TARJA TURUNEN: Regards from Sofia, Bulgaria!

TARJA TURUNEN has issued the following blog:

"So far so good. Everybody around is healthy and the road takes us further every day. Countries and environments are changing all the time. It is nice to see people having still fun and giving me smiles, even though it is obvious that all of us are already tired of traveling.

Anyway, the general feeling is excellent and positive. I am enjoining every little details of this tour, since it’s the last one for my debut album and I’ll need to wait quite a long time for the next proper tour.

Visiting Munich and Ingolstadt was a really positive experience. The old city of Ingolstadt is pretty with lots of clean, tiny streets and not that many people around.

It seemed that audiences were enjoining those shows a lot and that Germans truly gave their love for us. It’s overwhelming to see the difference from where I started and where things are now after touring 2 years! Thank you Germany, we’ll meet soon again.

After Germany we headed to Italy, Bologna. What a beautiful old town! Cameras were rolling on the off day when everybody got to go to the city and relax. Bologna would be a nice place to live…with its copper-red colored old buildings, towers and houses. And the dining is just delicious! ;)

The night of the show was fun. People came very far to see us as well and the show was a success. We keep on making some trouble for the local security, as you can see.

One day everybody will understand that fans don’t eat artists!

It has been a long time since I heard people screaming like the audience did in Croatia, Zagreb. Oh my God! It was very hard to hear the band at times :)

I wondered many times during the show how on earth my band is hearing what they need to play, but somehow they managed very well and we were having a time of our life on stage. Great people! Wonderful acceptance.

After Croatia, the loooooong journey to Istanbul waited for us. We were crossing 3 borders and needed to wait quite a while in all of them. It was not that nice to wake up in the middle of the night and go out to show your face for the passport control… several times. You just got to fall asleep, when you needed to wake up again and again :(

Well; finally sometime around 05:00 in the morning we happily arrived to Istanbul. The show was originally going to happen in a different venue, but we heard that the venue had bankrupted and we were going to perform in a “rock-bar”. It was more than exciting experience, since for example the stage was so small that Mike’s drums were not fitting on it! Well, once again we managed somehow to go through the show and the audience was excellent.

My first time in Turkey, I will never forget it. I got to do some sightseeing as well before the show, so now I know a bit more. It was not enough though. But, there is hope for the future. At least now I have something to write on my diary.

It was so good to return to Athens. Had been two years since I’ve been there and it showed me that people had been waiting for my return.

Heavens´ sake I almost burst into tears during the first song. That much the audience was screaming. There was only one thing bothering me during my performance and it was completely my own fault. I ate too late my dinner and when I was singing, the food started to rise up… I was truly suffering, but my crew told me that they didn’t hear nor saw anything strange in my performance. That’s amazing considering the mood I had during the whole show. Well, I learned my lesson and in the end, it was one of the best shows we did on this tour so far.

Day after we performed in Thessalonica and some people from Athens followed us there. It was very nice to see people so excited! I want to thank Greece once again for waiting for me patiently. I hope you don’t need to wait too long for seeing me again in your beautiful country. We had a very big dose of Greek salad in this trip until then ;)

Tonight, Bulgarians are surrounding us. Big venue, lovely people, and lot of excitement in the air…I can already feel the fans outside.

The show is to start in few hours…"