Moonsorrow in Hungary & Croatia

30.04 – 03.05.2004
Written by Jakab Zsuzsa

2004. 04. 30 (Friday)
Ferihegy Airport, Budapest (Hungary)
And so the day had come for me and the Hungarian tour organizer, Hartmann Krist�f, to pick up the Moonsorrowers at the airport on this sunny Friday, just one day before Hungary’s joining the EU (� useless info and has nothing to do with the tour itself but thought I let you know ;] ).

Due to the fact that I came from Kecskem�t (my hometown) by train we couldn’t make it to the place in time but it wasn’t hard to find them anyway. In fact, they were standing in front of the gate of the airport, tho we thought with Krist�f that we could always search for them in the Lost & Found if something goes wrong, haha.

After the introductions we went to a bar @ the airport to make them try out their very first Hungarian beer, Borsodi. We had more than an hour before the Norwegian band, Mortal Love, arrived than finally the tour buses came as well and the only thing left was to buy more beer for the trip. Beer is a must. Period.

2004. 04. 30 (Friday)
On the way to Osijek (Croatia)
If you want to know how do Finnish musicians travel I tell you: beer, pissing, beer, singing, beer, asking what do they grow on the fields and what is Hungary’s second biggest city (Ville =P) and finally some more beer. As for the sights it varied between potholes, dead dogs on the roads, cities of great wonder, and burning towers. Many times I wished I could understand Finnish, but I had to go with the flow and laughed my head off @ the Oppi Fjellet song ™. After we finally reached the border at Udvar it became even more difficult to find an English speaking person… But they let us go without any problems (if we do not consider Ville being mistaken for a girl a problem =P) in the end.

As for the organizers in Croatia: they sukked >8( No offence Bosko and whateverwasyourname, but you couldn’t arrange jack shit. The sound was bad, there wasn’t any light on the stage, the whole gig got delayed (and Moonsorrow could only start at 1:30 am) and the crowd was also small (no surprise there since it started so late). But at least we had a nice dinner before the show and I even managed to give an interview to a girl in the name of the band =P I didn’t mean to do so but she only asked very trivial questions the whole time. So if any of you read somewhere ’interview with Zsuzsa of Moonsorrow’ don’t be surprised, haha.

I still wonder why can’t the Croatian ppl move aside if they see that I’d like to go through between them (since that’s the only way). This and also the way too many dead animals on the roads bothered me a lot. Well, after the sucky gig we headed for the so called ’hotel’ (read: motel) and had our well deserved… 3 hours of sleep. Yes, the time schedule was very tight…In the morning me and the other tour guide, Syra, kicked the guys outta their beds (no really… we were so nice =P) and started to prepare for the trip back to Budapest.

2004. 05. 01 (Saturday)
On the way to Budapest (Hungary)
I was very proud of the guys this day. They didn’t piss as much as the day before =D Tho we still had to stop two times, but overall we reached Budapest pretty fast (or I found it fast because I’ve slept in the car * blush *). Due to their lack of sleeping the sorrowerz were also a bit tired at the beginning of the trip but fear the Finns if they ever starts to talk… haha. I can say that we literally started to burn inside the wan (I felt like being under a magnifying glass held by a 12 yrs old evil boy) and thanked the gods when we finally arrived to the capital. Yes, it WAS real Hungary. At this point I went to my grandmom’s place to change and to freshen up a bit then back to Petofi Hall where Gothica 4 fest started at 2pm.

2004. 05. 01
Gothica Fest 4, Petofi Hall
Since Moonsorrow only started at 10pm we had a lot of time before to eat, drink and just to chill out. Tho it wasn’t only that, because Krist�f held a great surprise for all of us, he could actually arrange that Kalap�cs J�zsef (former singer of Pokolg�p) and S�rk�zi Lajos (guitarist of Pokolg�p) play a song (A Jel) with the band as a second last song. Listening to Pokolg�p (Hellmachine – literally translated XD) is fun, but not for a whole afternoon to say the least, haha. But the band had to do it in order to memorize the song well and they did so perfectly.

