Camping trip

Metal Camp in Tolmin, Slovenia. The most beautiful festival site ever. We were playing on Sunday, July 6, so we left on Saturday afternoon and flew to Frankfurt. Yes, it is a strange place to go if you're going to Slovenia but you'll understand this later. We drove to Tolmin in a van through the night. It's about 850km and took about 11 hours. Matte had reserved some alcohol, 6 bottles of vodka to be precise, so we were comfortably numb after a while.

We arrived to the site early in the morning and had to wait a while before the festival manager arrived. He was by the way the same David with a difficult last name that was the tour manager for the Paganfest earlier this year. So we had about an hour or two to kill and we headed to the beach bar, shook some hands, posed for pictures, had a few beers and when the bald one finally arrived we managed to book in to the hotel. We spent the mid day hours by meeting old friends that we have a lot in Slovenia and generally just chilling out. It was hot as usual. We had a short press conference and TV interview that we did with Jonne and Cane but otherwise the real program for the day started a bit before 18. And that's when the problems started.

Our showtime was at 18.15 and the change over was supposed to start at 18.00. The previous band stopped at 18.10. At festivals you just don't do that. You do not play over time. Even if you start late you finish in time. Simple rule. Then for the next 15 minutes it seemed like nothing was going on and when I asked from the stage manager about that he said they never got our new channel list after we changed to "preamp only" setup so they didn't have cables for us. Of course I asked our manager if that's true and he said that the festival has received it but he of course can't be sure if they've read it. Back to the stage manager. "Yes we have it but we didn't know that your preamps would be behind the monitor desk so our cables are in the wrong place." Different reason this time! Our set was supposed to be 45 minutes. Then we were told that if we get started in 5 minutes we'll have time for 35 minutes. I think it took a bit more than 5 minutes but we did a 35-minute set anyway. Both band and the audience were disappointed in the situation but otherwise the show went on well except for some minor wireless problems again. Audience was excellent as always in Slovenia. They kept demanding more after the show but there was nothing that we could do.

The next band (can't remember who) on the stage again had all the time in the world. They spent at least 15 minutes just with the fucking drums and no one was rushing them. Maybe, I am not saying that this is a fact, but maybe all this has something do with the fact that both bands around us are managed by the same organization that is behind the whole festival but we haven't really been interested in their offer... Don't get me wrong, it's not the bands' fault.

After the show I walked to our hotel to take a shower, rest a bit and drink a little wine. During that a thunderstorm started and after about a two hour break in the program Helloween finally hit the stage. Can't remember much of them. It was muddy and wet and I went to bed.

Our next show was Masters Of Rock in Czech Republic but that wasn't until Thursday, July 10. At one point there was an idea that at least some of us would fly back to Finland for a couple of days but since we couldn't get any decent flights we all decided to stay in Tolmin. Around the noon on Monday when we woke up we started with some red wine and went to see our Slovenian-Croatian-Italian-whatever friends in the bar quite close to the hotel. They were already having a party and Jonne, Cane and myself joined in. We got quite drunk during the afternoon but it was a lot of fun. It was really cool to meet again the same people that we met already on our first visit to Maribor in 2005.

Back at the festival area later the same evening I actually stopped drinking. Don't know why though. Had enough perhaps. Still didn't really watch much bands. Although I managed to see or at least hear probably the worst band I've ever seen. I am not saying the name but the same band also played at the festival in Finland and I read some really good and praising reviews of them, so I was slightly interested in seeing them. In my opinion that was the biggest pile of shit ever. Then again some people surely say the same thing about us, so who am I to judge.

We met one of our Russian friends at the festival as well. He was there with his family. I don't know where his wife was then in the evening but he and his son were with us in the festival tent where they also had strippers performing in an after show party. He wouldn't let his son see them so when he looked away I showed his son naked pictures of my girlfriend. C'mon! We are a rock band! We are supposed to destroy the youth!

I was again getting tired and decided to go back to the hotel. At the hotel yard I met our FOH man Paukku talking with the festival's main promoter and some hippie. I told promoter who I already knew from the Paganfest about the biggest pile of shit ever, the band, and he, being politically correct, said that "Yes, I've seen them do better." So I wasn't alone.

We were supposed to drive back to Frankfurt area on Tuesday. Since the possible drivers had both been drinking last night we were not leaving very early. After waking up I sent a message for my Italian-Slovenian-whatever friend to ask where I could get some breakfast. She and her boyfriend were again in the same bar so they were easy to find. She escorted me to the grocery store, helped with the language and I got a big bag full of food and took it to the hotel. I thought it was a lot but me and the roommate Matson ended up eating almost all of it at once. I guess we were hungry. The rest of the day went slowly. A few occasional drinks, checking the CD booths, checking the bands. And meeting the same people again. One of the bands was quite interesting. I believe they were Slovenian and called Inmate. They were playing really interesting instrumental technical thrash. Since they don't have a singer they've probably been forced to make the music more interesting. I heard that they just signed a record deal so we will hear about them more in the future.

Once again we meet the old buddies Eluveitie again. I believe they'd driven from Switzerland to Slovenia in a van so we weren't the only ones driving insane distances. It's always nice meeting them. And we'll meet again at Summerbreeze. We can't get rid of them even if we wanted to! Well, it's more likely the other way around anyway.

Finally in the evening we started our journey back to Germany. Some people got drunk again. I didn't really. I tried to sleep which wasn't really that easy. Have you ever seen anyone sleepwalking in a van? I have.

To be continued...