Our bus

Our bus has only 2:nd, 4:th, 6:th and 8:th gear. And no reverse which makes things kind of tricky sometimes. So it is called Apollo 13 now.

Keith Moon impersonation.

Passau Dreiländerhalle.

Nuno Torres a.k.a. Towers-Nuno

This is Nuno Torres (Towers-Nuno). Our guitar tech. He is from Portugal. This is a great pic of him, he is actually way uglier (just kidding).

Everyday he brings us some guitars for the dressingroom just for having around if someone wants to practice a bit. He even brings me my fretless bass even though I'm the drummer and just have this new idea to learn how to play the bass. This is extra work and probably annoying for him, but he is a nice guy. Nuno of course does a lot of other things all day as well. Like setting up amps and re-stringing and tuning the basses and guitars.

Ljubljana

In general on this tour the "eastern" countries have been really great. Way better than at least I expected. Facilities backstage were always top notch, showers had always hot water and the catering was perfect. Not like how it used to be years back. Number one price for loud and wild audience was grabbed by Ljubljana, Slovenia. Even though the other countries came really close.

Döden.

Antonius Block: Vem är du?
Döden: Jag är Döden.
Antonius Block: Kommer du för att hämta mig?
Döden: Jag har redan länge gått vid din sida.
Antonius Block: Det vet jag.
Döden: Är du beredd?
Antonius Block: Min kropp är beredd, inte jag själv.
Antonius Block: Vänta ett ögonblick.
Döden: Så säger ni alla. Men jag lämnar inga uppskov.
Antonius Block: Du spelar ju schack, inte sant?
Döden: Hur vet du det?
Antonius Block: Åh, jag har ju sett det på målningar och hört det i visorna.
Döden: Ja, jag är verkligen en ganska skicklig schackspelare.
Antonius Block: Du kan ändå inte vara skickligare än jag.
Döden: Varför vill du spela schack med mig?
Antonius Block: Det är min sak.
Döden: Det har du rätt i.
Antonius Block: Villkoret är att jag får leva så länge jag står dig emot. Spelar jag dig matt, friar du mig.[Block räcker fram båda sina händer. Döden pekar på en av dem och får svart.]
Antonius Block: Du fick svart.
Döden: Det passar ju bäst så. Inte sant?

Night train to Bucharest.

We had a journey of 830 km on probably the worst roads in Europe ahead. So we decided to take a night train from Budapest to Bucharest. 15 hours. It started strange right away. The conductor was drunk, had missing teeth and was really fat and ugly (looked a bit like Leif Boork but 100 times worse). And he wanted bribes. He tried to tell us we only had paid for one ticket etc etc...the normal crap. He even draw on Oscar's pillow with a pen trying to explain to us. Joacim and Pontus had paid extra to be alone in a "cabin" of their own, but then came this guy with the biggest moustasch we'd seen in ages to join them (strange how they could resist and reject him). They bribed the drunk fat guy and they got their own personal space for two (lovers?) in the end.

They went full speed with the door open. The train was shaking and wobbling so it was of course very unsafe.

Me in the corridor. The train was fairly new, but everything really small and only half working. My bed was 180 cm. I'm 194. You do the math...
The train driver had this strange and annoying habit of blowing the horn every 30 seconds, all night long. We had the car (waggon) next to the locomotive and our cabine was all the way up front, so our ears were a few meters from the horns. Even though there was nothing out there for miles he kept hooting. Hooting with one horn, with both, the other one. When meeting other trains they were saying hello to each other by hooting loooong ones. Maybe it was some wolves or vampires on the tracks in the Transylvnian mountains? One cool thing was that the power connetcor for the locomotive was creating unbelievable much and big electrical sparks. It lit the whole landscape that otherwise had no lights whatsoever up.

Some travel food I got in Hungary. The sausages were awful. Intestines (bowels) full of meat dough with some grizzly fat chewy bits. Maybe I should have heated them? Fred bought some coffee. Ice cold. But who cares? It's the caffeine we are after. The Boci strawberry chocolate was fine. And orange flavoured Tic tacs are always a hit.

Ozz and Fred. I was all the way up over Ozz.

Budapest and x-mas in bus.

My kit fell again. I have to start playing softer.

We tried to create some x-mas feeling in our bunks. In this case outside mine. You can see Daniel Schindler's x-mas balls and garlands just over my lights.

Every night I take a pic of the audience. This one from yesterday in Budapest. I am the one responsible for taking the pic and for sending it to Oscar. He is putting them onto the HF's FB. Two days ago in Trencin, Slovakia I drew Hitler-beards on some fans as well as putting Hitler in the audience. He caught it in time unfortunatelly :-) (Pic below, unaltered pic on Hammerfall's Facebook-page)

Winter coming.

From last winter. The drain pipe froze, I think.

Road 101 in a blizzard.

Various travels lately.

Stayed at a one star hotel with Fullforce in Berlin. We started to wonder when they told us to park the bus a bit away from the hotel windows. Later we understood why, the guests puked and threw bottles out the windows at night.

