
In that moment I know to my bones this is the most ridiculous, expensive, reckless, and utterly perfect parenting decision I’ve ever made.
Then the refrain begins, and the stadium fills with homemade paper cutout hearts, as promised by Jelkje. The pastels waving to and fro feel like a greeting, an affirmation set to the lyrics: “Can I go where you go? Will we always be this close?”
I sure hope so. “Forever and ever.”
I’ve seen hundreds, possibly thousands, of shows in my lifetime. But I’ve never seen one like this.
It’s not just that Taylor performs for 3.5 hours every night. Nor is it just the enormity of her songs and performances. It’s not only how she never misses a note, step, or beat, or how she manages to somehow take a massive arena show and make it feel, if not intimate, at least, personal.
The Eras Tour isn’t just a performance. It’s a whole universe of storytelling and sparkles, perfectly choreographed onstage and then reflected back by her fans. It’s solidarity with tens of thousands of others ecstatic fans, showing their appreciation by elevating the experience even higher.
It’s Karma. It’s Enchanted. It’s Fearless. It was our Wildest Dream.
And it all came true.
I think of that man from the airport and others like him, who shrug off Taylor’s importance because she’s pretty and blonde and young.
They can no longer ignore her success — the math is too compelling to dismiss — but they can sneer at her talent, at her influence, as insignificant. Anyone who does this, does it at their own risk. They’re missing out on what’s probably the most seismic cultural impact of the past 20 years.
An impact that’s mostly felt by girls.
I didn’t have that.
As I was coming of age, I had bad-ass women musicians to help guide me. But they were all “alternative” — Liz, PJ, Tori, Kathleen, Bjork, Sarah, Shirley, Fiona, even Courtney. The mainstream pop icon was Britney Spears, and she was a pop tart train wreck. That’s who the normies got, I thought. With the wisdom of time, I can see Brittney’s talent and also her trauma, and how her manipulative, horrid family of origin crippled her. She stood no chance, really.
That’s how GenX women came of age, divided. But now?
Taylor Swift has raised two generations of young women and girls, front and center at the mainstream, with the empowering, killer messages I had to seek in the alternative. These messages are only underlined by her unparalleled success and these epic shows and how larger than life they are, and she is. She is the icon, the role model, the best friend, the mom, “The Man,” the coach, the wing-woman, the everything. She’s unabashed about her success but demonstrates such gratitude to her fans. She’s brilliant as both a musician and businesswoman. She’s quietly generous to degrees that fund nonprofits for years. She’s doing it all out in the open. But mostly, only the girls and young women see it.
How’s that going to move the world into the future? I can’t say. But Taylor’s positive influence on these young women cannot be overstated.
The day after the show, I saw the image below of the stadium and surrounding park the night of our show. Turns out the park isn’t just beautiful; it’s also a way for people to watch and listen to shows for free.
For our show, 40k people covered those hills, bringing the total number of show attendees to 124k. The same thing happened the night before. A quarter of a million people showed up in two days. I stared at the photo, stunned by the magnitude and also by where we stood. See that red dot to the left of the stage runway? That’s our spot.
It was rare, and we were there.
Look what she made us all do.
I can’t wait to see what these generations of young women do next.
Greetings!
I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.
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The end of the chat may have answered the question I am about to ask but did you ever feel that the concert was at any point too perfect? Here is the link to the NYT Magazine article if you would like to check it out. I love this writer's stories and I will read anything she writes - she is that good, at least for me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/magazine/taylor-swift-eras-tour.html