The original plan was to leave on Friday morning to head to the Midsummer Festival in Rauma. However, after Scott, Thomas, and I got hooked up with free multiple day passes by Coach Tomi Haula and the band Dingo, we decided to head up a day early on Thursday night.
I give you some background about the Finnish festivals. Since the winters are so dark and cold, the Finns really celebrate when its summer and the sun is out. During the summer there are tons of festivals all throughout Scandinavia. This weekend was Midsummer, the Finns call it Juhannus (U-HaHN-US). Some Finns say its Finland's second biggest holiday besides Christmas. The festival started on Thursday and lasts until Sunday. Everyone leaves the cities and heads to festivals or summer homes to relax. When we left on Thursday night it really did seem like the city was empty. We didn't see any cars as we were leaving.
The festival is somewhat of a music festival. Pretty much all the famous bands in Finland come to play at this festival. Everyone camps out from Thursday to Sunday, and there was to be an estimated 50,000 people at this concert from Thursday to Sunday. Needless to say it was crazy, but still a lot of fun.
We got there Thursday night and found the RV and tents of Mikko, Juha, and Sepa. They have been coming to this festival for who knows how long, but they camp in the same spot every year and it is not 100 yards from the Mecano Beach stage. Their camping spot is in such a good location that it should be VIP only. They had a huge nice tent already set up for us that was big enough for the three of us. The ground was still pretty wet from it raining a little bit during the day, but it wasn't bad. Then we walked around a little bit through all the different stages. There was a Mecano Beach stage, which was mostly DJs and techno music. Then there was the R&B Cafe, which was mostly DJs and Finnish rappers "doin their thang." By the way it was not a Cafe at all just a small stage with a huge tent where people could dance. Then there was the main stage. This thing was huge. The coolest part about the whole thing is that it was on a beach of the bay. The mainstage was only about 50 yards from the water. It was really nice especially on Friday afternoon. It seriously felt like we were on the set of MTV Spring Break or we were in Cancun; the atmosphere with the bay and the stages was that nice. They even had a huge rock on the beach where people could sit. The weather probably got up to 76 degrees during its hottest point on Friday afternoon, but it got pretty chilly during the evening.
We were up pretty late on Thursday night because it was the first day of the festival and when you bring a lot of Finns together during Midsummer, they get wasted. They call it "The Finnish Way." So its pretty hard to sleep when you hear nothing but techno music as you lay on your pillow. It stopped for about 2 hours from around 5:30-7:30am. We did manage to get some sleep, but not much.
We got up on Friday, got something to eat, then headed to the mainstage to hear some good Finnish bands. Actually they were not that bad and the first few sang songs in English, which was real cool cause we could understand them. We saw Killer (pop rock), Kwan (hiphop rock), and Don Johnson Big Band (rap/rock) in the afternoon and they were all in English. One thing about Finnish bands, some of them don't look like they go together. For example, Kwan had a short white girl as one of their lead singers, the other one was a big black guy. She was dressed in a sleezy tight black gothic dress and he was in a nice black suit with a hot pink tie. The rest of the band looked like it just got done playing with Ozzie Osborne and they had a black DJ that looked like he just got off tour with Puff Daddy (had a R&B Cafe shirt on). It looked like a goth band with 2 black guys thrown together. They were actually really good where the girl and guy would rap and the band would play harder rock. The best band would have to be Don Johnson Big Band though. This was a group of guys playing in a big band, which means they have a drummer, two percussionists, a guitar, a base, a keyboard, and a sax/flute. That was the band and the singer was a 23-year old looking skinny white guy who rapped faster than anything I've ever heard. It actually turned out really neat, unlike anything I've ever heard in the States.
The rest of the bands were good, but they sang in Finnish so we really didn't know what they were singing. However, everyone else knew the words and were singing along. It was cool but a little weird to hear 10,000 people singing as loud as they can a song you have never heard before and one you can't understand. It was cool to see all the Finnish people come together to see and sing along with Finnish bands singing Finnish songs. There was one Finnish song that I have heard before. Its a real catchy song by a punk rock Finnish band named Apulanta and the song is called "hei hei mitä kuuluu," which means "hey hey whats going on."
There were 12 bands that played the mainstage on Friday from 1pm to 3:20am. Theres nothing like looking down at your watch seeing 3:30am and the sun rising and feels like its 8am in the States. Finland is crazy but the festival was really fun. When we got back to the tent to try to get some sleep, we noticed that there wasn't as many people playing music and even throughout the night there wasn't as many techno songs blasting everywhere. So I guess the Finns were tired after their first two days of partying and were ready for some sleep. That was good because I needed it, but I still pretty tired when we woke up on Saturday. I have to mention that Thomas was struggling on Saturday morning. He was so tired and hung over that he could hardly function. I have to say it was quite hilarious.
Saturday morning was rough from two days of no sleep and we had already decided that we were leaving on Saturday afternoon. The rest of the bands were Finnish and I think we took all the Rauma Midsummer we could take.... Throughout the festival we saw Kimi being a big bad bouncer and Jeri was the big man - head of security. We saw some crazy Finnish costumes, for example a guy with a beer belly dressed in a spider man costume and an elvis wig. I got a picture of this that I will post for you. We also saw a guy standing on top of a huge crane on a tiny platform that was trying to set some sort of record. He was going to stand on the top of a crane for 36 hours straight. No sitting, no laying, nothing but standing for 36 hours. I'm not sure if he made it or not, but everytime I looked up he was still up there just standing. Anyway, it was a good time, and we have to thank the whole crew with Juha, Mikko, and Sepa for taking care of us again and making sure we have a tent, food, etc as well as Coach for the tickets. They were great and made our first Midsummer at Rauma awesome.
I took some pictures, mostly of the bands, but I will have them up once I get an adapter so I can get my laptop going.
Check the Random Story page for 2 stories from the weekend.