Frauenparkplatz = Women parking. The Germans know who drives badly (or at least parks badly).

Saw this after drinking the water...

In Transylvania, Romania. Biggest room so far.

Drakula's airport.

OK, that's what the band "Kalapacs" name means.

Eastern travels somewhere. (Hungary probably).

We ask for Australian wine and here they got Italian wine and just wrote "Australia" on the bottle. Yes, it fooled us...not! The wine was fine, though.

Some problems on the train from Denmark to Sweden. Don't remember exactly what the problem was, but the passengers were upset.

Hotel Moskva, Zlin, Czech republic. We usually go to the pizza and bowling-restaurant.

Romanian airlines? Czech?

Double bass!

Hammer-force one.

Pain!

Jill Johnson.

Moreaus´ TV-show.

On the way to the Moreaus´ TV-show. Oscar bought everything with alcohol in the train restaurant. Bad idea.

POO!

Some asshole train conductor told me to take down the suitcase from the overhead rack. So I did, but I refused to have it out of sight.

New bus due to temperature swings.

For you that might wonder how we sleep. Here is my bunk. It's a space roughly 190 x 70 x 80 cm. I'm 194, sleeping diagonally is required. Our bus has 18 bunks usually. Crew and band all fits.
You usually, depending if it's a top or bottom bunk, have an outlet (mine had broken plastic but worked. See: middle top in pic), a fan and a light. On my bed there are:
2 x bottles with antiseptic alcohol for hands
1 x harmonica
1 x bootleg HF-hat
1 x reflecting band for arm
1 x computer with case (PC)
1 x old Nokia phone (I'm the only one without Iphone or Mac computer)
1 x fairly new Nokia phone (N8 from Katching)
2 x pillow
1 x blanket
1 x thermometer

Fred "DD" Lars, our bass player, suffering from hypothermia. He was fully clothed with hat and hood, and throusers and the works but still his vital signs went down to a minimum. Joacim, Fred and I had the most aft bunks and there was some sort of temperature problem with the last bus. One night we had visable breathing exhaust and actual frost on the metal parts in the bunks (while Joacim waa boiling in hell). We got three thermometers. One night Fred had 11, I had 12 and Joacim 25. Then all of a sudden Fred had 28 and I had 29 and Joacim 34. Before getting them we had way lower temperatures near the freezing point...that's why we got them in the first place, but we never got a "recorded" freezing notation.. It was kind of random.

It's hard to sleep on busses if you are not used to it, which I fortunatelly am.. Imagine a sleeping train and magnify it by 5. Bumpy roads (eastern Europe is really interesting), driver slamming on the brakes. Driver having a hard time with a gear. The whole thing shaking and wobbling. The bus feeling like it's running into a ravine. Driver feeling sleepy and driving onto side of the road. Band members screaming and shouting (partying) all night, band members and/or crew snoring. Band members or crew having terrible nightmares and screaming in agony. Loud bangs from doors when bus is parked. Loud music at all times.

We have gotten a different bus now...I'll report later how it's going.

Jumping fast from 3 degrees to 29 withing 10 minutes (at 13 in the pic). Better with the cold than the heat somehow.

Seb and the heads.

Seb is drawing on the used drumheads. They are becoming more and more elaborate. We're thinking of selling them to the highes bidder online somehow and give the money to a good cause. Now I throw them out into the crowd every night.

Praha

The kit after the show. Good thing it's a Tama so it will hold up during some abuse. I've had some issues lately of which level of (over)playing I should put into HammerFall. I come from a jazz/fusion-background and sometimes forget to hold back. I tried the old towel-over-the-head-in-a-complete-song-trick. But that just made it dark. Then I thought of the old holding-one-foot-on-one-bass-drum-in-a-complete-song-trick, but it got boring. So I just knocked the kit over in pure happiness and excitement.

Some Czech freaks after the show. I always take a pic of the crowd afterwards. You'll find them all in the HammerFall's facebook page.

What is this? Seems like it's a common light-sign in the old Czech republic official buildings.

Our bus driver Andy did his best to keep the bus on the Czech and Polish roads which are in serious need of repair. This night Joacim, Fredrik and my bunks were about 4 degrees above zero centigrade. I'm not kidding. We had all our clothes on. It was still freezing. We are buying sleeping bags tomorrow.

Walking with Joacim.

Took a walk in Luxenbourg. We found a factory, a train locomotive and a hole.




This, in Europe, familiar sign is a bit different. Seems like the man is fat.

Dummers point of view.

This is what I see night after night. Being a drummer is somewhat like being a half-musician, half-crew person. When the band is supposed to thank the audience after the gig (and I have to climb down and go in front of the drums) I feel shy and want to go and hide again.

Anderas "Metal" Schöwe

This is our friend Andreas. He is from Germany and has been with us on tour for four days now. He is a journalist and photographer extraordinaire.

Wien

Oscar and his Olivia.

Jenny and I had a day off in Wien. Here in a candy shop. We asked for Hitler-kugeln. They only had Mozart-kugeln.

At Aida coffee shop. Cakes and tea/coffee.

Stefanplatz at night.