SOILWORK ... ESTONIA AND BACK IN 42 HOURS 25 MINUTES JUNE/JULY 2007 June 29th to July 1st 2007 / Hard Rock Laager festival Estonia by mark von sound Friday June 29th 11:45pm ... I descend the ten flights of stairs from my apartment down to the street ready for my gruelling 2 day adventure to Eastern Europe ... Ahead of me I have two nights of minimal sleep ... And the purpose of my journey is to work for Swedish metal band Soilwork ... Our eventual destination will be Vana-Vigala ... 60 miles south of Tallinn ... the capitol city of Estonia ... this country is bordered by Russia to the East and Latvia to the south ... the north and west is all coastline along the Baltic sea ... with Helsinki in Finland just an hour and a half ferry ride away ... But for the first leg I get a taxi for the short distance down to the bus station where I met my friend and guitar roadie Chris who will accompany me on this jaunt ... Saturday June 30th 12:15am ... we leave for the 4 hour National Express coach ride down to our airport ... I prefer to call them Nation Distress as I find the seats are so uncomfortable and the drivers negotiate the roads as if they were in the Monaco Grand Prix ... The coach filled up with more people than I expected at this unsociable hour ... a large group of chattering girls filled the seats in our part of the bus with one sitting next to Chris ... she starts talking to him ... and I hear her saying the annoying sentence ... "I'm not name dropping but" ... at this juncture I quickly insert my earphones into the correct orifices and enter the world of my Ipod ... hurrah !! ... A couple of hours previous to leaving my home tonight I got Soilwork's set-list for the next day emailed to me ... so I hastily download all the songs to arrange in the correct order in a playlist so I could check out exactly what I had in store for the Festival ... Between each song I could hear the girl chewing Chris' ear off ... poor guy he just wanted to sleep ... she seemed to be suffering from a acute case of verbal diarrhoea ... I'm sure they have pills to ease the effects ... I believe they are called valium ... that would silence her for sure ... mind you at one point she was discussing the benefits and effects of horse tranquilizers ... such a shame she didn't bring a few for a mid journey snack ... Anyway her and her gaggle of holiday birds departed the bus at Luton Airport ... previous to this we stopped in the concrete labyrinths of Leicester ... Milton Keynes and Luton ... three of the drabbest most insipid and subfusc towns I have ever had the misfortune of visiting ... Concerning national news ... Our adventure has dropped on a day when a huge part of England is underwater from floods ... many roads are closed and whole towns submerged ... living on the fifth floor of my apartment block I will be OK until my food runs out ... Just a few hours earlier today in London a car was discovered containing a huge nail bomb ... so national security was on tenterhooks ... but we battled with adversity to beat the floods and national crisis to get to our airport ... 4:10am ... as dawn was breaking we arrive at Stansted Airport ... classed as one of London's airports but is in fact bloody miles away from England's capitol ... Stansted seem to be mainly run by 'budget airlines' ... These companies strip back the costs in anyway possible to make it cheaper ... and one main cutback was comfort ... I guess this is all good if you are paying for it yourself but the festival was paying for ours ... and a bright orange Easy Jet flying caravan was what we got ... our flight is due to leave at 6:45am ... only the cheapest flights leave at such an unsociable hour of the day ... I was expecting things not to be too busy in the terminal for check in ... but ... oh how wrong I was ... in a huge football pitch sized room were thousands of people also trying to check in on a hundred different flights ... it was utter chaos ... ... lines of people and luggage in every direction ... once checked in it was time to go through security ... this was an even bigger clusterf*ck ... again many lines of people coming to a bottle neck of confusion before the lucky people got let through one by one ... this all took so long we had to dash to make it to our plane on time ... from the terminal to get to our gate we had to ride the monorail ... then through the final checks before walking out onto the runway to the plane ... even devoid of red carpet I still felt like royalty until I saw the bright orange Easyjet plane ... on approaching it I helped the pilot by spinning the big propeller to start the engine ... with the engine engaged I ascended the steps to enter the fuselage ... once inside I become a human hawk ... I had a peregrine moment ... scanning up and down all the rows for a window seat ... always my seat of choice due to it being easier to sleep and you also don't have any annoying sparrow bladders wishing to get passed every few minutes ... I spotting the very last one available which I swooped in and made my own ... unfortunately for me the guy sat immediately behind had the worst body odour smell I have ever suffered ... budget flying at it's best !! ... my eyes were streaming with the stench ... but magically when the main air conditioning kicked in the smell got blown back ... I swear the entire row behind him melted into the upholstery ... akin to the victims of John George Haigh's acid bath murders during the 1940's ... Well with gusto myself and Chris had managed to get to the plan on time ... unfortunately the last seventeen passengers didn't ... this delayed us by a further 45 minutes ... 7:30am ... we take off from English soil to soar into the morning sky ... I soon got into the best possible sleeping position I could contort myself into ... which was hoodie rolled up as pillow next to my head leaning against the window whist folding my legs in seven under the seat in front ... I was asleep before we took off ... with extreme fatigue from not achieving any bed since the previous morning I was out like a light ... due to being sat up I did awake several times with terrible pains in my neck ... I looked round to see if anyone was trying to harpoon me with knitting needles from a crossbow ... but I didn't catch them ... after 2 hours 45 minutes we get to our destination of Tallinn Airport ... with the timezone changing the clocks moved on 2 hours so we landed at 12:15pm local time ... and for the first time in my life I walked on Estonian soil and breathed Estonian air ... to ensure basic funds we changed some currency at the bureau de change ... their money is called the Krooni ... The woman pictured on the 100 Krooni note resembled Sigourney Weaver from Ghostbusters 2 era ... when she had longer hair ... I think it's wonderful for the Estonian nation to celebrate such a great actor and role model for other women ... I'll probably find out it's actually their president or queen ... then be arrested for treason ... then tortured and shot ... 12:45pm ... we are met by an Estonian gentleman who I think is called Tawl ... he has two long thin braids coming down off his beard ... as soon as I saw them I contemplated the risks of catching them in jacket zips and even car doors ... how problematic eating spaghetti could be ... and cooking with a barbeque ... the braid beard is so impractical ... He drives us in a minibus to our hotel ... we arrived and got checked in by 1:30pm ... the hotel is OK ... it's basic but clean ... I switch on the television expecting to see a bizarre Baltic game show ... but to my astonishment I am greeted by the English comedy sitcom "The Vicar Of Dibley" ... I never thought I'd see the bubbly Dawn French with Estonian subtitles ... I look out of the window I see forests of pine trees all around ... but immediately below two floors down on a flat metal roof is a clear plastic carrier bag contain a brown substance and some white toilet paper ... I really hope it isn't what I think it is ... In front of me in the room there is a chair ... one leg is sticking out at an angle ... it has been sabotaged and now strategically balanced as a booby trap for the next victim ... across from me Chris is snoring away on his child sized single bed ... zzzzzz 6:30pm ... We hit the lobby to rendezvous with our Swedish employers Soilwork ... I introduce you to ... Ola and Ola and Sven and Daniel and Partick and Bjorn and Dirk who is plays drums and is actually from Belgium ... which suited me as his common language with the band is English ... Across from us in the lobby is a television room showing yet more English broadcasting ... but this time it's Mr Bean ... of all our great television programmes to chose from ... they want Mr f*cking Bean ... I despair ... We depart for our 60 mile trek south to the festival in convey with the band in a mini bus and Chris and I in a car ... there is also a third passenger in the car who is some random lost girlfriend of a member of one of the other bands playing ... she sure was a talker ... telling us at great length her love of the two movies Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Clockwork Orange ... an odd combination ... I think she is mental ... We stop at a garage for drinks ... above the door in is a sign that says in large writing the word pood ... this entertained us enough for Chris to get out of the car to take a