Flat

15.00 in the dressing room in Calgary. The venue has actually been changed and it's now the same as it was the last time we were here. Macewan Ballroom at the university campus area. This is a really nice venue with real dressing rooms and showers and everything. And female university students. Nice sight for sore eyes.

Yesterday in Edmonton was quite good. We played a good set as usual with some Rainbow and Accept riffs thrown in. The audience was quite nice as well. It was a Monday night so maybe not wild as some other audiences but still nice. And after the show I took a bath as usual. Toilet sink. It's not that bad when you get used to that.

Canada is a strange country. First of all there's nothing. The country is a flat piece of land with just nothing. Then suddenly there's a city in the middle of nowhere with skyscrapers and all. Everything is really clean as well which is of course really nice. The cities look busy and for the first look you'd think that "Hey, the venue's in the centre of the city, there must be lots of interesting stuff around here" and then you realize that there really isn't anything. Or maybe we're just stupid and can't find whatever there is.

The people we've met have all been really nice. Except for the idiot bikers. Everybody's been really friendly and open, in both Canada and USA. I've heard many times the sentence: "Oh, I love your accent! Where do you come from!" and when I say "From Finland" quite many of them start telling how they've been to Finland or they're going to go there or they have relatives living in Finland. Finland. No matter how hard you try, you can never escape.

Prairie dogs, those sneaky bastards

17.30 at the backstage in Edmonton. Finally they got the internet working. Today's venue is basically a nice old theatre kind of thing in the city centre but since there's no shower, it's a shithole. Edmonton seems really strange. There's basically is a lot of stuff in the city centre but still there's not much. The river and the valley give it a nice touch though. If someone askes me to describe Canada with just one word, the word would be "flat". Edmonton is not that flat so it is probably one of the nicest looking places here. It has a river. It can't be that bad.

Earlier today we went out with Jonne, Matson and Juho. We walked around the city getting some strange looks from the locals. I guess they don't see our kind of people that often. We also found an English pub so it was breakfast time. I had two pints of Strongbow cider and a veggie burger with sweet fries. Yep, sweet. Strange. They were good though.

Yesterday was a nice day as well. The place was ok. No shower, so it was a shithole, but still. It was located at the industrial part of the town but Regina is a small town so everything was in the walking distance. Everyone went out except me who stayed in the bus a while typing. Then I went out alone and bumped into Mitja so we continued out Regina tour together. City centre didn't really have anything but the park and the reservoir around the whatever creek were quite nice. We even took a guided tour around the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.

The weather was really hot so back the venue we all just basically chilled out. Some of us played football and some played soccer. Although I don't understand why they call American football football, since it's mostly played by hands and the "ball" is not a ball. I was trying to take a picture of prairie dogs running around but those bastards were too fast.

The show was really good. Not much people but still totally different than in Winnipeg. No death threats from the bikers. Good show, nice people. After the show there was still a few hours to kill so we basically just hung aroung the buses and drank few beers.

Let's see what today brings.