KATRA: Once upon a time in Germany (WGT)

Once upon a time in Germany (WGT)

As always our travelling party was a little late in the morning. We were supposed to meet each other at 8.30 am in front of the rehearsal grip, but somehow the cat dragged everyone of us in around 9:am. Luckily we had still plenty of time.

We were at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport around twelve and went straight to the check-in. There we pondered what to do with instruments and the weight-problem. Not mine ;). Just how many kg/person can be placed to the airplane's hold…

Then we queued to the passport control. That was the easy part for everyone else except for me. I had this huge backpack, which has many hidden pockets. And of course I did remember to check the pockets... Yeah right. The backpack peeped in x-ray. I had stay there and check its pockets, when everyone else got to the other side of the fence. Well, I opened one pocket and found a big bottle of deodorant. Ok, once again they x-raid it. This time there was still something wrong. And again I checked. Well, there was a hairspray bottle, which was a bit too big. X-ray, check, x-ray, check. Finally I found 5 items one at a time, which were not supposed to be in those pockets. You know I have red hair, but you should have seen my face, when I finally entered the other side. Everything from that on went quite smoothly while in the airport… except do you wanna know what happens if you say bomb too loudly?... just kidding.

We arrived to Germany around 3:pm. We took our belongings and carried those about one mail trying to find the car rent-centre. Finally we found it. We travelled with this really nice car and because I don’t know anything about cars I can only say that the color was silver and it was a big car. Have you btw noticed, when a man talks about a car he says: “Do you see that car, that Mercedes-98…etc”, a woman says: “Oh, do you see that car, that little red one”… You are right, I generalized a bit. Back to the subject…

The car trip to Leipzig was hilarious. Teemu drove and made these funny robot noises and Johannes told jokes. But the climax was our interpretation of Bohemian rhapsody from Queen. There we were driving too fast on the germane highway and singing Bohemian rhapsody in five different harmonies, which of course hit the note everytime.

Finally we found ourselves in Leipzig. Somehow, though, we were a bit speeding blind, ‘cause the speed camera on patrol took two photos of us… or maybethe people in Leipzig just liked us so much.

We didn’t have enough time to take our stuff to the hotel, so we drove straight to get the tickets and then to the festival area. I’ve never been before in WGT, so it was really nice to see the festival area and the stage etc. We even had our own backstage dressing room. It was really cool… there was a mirror and "freshments", what else do you need? Ou.. and of course a bathroom.

We spent well the whole hour before the gig meditating in our own Finnish way and when was our time to head to the stage, the athmosphere was excellent.

The gig was great. I loved the audience. I didn’t hear myself in some parts of the gig, but I didn’t let that bother me. I just wanted to sing and have a really good time.

We hadn’t had anything to eat during the whole day, so after the gig, we headed to get some food! Which was btw great..again! I could almost feel the sugar rush… or at least something, which made me feel warm and cosy?

Something really interesting happened when we were sitting outside, behind the backstage catering. We found a funk container!! In what world can one ever find a funk container? We were so thrilled that we had to take photos of that. Then the guys decided to take some Hurriganes -photos (Hurriganes was/is a famous Finnish band). Maybe that’s the style for our next promo shooting-sessions. Something new, something blue, something retro…

Around 12: am we finally dragged ourselves to the hotel, where Matti and I sat in the lobby bar till 3: am trying to make the world a better place or us more cheerful. Then we had a good night sleep -about three hours. At 6:am we were forced to get up and jump in the car. I slept the whole journey to Berlin and from Berlin to Helsinki and from Helsinki to Tampere. What can I say, I have a good sleeping habits.

It was a really fun journey and it really gave us something…like a speeding ticket two weeks later.

It had a really cool photo of Teemu and his sunglasses. Seriously though, can’t wait for the next gig abroad which is at Summer breeze festival 13^th of August.

(Almost) Sincerily yours
Katra