photograph of it ... a few seconds later he returned visibly shaken ... he explained that when attempting to take the photo a man who appeared to be drunk got out of a car and started threatening him ... so Chris retreated back to our vehicle ... it turns out the guy was a Russian and completely out for a fight ... nice ! ... We drove beyond Tallinn city limits proceeding through thicker and thicker forest ... there's wild bears and moose living there ... I looked but saw none ... The expedition into the Estonian countryside took over an hour before reaching deep in the trees a large clearing where we discovered the Hard Rock Laager festival ... not huge ... just a few thousand ... Once in the festival we check out catering ... to my surprise and disappointment they had cooked the traditional English dish ... sausage and chips ... Not very Estonian ... And unfortunately no veggie option ... So breakfast lunch and dinner was a dozen or so sausage scented cremated crinkle cut chips ... or fries of course if the language you speak is Star Spangled English ... The main stage and our dressing room is just a few feet away from a small lake which was the natural habitat of the Baltic Mosquito ... a large angry bloodthirsty bug ... and so I did a bad thing ... the girl who came with us in the car came into our dressing room ... she sat next to me talking ... when ... I watched a mosquito land on her forehead ... It started drinking her blood ... when it achieved the size of a baked bean and full of hemoglobin it took off ... It was only now that she felt something ... the small red dot swelled up and up ... within just a few minutes she could challenge John Merrick in a ... trying to find a hat that fits competition ... my reason for not warning her wasn't down to any malice but just pure curiosity of watching a vampiric act before my very eyes ... Main support was from a metal band called Vader ... They played no slow numbers for the lovers on the dance floor ... 11pm ... Vader finish so we have 1 hour to get their equipment off and ours on stage and set up and sound-checked ... due to a completely new crew for the band and using hired in festival equipment this took slightly longer than anticipated ... but no big deal ... Sunday July 1st 12:10am ... the band hit the stage to play a fourteen song set ... the show went great ... everyone did their job well ... the band played a killer set ... the crowd seemed a little lackluster but perhaps Estonian's are a bit more reserved than other countries ... and also it is the final band for a crowd who have been on a 2 day drinking binge and did look somewhat unstable on their feet ... It is now I must bring your attention to reports of an Estonian drink made from potatoes which is 196 percent proof ... the strongest drink in the world ... 1:30am Sunday ... the shows over ... This time of year here is remarkable ... nighttime at it's darkest the sky is still blue ... probably still light enough to read a book ... Chris told me there were loads of kids wearing death metal corpse paint ... it pissed me off that I missed them all ... they look extraordinary I can never help myself from staring at them ... also I wanted to have my photo taken with them ... another time ... Backstage after the show a very excitable kid told me I'd mixed the best he'd ever heard in Estonia ... I then questioned his sincerity when I saw his right forearm arm was in plaster ... and realized when shaking his hand he feared agony if he said anything short of a serious complement to me ... After a couple of cans of the festival's own brand beer called ... ROCK ... it's time to say my farewells to my new friends Soilwork and get a car back to the hotel ... eventually finding my strangely small hotel bed at 4am ... 8:30am Sunday ... alarm ... awake ... up ... and shower ... achieving the correct temperature was near impossible ... to quote Eddie Izzard ... it's like safe cracking ... with the temperature set there's a separate control for increasing the velocity of the water ... when on full I became pinned to the back wall of the shower ... it was a water cannon ... waked me the f*ck up I tell you ... After a child sized breakfast with plates no bigger than a ten pence piece we wait for our car ride back to the airport ... When it doesn't show at 9:30am I arrange a taxi with the hotel ... the hotel gave me 150 Kroonis for the fare ... about £6.50 / $13 ... At 10am with just 2 hours before our flight the taxi shows up ... the roads were clear and the airport devoid of crowds so we were checked in and at the gate by 10:35am ... result ... until ... the information screens tell us our plane is going to be delayed by 20 mins ... so our