Unfortunately Ville was quite sick during the whole tour (no wonder * cough * toomuchbeer * cough * =P) but the show must go on. As the starting time was approaching I asked them if they want to put on any war paint. Surprisingly the answer was no and it took a little effort to convince them that the crowd will be disappointed if they won’t do it. So in the end they agreed and started to… paint themselves into Immortal wannabes, haha. You can imagine that it’s NOT what I had in mind (only a bit blood paint) but I didn’t have a word there anymore (Markus especially scared me as a twin brother of Legion from Marduk haha). Let’s just call it Raah Raah Bl��h paint from now on and when they were finished it wasn’t that bad after all.

The Hall was already full of metalheads (around 1000 or more) so it was high time to start the show finally. The playtime was around 1,5 hours if I remember correctly and it was a blast! The crowd was singing along (even tho the lyrics are in Finnish), moshing, headbanging, so basically getting crazy. I managed to take some pics from the photopit, the hardest was when Kalap�cs came on the stage and they started the surprise song. Fuck that guy hard up in his ass who was like walking back and forth in front of me all the time >8( Anyway, Ville learned a few Hungarian sentences in backstage which he used pretty well during the concert then when the gig was over we took some pics with Kalap�cs and Lajos and just collapsed. Of course the night wasn’t over just yet for there was also an official signing session which the guys had to attend. I acted as some kind of bodyguard there (tho it’s not like I could have done anything if a 2m tall yetti wanted to get to them haha), must have been a funny sight. After that we were pretty much exhausted and went straight to the hotel with taxi and drank some beers there. Filling out Hungarian crossword game for Finns is fun. If nothing else they’ve learned the most important word in Hungarian; s�r (beer) |,,/. And zee Germans are bad people, haha.

It was also fun ( = fuckin awkward ) to realize that there weren’t enough beds for the 6 of us. That’s when faggotry helped us and Marko/Markus & Janne/Mitja were willing to sleep in the same room. I’m pretty sure they were eagerly waiting for this opportunity, haha. Ville already passed out in the room with two beds so I was thrown there later on.

2004. 05. 02 (Sunday)
In the great city of Budapest (tourist whoring)
Sunday started with a very disturbing water line construction in the neighbourhood which ended up witnessing Marko coming out twice from the shower, first when he got wet (XD), second after he put the shampoo on his head, haha. Yes, it was hilarious. Apart from laughing at him we didn’t have anything to kill the time with until the cabs came, so the hotel’s cute lil’ doggie also got abused (not in any perverted sense, tho I’m not sure about Mitja… haha). Our apologies to the owners for that, haha. When finally the taxis arrived we and this Norwegian band, Mortal Love, who have travelled us the whole time as well but strangely I forgot to wrote them into my review so far, heh, so, we ALL went to the centre of Budapest to give the band a chance to act like their nature dictates; newbie tourists XD

Tho I admit Budapest is quite a sight, so through millions of picture shootings we got to this area, which held Tab�n Fest, and met Krist�f there. By this time we were in serious need of some more beer so I accompanied the Finns in their search for a beer tent.
A few hours later the rain started to fall so heavily that in that 10 mins running to find a shelter I was soaking wet >_< The rest of the night was spent in a restaurant with more boozing then since Ville started to feel very sick; we took him home with Krist�f.

The rest of the band (AND the Norwegians =P) came home later and I heard the next day that they had some fun on their way home in the subway XD Even tho I told them that inspectors are not a rare sight in Budapest =P
Later that night I heard that they made Zsolti (a guy who worked at the hotel, kewl dude, thanks for the dinner you gave them ;] ) to call Henri (Trollhorn) and telling some bullshit onto his answering machine, and shouting TOT�LIS MET�L hahaha. Jumping into the bushes and scaring the Norwegians must have been fun as well, not to mention the time when Markus was possessed by a demon XD

2004. 05. 03 (Monday)
Back to the airport
Again we had to wait ’till afternoon for Krist�f to arrive then he took part of the band to some music shop while me and Ville checked out the Square of Heroes. I let him to be taken over by his tourist side again then we went to meet the others at the Hammerworld editorial office.

I still wonder where did they put those 10 CDs and huge pile of shirts Krist�f gave them but in the end it didn’t cause any problem at the check in. Unlike that old bugger who took away their instruments. I could almost hear their hearts breaking when they saw how the guy handled their luggage, haha.

With the last handshakes ended the 4 days long Moonsorrow tour in Croatia and Hungary and the guys flew back to Finland.
It was a pleasure to be their guide on these days, hopefully I didn’t sucked as one too much XD
Hail all who have helped, feed and looked after us on this tour! See you all again under the serious moonlight…