Hungary, Czech & Germany - Part I

Once again we're back from some festivals where I've once again been able to catch something that ain't making me feel any good. Oink. Oink.

This time we started from Hungary. We left Tampere again in the middle of the night. Our destination was Rockmaraton festival near or basically in Pécs, Hungary. A few years ago we played in Pécs at the indoor festival called Rocktriatlon. Maybe this was the same festival, just a bit bigger and longer now. At least this one lasted for a week.

We were greeted at the airport by our hostess Zsófia and a fellow who's name I didn't catch. We had again a bit of driving ahead since Pécs is about 200km south from Budapest airport. The driver was a lunatic. Some of us were afraid that they won't survive the trip. And then when we finally stopped to have some drinks he was really pissed off because we were losing time. He didn't speak a word of English but this is what Zsófia explained to us. We were quite quickly in the car ready to leave but the wanker just stands outside eating his whatever it was. Idiot. Of course when you start drinking beer you soon have to stop to relieve yourself. That was the next problem. The idiot just wouldn't stop. He was asked to stop many times but he just kept driving. Finally I raised my voice from the back so that he definitely heard that too. Zsófia translated that to him, probably included all the swear words as well, since the idiot stopped the car immediately!

In Pécs we checked ourselves in the hotel, quickly had a look at the rooms and decided to head to the festival area immediately. Except Hittis. He had learned something from the infamous Ukraine trip when he only got to Warsaw, Poland and told us that "the festival will be boring and I'll only end up drinking at the backstage the whole afternoon which will not end well."

We indeed spent the afternoon at the festival drinking beer. It was a hot day, you know. We checked out some of the bands playing and just generally enjoyed the atmosphere. At some point we were also informed that some of us will be "needed" to judge the wet T-shirt contest. We were headlining on Wednesday and our buddies My Dying Bride were headlining on Thursday. They arrived already on Wednesday and got in the festival area just before the contest. So I just grabbed Andy, their guitarist:
- "Let's go, follow me. It's going to be fun."
- "Where are you taking me?"
- "You are going to judge a wet T-shirt contest."
- "No way. Really?"
- "Yes way. Really!"
- "Let's go."

We were put to sit on a bench on the stage next to a children's plastic pool while the local announcer was getting the volunteers from the audience. We couldn't really follow that or anything else what was going on. Zsófia of course tried to explain as much as she could. Anyway, soon they had 8 or 9 girls on the stage all dressed in white t-shirts. At this point we learned that we were also supposed to be the ones pouring the water on them. Oh, well. It's shit job but someone's got to do it.

I won't go much into details since this was NOT the main event of the festival. Or was it? Once all the girls were wet we got a load of new instructions in Hungarian. Zsófia explained that we were supposed to pick three of them for the final. The first two were easy to pick since two of the girls had already exposed their boobs anyway. The third one was difficult. We couldn't really agree on that. Luckily one of the girls, a really small one, decided to take matters to her own hands and showed her boobs so the trio was ready for their final show. Which was nice. I don't know who won. The audience I'd say.

At one point during the contest Andy and myself had a short conversation. I asked him:
- "What do you think, aren't we like really dirty old men using these girls as objects right now?"
- "Yeah, we are. Excellent. I love it!"

After the competition I heard one of the nicest, if not THE nicest, things anyone has ever said about our band. Andy was talking to his band mates and said something along the lines "I just love those guys! I'd been here like a minute and they took me there! There's always something going on when they're near!"

Anyway, back to the real business. Since we were headlining we had a bit longer set than usually during the summer festivals. It was 70 minutes, so we had to play some songs that we don't do that often this summer. I can't really remember the set list that well anymore though. Our original idea now that the new album is out was that we'll replace "Tuli kokko" with "Huppiaan aarre" in the set but for example in Hungary I think we did both. "You Looked Into My Eyes" made a comeback to the set as well. I think the encore was maybe four songs so it was a decent set for the Hungarians. We have to give our best. We are related, you know!

The rest of the evening was already planned quite well too. The last band of the day was a local Iron Maiden cover band so we spent the evening watching them, drinking alcohol and behaving badly. That was nice. The band was actually pretty good. The singer sounded a lot like Bruce Dickinson. Not the current Bruce, the 1980's Bruce when he was still good.

We had 4 rooms from the hotel, all for three persons. Three of them were full and I was the lucky one to have a room of my own. In the morning I heard quite a lot of noise from the corridor and realized that it was our guys but I was just too tired to get up. Once I got up and took a shower I just wrapped a towel around me and went to search for them. Since we basically never close doors it was easy to find them. Or at least those who were up. At least Jonne and Cane were sleeping, some were out, but most of us were sitting in one of the rooms where we had taken huge amounts of alcohol from the festival previous night. I took a beer from the fridge and joined.

Tuomas and myself hadn't been up early enough for the hotel breakfast so we went downstairs to get lunch instead. When the waitress approached us I asked if she speaks English to which she replied something like "A little. Menu?" We said "Yes, please" since we thought that she going to bring us the menu from where we can order something but it turned out that we had just ordered their entire lunch menu. Well, the soup was actually really good and they actually understood when I said that I need something vegetarian. I don't know what it was but it was good as well. And it cost as 1260HUF together so it was practically free. For me at least since Tuomas paid. Ha! Sucker.

At some point of the afternoon we carried all our stuff to the nightliner that had arrived from Germany to pick us up. This may have been around 16 or 17. Then the driver went to sleep. I think we agreed to leave at 3 or 4 at night or so. Back to business ie. to the hotel room to drink. At some point we sent Valohomo shopping since he had been out and told us that he found a shopping centre. I gave him 4000HUF and asked him to bring me 10 Bacardi Breezers. He arrived later and brought those and some vodka and orange juice.

At some point of the afternoon we had already emptied the fridge and moved to the "technicians room" where they still had the fridge full. That room was right opposite of mine and both doors were fully open. At 19.00 I had to do a phone interview to Germany. I went to my own room to do that since I wanted to hear something. The sun was shining directly to my room and it was hot as hell in there so I decided to take my pants off. I was wearing only a t-shirt. The last question was "How does it look like in a typical Korpiklaani party?" I just walked across the corridor to the other room and described what I saw. Funny thing is that while changing the room I realized that the room next to ours wasn't an actual hotel room. It was a conference room with glass walls and it was full of people. Ok, I'm sure they had seen penises before. Valohomo had been out somewhere and arrived a moment after that. I told him what I did so he decided to take his pants off as well and walk past the conference room. I mean I only crossed the corridor but he walked passed the room. And did Michael Jackson style moonwalk back!

The rest of the day was quite normal festival day. I think we were taken to the festival area at around 20. We watched the shows, drank and spent time with the locals. And then it was time to pack ourselves in the bus and start the trip home. I mean, Masters Of Rock festival feels like home to us already and people working there probably meet us more often than some of our family members. Well, that basically just tells you more about my family than about Masters Of Rock...