St. Petersburg concert, autumn 2008
Oh boy, that was fun.
First thing i have to say (I know Teemu also has alot of things to share :) ) is that i was really profoundly touched by your club Achtung Baby.. I had super fun time there. The music was great and the people who wanted and could chat with (because I can't speak russian and most of the russian people didn't speak english) were really nice and warm.
The gig went good, the drinks were (almost too) good. Blins (local food - I'm not sure if that is the way it's written) were fkinda good too. Though I think they must have been kinda un-healthy :) . The most exciting part of the trip was however, getting lost on Nevsky Prospect, the big street where I spent much of my time. I wasn't that lost though. I just couldn't find the right door to my hotel, which our hostess kindly got for me. I think I must have had too much drinks at Achtung Baby... oops.
So I wondered around, met some street children at some stairway, and woke up a sleeping police (militia) at another. He said something to me in russian and went back to sleep. I said "I'm sorry, I'm lost", and he said "ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz". Then I got to the first door I was at, and tried it again, with more force from my astonishingly athletic arms, and somehow got it open. Then with some help from the reception guy (to whom I spoke to with sign language) I found the right door, and was ready to go sleep.
But first I put the television on and watched how Putin had saved the camera crew from a tiger (he's my hero). Then I had to kill some mosquitos buzzing on my face. When I woke up in the morning, Putin had apparently killed some more tigers (no wonder they're kinda rare), because he was on the telly again measuring it's teeth. I wish our president Tarja Halonen would do something similar, or at least kill a reindeer or something.
I wish to go back soon!
Jarno-Erik
St. Petersburg concert, spring 2008
A couple of weeks ago we travelled for a quick performance at Roks Club in St. Petersburg, Russia. The trip was fun and we met many interesting human beings back there, and especially because of the people we want to go to Russia again as soon as possible.
The homecoming didn't go so well though. We left St.Peterburg in a minibus (avtobus) which was filled with ten Russian passengers and us two with only one girl and one babushka who could communicate with us properly, as they spoke Finnish. It was dark already, the clock was 22:00 local time and the fog was starting to form.
When we got out of the city area and dived into darkness the car was filled with steam emerging from the twelve travellers. The driver didn't want to open the windows for some reason and just wiped the steam off when it became impossible to see through. At this moment the fog outside was also as thick as driving through a cloud of milk.
There were a couple of close shaves when a truck appeared from the fog and the driver noticed that we are driving on the wrong side of the road. Finally we arrived at the border area.
The road was quite bumpy and when we came to the no-mans-land one of the tires went flat. We stood there in pitch black night with trucks driving by 100km/h through the fog noticing us just a couple of meters before hitting us. The driver tried to change the tire, but he broke the wrench. So we waited and waited and eventually the driver got so pissed on the trip organizer babbling next to him that he decided to walk away into the darkness.
A couple of minutes later the man came back and he had a solution for the problem; we would drive back to Russia to fix the tire. So we did, and it was a ride of couple of kilometres with a flat tire. Then we waited in a lonely service station for an hour or two, watching a 80's romantic comedy starring a Russian speaking Bruce Willis, sipping on some beer and eating very strange (almost green) hot dogs. When I looked out of the window, I saw the driver going in the minibus and driving away with all our bags and stuff insine the vehicle. We were too tired to get worried at this time. And considering "this time", the clock on the wall was stuck on 01:30 am.
Later the driver came back with a new tire and we continued our mysterious trip to Finland. After three passport checks by the Russian authorities we arrived on the Finnish side of the border. We were stopped by the officer and he started a debate with the driver. After the debate a collective sigh of Russian desperation was heard inside the bus and the officer came to explain the situation to us Finlanders: "The bus is illegal, it has to return to St. Petersburg, step out of the vehicle please."
So we did and walked to the homeland with no worries except for the one question: "How do we get to Helsinki from here?"
We were told to get into some bus which was going somewhere. We followed the instructions and got a lift a couple of kilometres further, to another service station. The next thing we heard was: "Get in this bus" and again we followed the instructions, getting in another bus. The bus left towards Helsinki and we fell asleep, just to wake up again when the driver had also fell
asleep on the wheel and had to quickly turn the bus to avoid hitting the car on the opposite lane.
We fell back to sleep and woke up in Klaukkala. After all we were supposed to go to Helsinki.
Show Klaukkala on a mapEventually the bus managed to find its way to Itäkeskus and we jumped out of the god forsaken bus of eternal worries and took the slow but trustworthy Finnish subway to city centre. We had arrived after twelve hours of travelling, that's quite a lot for a car trip of:
"Time: 05h03 including 00h52 on motorways
Distance: 392km including 85km on motorways"
as stated by viamichelin.com
But as a last statement, the trip was fun and the homecoming was an adventure. We will definitely go back to Russia some day.
-tmu
