Say (Swiss) cheese!

The story continues. So we were on our way to Switzerland to spend our day off. We landed in Zürich and immediately in the terminal mixed three bags of the Fisherman's Friends with Jonne's bottle. We started our journey in a festival's van to Langenthal where our hotel was. The 60% vodka didn't go down that well. It burned the throat. At first. Then it started to taste better. Suddenly the journey wasn't so boring after all. The two hours went quite easily.

In Langenthal we decided that we should head directly to the festival in Huttwil to eat and see the bands as well. The festival was taking place in an icehall. We didn't know about it before but when we couldn't find our stage anywhere someone told us that the second stage was outside in an icehockey rink. At that point it didn't really bother us anymore. We settled in our dressing room, mixed another litre of Fiskeman, got food from the catering and the fridge in the catering area was full of cold beer. The weather was nice so we parked ourselves on an outdoor table.

My memories from the evening are not that good. We met a lot of people. Old friends (5th or 6th or 7th time in the country), new friends, fans, whoever. I don't really remember that many of them. Don't blame the alcohol though. I never remember anyone. I went to see Opeth, didn't really care. I enjoy the band occasionally from the CD but live they don't really give much for me. Matson went to see Avantasia and I believe he actually enjoyed that.

The next clear memories I have are from the next morning, when I wake up in the hotel room. I spent a moment thinking if I should go for a breakfast but decide no. Sleeping is good every now and then. At one point during the day I send an SMS to home just to say that I'm still alive. Then I call Matson to ask when we are supposed to get to the venue. At 16.00. So I finally get up from the bed around 15 and go to shower. Suddenly I hear a huge banging from the door. It's Paukku with his "nice" wake up call. He tells me that we're leaving in 15 minutes.
- "Wasn't that supposed be at 16."
- "Yes, it WAS. You have 15 minutes."

The festival's second stage had an interesting lineup: a local band, Korpiklaani, Eluveitie and Ensiferum. 3 out of 5 Paganfest bands and I was wearing a Moonsorrow hoodie so it was almost 4 out of 5. Lots of familiar faces and music around us then. I was nice seeing all them again. It's funny how you actually miss people even if you don't realize that. You just understand that when you meet them again. Quite soon after we met Eluveitie Rafi told me the news about him and his brother Sevan leaving the band. That was a surprise. I've always though that they would never leave. They are quite integral part of the band, at least that's how it seems to an outsider, so I wonder if the band will ever find good replacements for them. I really hope they do though.

We sort of shared a dressing room with Ensiferum. The rooms were separate but we had common showers and toilet. Mahi, who seems to be responsible for their merchandise among other things, asked if we know anything about the merchandise or if we have someone to sell ours since they were told that they have to have their own one. On the other hand we were told that the festival will be selling our merch as well. After some talk with the festival people we understood that we need someone to sell merch for both bands. I contacted an old friend Melanie who I think was anyway coming to sell Eluveitie stuff and she agreed to do us as well. Well, not "do us" in the dirty meaning of that, you perverts. Thanks, Mel and girls. We'll probably never pay you back.

The weather wasn't so beautiful anymore. Maybe 15 degrees and raining. Stage of course had a roof but the rain came from the front so the first few metres of stage were wet. We should've hung our backdrop in front of the stage. The new backdrop was maybe a bit too big for that stage. It filled the whole back from left to right, top to bottom and there even was a metre extra hanging below the stage. The changeover times were quite generous, an hour. The idea was I guess that when indoor band stops the next outdoor band starts. I usually play without any shoes. Of course I always check beforehand if the stage is good enough for that. Splinters are not nice. This time I decided to go without shoes again. I was maybe a small mistake. It was freezing and I ended having a piece of metal in my foot.

Except for the freezing water, the show was good as usual. We've always had a really good crowd in Switzerland. I don't know if that's the case with every band in Switzerland but for us it's always been really good. Already on our first show there in August 2005 when we basically sucked. The show went on as usual. No big surprises in the set. We did "Palovana" though which has quite often been the first one to be left out if we have had to cut the set shorter. Matson had a small accident. I believe it was in the end of the first song when I saw something strange on the stage. Matson's splash symbal was rolling on the stage. It didn't matter really. During the second song someone fixed that with a new stand.

After the show I took the shower as usual and got dressed. The catering rider alcohol was put into good use. I even noticed the icehockey team's stereo system so that we could listen to the Kiss bootlegs Matson got in Sweden. They were crap. I realized that the stereo system had an RCA inputs in the back and since Paukku always has all kinds of cables with him we managed to hook up Cane's iPod to the stereos. 3500 songs in random. Excellent. All the rest decided to go to eat but Cane, Hittis and myself were already having such a good time drinking and listening to music that we decided to pass that, since we knew that we wouldn't have the same feeling again after eating! That's called experience.

We met two record company guys as well. We mostly talked about the Paganfest tour that we did and about the possible US tour later this year. There's been a lot of talk about that and it seems that we are basically wanted there, but as for now it looks like it's not going to happen this year. I am not sure if the Paganfest II or whatever they call it will happen, but we won't be part of it. Let's see that again in 2009.

On Friday there was two bands that I was interested to see at least a bit. I used to like Queensrÿche during "Rage For Order" and "Operation: Mindcrime" era, but sort of lost my interest after that. Europe was the other one I wanted to see. I hate how everybody always remember them from the horrible "Final Countdown" and no one seems to know that were a really good heavy rock band on their first two albums: the self-titled and "Wings Of Tomorrow". Joey Tempest is a great singer and John Norum is a brilliant guitarist as was his temporary (6 years!) replacement Kee Marcello. Crap. I am old.
Anyway I actually managed to see both bands. Not entire shows but enough to form an opinion on them. I can't remember what it was. I also saw Eluveitie and Ensiferum but I already had an opinion on them.

The evening went quite well. We saw some bands, met friends, drank a bit and had fun. It was really relaxing to be with all the familiar faces again. Although Merlin poured his entire drink on my lap but you can't really be angry at a lovable person like him.

Next morning it was again a drive back to Zürich airport. We are a bit difficult group for the check-in personnel since it's a group of 8, we have usually 15 pieces of luggage to cargo bay which weights way more than we are allowed to have and some of the boxes weight more than one person is allowed to lift. Once again we tried to do it the easy way and asked from a lady there guiding people if there's a group check-in somewhere: "No, get in the line."
After about a half an hour wait we get to the check-in and the lady asks us why didn't we use the group check-in! Fucken sie offen, bitte! That's German for fuck off. She was really nice though. Guided us to the check-in and everything. And charged 500€ for the extra weight.

The plane was about 40 minutes late in leaving and about an hour late in arriving. For some reason the luggage was delayed at the airport for another 30 minutes so our driver, the world famous "You may have seen this man on TV!" punk bassist Lahti had to wait really long. Not our fault. We stopped at the first gas station in Keimola (or is it Gaymola) and Tuomas and myself got some cider. Traveling is nicer that way.

Sauna Open Air was going on in Tampere at that weekend. Me and the lady tried to go to Inferno metal bar later in the evening but the line was like a hundred metres long drunk snake. Then we went to Sputnik but they had a note on the door: "We've moved". We went to the new Sputnik but it just wasn't the same anymore. Screw you hippies! I'm going home.