After midnight Monday morning – 4 days early – we arrived at the Alte Zieglei, the area where the Homeward Festival takes place since the last three years. A few volunteers and Sebastian, the main organiser, was welcoming us with some beer and we gathererd in the bus to share stories.

The Bus

And again the bus turned out to be a meeting point for many. We got to know some of the volunteers and we kept hosting people – serving coffee, offering food and having deep conversations.

It is a wonderful home to us and others 🙂

..speaking of which, during our travel through Poland the tyre of our stage trailer broke down. As we went to a store, a guy gave us a ride to another store, managing everything to get the new tyre and even gave Taavi a ride to the nearby city where we were able to get it. We had to stay over night to get it fixed in the morning, but we are so thankful for the polish guy that helped us out so much!

 

The Gig

Again, we were practicing the days before our gig and some people got together and got excited for our gig. As we started to play not many people were there. But in the same time the sun came out and a crowd was formed. We looked into many smiling faces and saw some people dancing. Eli was shared stories behind the songs containing suicide, depression, identity, sexual abuse, broken relationships and voicing hope at the end of it all. Even though it was all very heavy and not easy to talk about, people were still open and surprised how happy our sound would be although the lyrics are quite heavy.

Our stay

We were the first band to arrive and the last band to take off with the bus on Monday, one day after the festival had ended. We took part in packing down and ended up jamming at the volunteer bonfire, which was a great time.

 

We made our way through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and now arrived in Finland! After some recovering time and cleaning the bus, we are excited for the things to come!