Swifties in Vienna cry, commiserate and try to shake it off after concerts canned

VIENNA – Just as she was boarding her flight at Boston Logan International Airport headed for a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Ms Mary DePetris excitedly checked the online fan group, Swiftie Nation.

Austrian authorities had discovered a terrorist plot targeting Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in the city, she read. On Aug 7, just before take-off,

organisers cancelled all three shows scheduled for Aug 8 to 10.

Ms DePetris, 47, stepped onto the plane and broke the news to some of her fellow passengers.

“Half the plane was crying,” she said. “It’s not just about the shows, it’s the community coming together and feeling safe at her concerts, and Swifties letting their guard down. And this just shifted all of that. How can we do that now that we feel we are targeted?”

As the estimated 200,000 people who had been expected to worship at Swift’s proscenium in Vienna

grappled with crushing disappointment,

wasted money and a measure of fear at narrowly avoiding danger, a sea of fans flooded the baroque city looking for ways to shake it off.

They traded Eras merchandise in the shadow of the vacant stadium or dissolved into tears when they caught the strains of Swift’s stanzas drifting from the doorways of sympathetic gift shops or churches.

Some hung handmade friendship bracelets – a treasured Swiftie talisman inspired by a song lyric – on a tree on Corneliusgasse, a central Vienna thoroughfare whose name echoes the title of Swift’s song Cornelia Street (2019). There, hundreds hugged, cried and commiserated in the middle of the road.

Tempering the dejection for many was a feeling that a missed concert was far from the worst outcome possible.

On Aug 8, Austrian authorities released information on the two teenagers whom they say had planned an attack, outlining a picture of a terrorist assault designed to kill as many people as possible with machetes and explosives, plotted by the pair who had become radicalised by Islamic extremism on the internet.

One had recently started a job for an events service provider that was working at the Ernst Happel Stadium, where Swift was scheduled to play, according to senior Austrian security official Franz Ruf.

The suspect, whom the authorities did not name but said was 17 years old, was arrested there on Aug 7.

“I feel grateful to be alive,” said Ms Charlotte Keller, 34, a human resources manager from Rome, outside the stadium on Aug 8.

Mr Ewald Tatar, a manager at Barracuda Music, which organised the Austrian leg of the Eras Tour, said in a news conference that the decision to cancel the concerts was made with Swift’s management, based on information received from authorities.

“Although it was not an everyday decision, it was definitely the right one,” Mr Tatar said, citing the fact that one of the suspects was an arena employee as a deciding factor. According to Barracuda’s website, all tickets would be automatically refunded within the next two weeks.

Listings of palliative events popped up almost immediately. Vienna’s Albertina museum and municipal pools offered Swifties free entry, while Austria’s national railway offered refunds on unused train tickets. A dance party called Shake It Off, named after Swift’s 2014 song, invited fans to come dressed in their sparkly concert best. A restaurant offered free flutes of pink sparkling wine for every crushed concertgoer.

For some, the concerts had meant more than a silly, good time for some, including Ms Eliya Briand, 22, and her sister Naomi, 24. They arrived in Vienna on Aug 8 from Netanya, Israel, just north of Tel Aviv, seeking a reprieve from Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. Now thousands of kilometres from home, the sisters felt they were facing the same fear.

“It has been a really, really difficult year, and this concert was sort of an escape from the reality at home,” Ms Briand said.

Her sister Naomi said they had come “from war, from terror – and now we meet it again”. She added: “For this concert to be cancelled because of that specific reason, it hurts a lot more.”

It was still too early to assess the economic fallout from the cancelled concerts. The Austrian Hotel Association offered its members legal guidelines to manage an expected influx of cancellations, but Mr Oliver Schenk, a spokesperson for the organisation, said he had received conflicting reports.

“It is not yet possible to say how high the financial loss is for the companies,” he said.

Outside the stadium on Aug 8, there was no coveted Eras merchandise for sale. Vendors began to pack up tubs of uneaten wurst and untapped kegs of Austrian lager.

Mr Stefan Schneider, 48, owner of Arena Cocktail Catering, had spent €10,000 (S$14,450), on hotel rooms for 60 staff members he brought in from Germany for the three-day event, plus another €10,000 in cocktail ingredients. The event would have accounted for 30 per cent of his yearly income, if all had gone well, he said.

He added that he had no insurance.

“It’s a disaster,” Schneider said, but looming larger than that was his fear that other concerts could be under threat. “It’s a problem. You have thoughts, what about the next event? What about disaster after disaster?”

Next week, the singer’s global tour is scheduled to begin a run of five sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium, a 90,000-seat arena in London. A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement that there was “nothing to indicate that the matters being investigated by the Austrian authorities will have an impact on upcoming events here in London”.

With all the tickets for the London gigs snapped up and further tour dates fixed through December, it was unlikely that the disappointed Swifties in Vienna would get to see the singer soon. NYTIMES