SA:On the Road: More Than Fest, Slovakia & Tampere, Finland

Friday 21.8. Travel & More Than Fest

Our last weekend together this year and the end of the tour as well so this was

bound to be an interesting one. Well, no sleep until the holidays, right ? Got up at

0500 back home for the 0520 cab ride to the airport. Met up with Tony & Tommy and

got to Helsinki alright. We had a tight 1,5 hour change but since the rest of the guys already started with the check-in of the luggage before we arrived, we had plenty of

time to have some breakfast…and beer. A couple of hours later we landed in Budapest.

Our 200km vanride was taking quite long since we had a flat tire but luckily the driver had all the right gear and a spare one so we got to the festival without any other problems…so far ;-) It was somekinda amphitheatre, outside as is the custom during

the summer. Other bigger bands on the bill where Helloween and Kreator….Since our 

show ends at 2130 we have to get to our hotel in Budapest straight away in order to try to catch at least a couple of hours of sleep. Our lobby call tomorrow is at 0400 so you can imagine how that’s like ;-)

Anyways, the show went really well and we watched a couple of songs from Halloween before we left. Upon arrival in Budapest the driver of course got lost and we spent over an hour driving around the block…thank you very much ;-) At 0225 I got into my room after making sure everyone got their keys and our shuttle was ordered for 0400.

Saturday 22.8. Travel & Tourending show @Pakkahuone, Tampere, Finland

0400 after one hour of sleep (mind you the other boys did maybe sleep 10min more at the most so we were all at the same situation. Of course the shuttle was too small even though we specifically asked told them that we have 9 people and around 20 bags. No problem we took an extra cab on the side and headed for the aiport. The usual hassle, nothing too bad and we were on our way. Slept a bit on the first flight from Budapest to Munich…and then some more on the flight to Helsinki. Well in Helsinki we were picked up by our bus so we had the opportunity to sleep. Of course there was a bunch of things to take care of for the Tampere show….I did that and then tried to rest for a bit.

The Show in Tampere was a really special one, just as planned. We played for about 2,5 hours. The whole of Ecliptica for the last time, some acoustic stuff and most of the Pariah’s Child material that we’ve been playing during this tour. In addition to that we had the Preacher doing live speeches which was funny as hell…at least to us ;-) Eventually the show was over and we spent the next 2 hours having drinks and saying goodbye to everyone. This was also the last show for Punky, he’s moving on to other things. At 0115 we went to the night-train for the last time this tour. Since the restaurant car was closed we went to bed, tired but happy. In the morning we woke up in Kemi and this World Tour was over and done with.

So, thank you all who came to the shows and made this the best World Tour for us so far. We did a lot of interesting shows, some really special ones and went around the globe….almost 160 shows in 1,5 years…I think the total count of countries was close to 30. We’ll be off the road until February when we head out to the US & Canada with Nightwish and Delain. The Next SA update will probably be when we start working on our next album in January….until then there will be some Silent Voices stuff going on as well as Klingenberg Syndrome 2…which will be finished by the end of this year at the latest….more about that later…

For now and on behalf of the Sonata Arctica band and crew, Thank you all 

very much !!! See you soon again !!

cheers,

Henkka

ps.yes, I’ll post some pics from the summer shortly ;-)