Creepy Crawlie/Ristisaatto eurotour 2005

The tour started from Vuoritalo on 10th of June. It was also Vuoritalo's 3rd birthday and it was a nice party. We went home early, cos the next day we had to leave to Tampere with all the stuff.

Next morning we were supposed to meet a Vuoritalo. Jaani and Jonsku were an hour late, so we started off without them and they had to take the train. We arrived to Vastavirta-club and did soundcheck, when some drunken idiot started yelling some inappropriate shit to us. We dedicated Testicle Cat to him and all the other idiots, which the place was quite full of.
The gig started around 10pm. Omaisuusvahinko was great, also Ristisaatto played before us. At our gig some idiot threw bottles and his cellphone(!!!) to the stage, and were acting like an asshole yelling stupid things and pulling Peppi's hair. Peppi beated him up a little after our last song. We had made clear that we won' t take no shit from no-one, but obviously they didn't get the message. After the gig some other men also talked some incredible shit to us, and sexually harrassed some of us. That really sucked, because Vastavirta is a punk club, and people aren't supposed to feel threatened there. All of those idiots were loca drunks and they were there only for the cheapest beer in the neighbourhood, and we shouldn't feel like shit because of them. So that was a really great start to the tour...

The next afternoon we hit the road. The ship was leaving at 9pm from Turku. At the harbour, Markus got gasoline in his eye trying to fix the car. We also noticed that we don't have a place for the car at the ship, so Pipsa and Eronen had to wait in the car for some cancellations. Luckily they got one. We were discoing until 5 in the morning, got 2 hours of sleep, and around 8 o'clock we started to drive through Sweden, which is a pain in the ass literally. We didn't have any crowns so we had to wait to get to Germany where we could buy some food. During the drive Eva catched a cold.

At Helsingborg we took a ferry to Germany. It only took about 5 hours, but still some weird things happened. Some revolting man grabbed Eva's crutch as she was walking down the hallway. We were pissed off. The ferry arrived to Germany late in the evening, so we decided to drive the whole night thru to Switzerland, where we could finally relax.

We drove straight to Yverdon, where is a squat in which we spent a couple of days on. There were no electricity, so we had nothing to do really but drink beer and sleep. Me, Peppi and Eva spent a day at the town shopping and drinking cheap wine at the park. Yverdon is a nice little place. From Yverdon we left to Lausanne, where our first gig was going to be. There was a squat called Thrashland, where we spent couple of days also. There were toilets and shower! And VERY delicious food! But my god the heat in that town! There were like thousand degrees. The people were nice at the squat, even though the Swiss people didn't turn out to be as outgoing and social we had thought.

Friday, June 11th, Thrashland, Lausanne, Switzerland

When we were putting the stuff together for soundcheck, we noticed that we had left the stand for hi-hats at Tampere! Luckily the people there got one from somewhere, and we could play. The gig was good, even though Pipsa had fever, and both Peppi's and Pipsa's voices were shit because of the flu. We videotaped the gig and laughed afterwards at the dancing people at the audience. People bought some stuff from our distro, mostly Ristisaatto-stuff.  It's a pity that Thrashland is going to be teared down. It's such a great place and we had good time hanging out there.
 

Saturday, June 12th, Mala Manera, Milan, Italy

The next morning we drove all the way to Italy. Or at least tried to.. We had to climb up the Alps with our car, and of course the piece of shit broke down. We had to stop every 5 or 10 minutes to wait for the engine to cool down. Luckily it was very hot and we could lay in the sun. The view was amazing from up there, and we took some pictures and videotaped also, like decent tourists should. We found a little brook where we cooled down and refilled our water bottles. We also saw a lot of cows chilling with the bells on their necks. So the 3-4 hour drive took us 12 hours, and of course the stupid police checked our stuff at the border. Me and Peppi had to empty our bags. I bet they were hoping to find something little more interesting than used tissues and mouldy bread, heh. So the cops let us go, and we arrived to Milan sometime around 10pm. The guys from Thrash Brigade came to get us and we followed their car to Mala Manera squat. The gig finally started around 1 o'clock at night, and some Italian band played almost an hour. Then it was our turn. The gig was again good even though the singers didn't have no voices this time either. Couple of guys were asking for our t-shirts, but we didn't have big sizes left. Few also bought our cd, and it was funny cos everyone thought we were Ristisaatto, and we always had to tell them that it's the boyband. The morning after we took a free busride to the city and went to get some Italian pizza! :P The staff were Chinese, but still the pizza was as delicioso I had remembered.
 

