Zagreb, Milan, French highway

Monday, November 17, 11.00, Italian highway. Yesterday in Zagreb we had the greatest audience ever. 900 screaming and jumping Croatians. Most violent looking pit I've ever seen. Every band was greeted like that. Amazing.
We played a pretty good show too. It was the fourth show so we were back in to the "white set". We have three different coloured set lists you see. I really liked how we did the first five songs. Not much pauses or breaks, one songs ends, next one starts.

The venue was the same as last time, Boogaloo, basically a decent venue. This time they however had changed it so that there was no shower or even a separate toilet at the backstage. We had to use the public toilet and they had a shuttle service to a hotel where they had a room with a shower reserved for us. And they have signed the production rider that specifically says that there has to be a toilet and a shower for us. Well, maybe they fulfilled that clause that way. But it wasn't good anyway.
Since the men's toilet was really crowded and not really clean I used the ladies' toilet. When I got out there was perhaps 20 teenage girls wanting to take pictures with me. Felt a bit strange. Photo session in the ladies room.

Now we're soon going to stop at the gas station. I hope their toilet is good.

Tuesday around 11, French highway, 60km to Lyon. Yes, the toilet was good. And we got some breakfast and after that opened a bottle of red with Cane and soon Miikka (Falchion) and Tony (lights) joined and we emptied two bottles quite fast. Nice morning that was.

The venue in Milan, Alcatraz, was great. It usually serves as a huge disco/rave/whatever hall but it has some live rock shows as well. It's one of those places where you can drive a bus in for loading. 013 in Tilburg is the same. It's quite hand when the gear comes right next to stage on rubber wheels.

We had plenty of time again and we went to city centre where the only interesting thing is Duomo, the cathedral. This was not my opinion, but our guide's who's originally from Rome and has lived in Milan for a few weeks only... Duomo was nice definitely. I even went in and didn't get struck by a lightning. The old market hall thing was nice too. It wasn't really a market hall in a modern sense. Just beautiful old buildings with fancy shops and restaurants and roof covered streets between them. And old wall paintings.

It was monday so the program started earlier. Doors opened at 18 and first band was on at 18.25. Our scheduled show time was 21.45. Of course in Italy that changed already in the beginning and Falchion started at 18.45 and others then accordingly.

I think I should quit talking about the audiences since I can only use the cliché phrases like "best audience ever" or "wild and loud". I'll just mention that the choir singing started from the first note of Wooden Pints and didn't end until the last note of Ii Lea Voibmi.

Backstage curfew was at 1.15 so we had plenty of time to stay in and get drunk. That's what we did and continued outside. The other bus left earlier but we continued with our people.

Now I heard from our driver that since the other bus is longer than this it can't park next to the today's venue so once we get there we give them a call and the other bus will come and we have to quickly unload it because it will block the whole street. I have to go and prepare myself for that. That means that I will have to go and hide myself upstairs.