rescheduled take off time is now 12:20pm ... don't want to be too late as we have to make a connecting coach back to Nottingham ... I sat in the departure lounge next to our gate ... and by the looks of the other people also waiting the rest of the plane will be inhabited by several groups of Chav Cockney wankers who'd been on cheap drunken weekend benders over here ... probably stag weekends ... These arrogant knuckle dragging retards are an embarrassment to my country but unfortunately from traveling so much they seem to be the default Englishman abroad ... Loudmouthed ... drunk and completely disrespectful to the local people ... Some attempted flippant impressions of Estonians ... I was sat in the corner cringing ... I've only been here for a day but I have loved my short stay ... The Estonian people are great with a beautiful country ...helpful and polite and devoid of bad attitude ... I look forward to coming back ... 12:20pm ... time to board our plane ... again another bright orange caravan ... and again the pilot needed me to spin the big propeller to start the engine ... which is certainly a fun task if not a little scary ... I am from a family of propeller spinners ... My father did it and his father and his fathers father so on through history ... I am from good propeller spinning stock ... and ... just to help out I also did some map reading for the pilot ... he couldn't find London Stansted on the map ... all was good once I pointed out it was nowhere near London ... in fact bloody miles away ... And again I had a window seat for the journey back ... right next to the wing ... as we flew through the clouds I could read printed on it ... do not walk on the wing ... and so ... I ignored my rebellious streak and adhered to the rules and chose not to walk on the wing ... After minimal sleep for two days I dropped off for a powernap ... Chris said I was snoring ... I don't care ... Just shows I can adapt to my surroundings like a chameleon ... Or rather a tired sloth !! ... But when I awoke I again had the same stabbing pains in my neck ... I again looked round to see if anyone was harpooning me with knitting needles from a crossbow ... But again caught no one ... So I can only assume it was ninjas using the gift of stealth ... or maybe an invisibility cloak ... We land with only 40 minutes until our bus leaves ... so we exit plane ... walk from runway to building ... get mono rail to the main terminal ... wait with hundreds of other people to get through passport control ... wait for our luggage on the carrousel ... find the coach station and finally our coach ... Chris was the ultimate pessimist saying we wouldn't make it ... I believed Lady Luck was looking down on us favourably today ... we made the bus with seconds to spare ... at 1:50pm we depart Stansted airport on our National Distress coach back home ... not forgetting to change our clocks back to the correct timezone ... I had a great adventure even though I have now developed neckabifida from having to sleep upright ... on the journey from the airport the coach again stopped in the town of Luton ... It was here we drove passed Michelle's Massage Parlour ... from the look of the place I don't think necks are their specialty ... The 4 hour coach journey seemed to last forever ... but I eventually shut the door of my apartment at 6:10pm after my 3000 mile expedition ... with an array of different modes of transport ... 3 taxis ... 1 minibus ... 2 aeroplanes ... 2 monorails ... 2 cars and 2 coaches ... ALL IN 42 HOURS AND 25 MINUTES ... with just 4 hours 30 mins in a bed ... Starved with hunger what food did I eat when I got in? well ... sausage and chips of course ... And as I finish typing this up ... coincidently Clockwork Orange is on the television ... Viddy well time for spatchka ... When I visit these wonderful countries I like to learn something ... and from Estonia I have learnt that stop is spelt with 2 p's ... Stopp ... For the English speaking traveler this makes translation a walk in the park ... Another great word I now know is Pood ... This means 'shop' or 'store' ... However we can be excused for giggling like children when thinking it meant the past tense of poo ... To finish this journal ...the news today ... from July 1st in England a no smoking ban has started in any enclosed public places such as pubs bars and venues ... As I quit back on march 9th I'm all for it ... But Chris likes smoking his ciggies so is not best pleased ... I say tough shit bitch !! ... persecute the unclean ... damn dirty people chimneys ... I am now a member of the worst kind of group ... The self righteous non-smoker ... And those were my days June 29th to July 1st 2007 ...