 Monday, June 14th, PMK, Innsbruck, Austria

 At the evening we said goodbye to Italy and headed towards Austria. We drove like 200km to the wrong direction. I woke up sometime in the night and we were near Venice. After that I woke up at Innsbruck, it was something like 5 am. We couldn't call Aldina that time at night so we parked our car to a street and got some more sleep. At 9 am we decided it was ok to finally call her, and she gave us directions to PMK, where our gig was going to take place later. We went straight back to bed, slept a couple of hours and when we woke up, there was breakfast waiting. Aldina said that we can eat and drink for free as much as we want to. That was definately the warmest welcome we had on the whole tour. Aldina and her boyfriend were so friendly. We thought that there wasn't going be many people at the gig cos it was Monday, but there were something like 50 people at least, it was nice. The gigs went well and people bought a lot of stuff from the distro. After the gig we sat outside talking with some local boys and later we went to Aldina's place to sleep. We had to wake up very early the next morning cos there was going to be a long drive to Bratislava. In the morning we said goodbye, Aldina gave us lots of food and drinks to enjoy in the car.
 

Tuesday, June 15th, Garaze Pod Mostom, Bratislava, Slovakja

We arrived to Bratislava in the evening. We didn't got a clue where to go and we drove around the city. Then we saw some guy with DIS-something patch on his jacket, and we kidnapped him and some girl to our car, and even if they didn't speak a word of English, they managed to get us to the place where the gig was. The place was amazing. There were like 20 little garages on the row and we played in one of them, and the audience was outside. We had invited our friends Elli and Jesse over there to see our gig, cos they were interrailing and were at Bratislava that day. We went to get some really cheap beers to the local pub. Peppi was really sick, and we wondered if she can sing at all. She also had eye infection. Anyway we tried our best, which was something like 7 songs, because the microphones were lousy, and neither Peppi or Pipsa didn't have their voices. After he shows we drank a few beers, and then went to sleep at that garage.
 

Wednesday, June 16th, Pod Klenbou, Vsetin, Chech Republic

Vsetin was a strange little town near the border of Chech. We spent the day at the town trying to do some shopping. Every shop had the same clothing, which reminded us about the wonderful 90's. The sellers just stared at us, and it was really annoying. The first smile we saw at that town, was in the saleswoman's face when she got some money on her hands. The place was like Kirkkonummi. We bought some cheap beer from the shop and went to the bar where the gig was. Peppi had some tea and later we ate some delicious pasta and salad. We played first. The gig was short again. People didn't seem to like us, just standing there, but they asked for encore. Ristisaatto was a total success. After hem some local band played like an hour. We waited for them to stop so we could pack he stuff and start to drive all the way to Germany. We noticed that we had an extra crash cymbal we had took with us by accident. We thought it was from Slovakia but it turned out to be Aldinas.  
 

Thursday, June 17th, Albersdorf, Germany

We drove all night and day to finally get to Albersdorf, where was the warm-up party for Punk Am Ring- festival. We cancelled our gig, so that Peppi and Pipsa could save their voices to the las gig of the tour. Markus had a little too much Mümmelmann and he passed out at the car. We woke him up just before their show, and it was interesting. German people seemed to like them. We stayed at Pogo Paul's that night.
 

Friday, June 18th, Punk Am Ring- festival, Germany

At the morning we went to copyshop to copy more booklets for our cd and ate some sandwhiches for breakfast. We visited the supermarket and liqourstore to buy some more Mümmelmann and beer for the festivals. Our exhaust pipe fell off and we drove over it. People stared at us again, partly because Pogo Paul wasn't wearing any pants. At the gates there was police checking people for drugs. I laughed when they checked my hair :D We didn't have anything, so we could drive to festival area to wait for the food to be ready. We were supposed to play 11.45pm, but the local bands all played like over an hour, so our turn was after 1pm, when we had heard some bands playing ''Hey Ho, Let's Go!'' three fucking times. There is also other songs to cover.. Anyway, we hit the stage, and after half an hour we were ready to start. For some reason Pogo Paul was at the stage the whole gig drinking Peppi's Mümmelmann. We told him to get lost but he just stayed. I guess the gig was a success, even though I have never played that bad. Some fucking idiots harrassed Peppi afterwards, but we told them to fuck off, and it was that easy. We stayed at the car. When we woke up at morning it was thunder and lightning and raining, and we decided to get the hell out of there. There was still 2 days of K-town festival left.
We picked two American hitchhikers up, and the drive was hilarious, everyone was drunk or just hysterical. People stared at us at the ferry because we didn't actually know how to behave. At K-town it was finally time to relax and drink some delicious cherry wine and eat falafel. It was also nice to see Finnish friends over there. Me and Peppi didn't buy tickets, we just sat outside. The next day there was bike wars, and in the evening we were supposed to leave cos there was a long way to Stockholm, and we didn't want to miss the morning ship. We couldn't find Simouni and Tuisku (who was coming with us home) anywhere, and everyone started to get nervous. At the last minute they got back to the car and we could finally go home. The police stopped us for driving to red traffic lights, and didn't notice that Simouni's drivers license wasn't legal. So we drove all night and managed to get to the ship in the last minute, even though the car's clutch broke just before the harbor. The cruise was quite boring, some drunken Finnish people singing karaoke and waiting to get home. We had to take the train from Turku, and it felt like an eternity.
In spite of all the misfortune, the tour was great, but it was also great to get back home.