SWEDISH POLKA

‘Mister Oleg, why do you talk so much?’ – that’s from my youngest student Madeleine. She is from West Virginia, US and she is seven years old.

‘I’ll talk less if you practice more, ’ I replied and immediately got scolded by my Gemini twin, ‘Scoring points with the little girls now, are we? Well done, big man, well done!’

To be honest, there was a good reason for Madeleine to ask this question. I do talk a lot. I told Madeleine I didn’t meat to snap at her and I said I am very sorry. Madeleine is a sweet little girl. She said, ‘It’s ok, Mister Oleg. I don’t mind.’ Everything was forgiven, the peace was restored and we went back to talk cats, dogs, movies, games and other important things.

Later that evening I had a gig with ‘NoCrows’ in the Arts Centre in Naul, a little town just outside Dublin. They were already going through the soundcheck when I arrived, so I came in and went straight to the stage.

Originally, our stage plan included six microphones – one for each of us. I don’t like talking during the gig, but when you have a mike stuck in your face for two hours, it’s hard not to… There lies the problem. My dear Madeleine was absolutely right. I do talk a lot and when I start I find it difficult to stop. A little announcement turns into a story which leads to another story and so on. After a while, ‘Crows’ made some kind of a collective decision and there were no more mikes within my reach after that.

For some reason they decided to break the moratorium for the gig in Naul. ‘You got to talk today,’ said Felip. Then during the gig, Anna turned to me and said, ‘Your tune next, Oleg, tell us a story…’ And so I did. The tune in question was called ‘Swedish Polka’, so I said, ‘Hi everyone, this is a Swedish Polka. It’s not Swedish and it’s not a Polka. And this is why…’         

‘There’s a reason why we don’t give a mike to Oleg,’ announced Felip fifteen minutes later. I did it again. I couldn’t stop. You see, there is always a story behind each of our tunes and some of the stories are quite long. For example, Felip wrote a tune called ‘Waiting for the tide’, which really should be called ‘Waiting for the drink’, as he got stranded once on a deserted island for twenty four hours, waiting for the band to come to rehearse, but most importantly to bring the drinks. He got so lonely, thirsty and desperate that he wrote a tune, one of my favourites by the way. Steve wrote a song after he met a homeless man in Paris, Eddie wrote his ‘Cozy Eye’ in his sleep, Ray wrote a tune dedicated to his departed friend, Anna wrote a tune dedicated to the selection of Belgian beers and so on.

I wrote my ‘Swedish Polka’ because I got a commission to write a Swedish tune for a theatre play, which I did. It was quite Swedish at the time, it was written in 3/4 time and it had a Polka (The Polska in Swedish) structure. It was boring. Soon after I wrote this tune I went to Norway. It was one of the most bizarre tours I ever did. During this tour I re-wrote the whole thing, so it stopped being Swedish. I came back home and gave it to the ‘Crows’, so it ceased to be a Polka. It became something fast, loud and highly inappropriate by the Scandinavian music standards.

What’s missing now is the Norwegian part of the story. I didn’t have enough time to tell it to the audience during the gig, so I decided to write it down.

Here goes.

 

An International Folk Festival. Bergen. Norway.

A Masterclass on Norwegian folk music. 

Me, being a smart ass, ‘Is all Norwegian music so slow?’

A local fiddler, looking at me disapprovingly, ‘In our village, if the young ones play too fast, we throw the rotten fisssss (fish) at them.’

 

 

I got a phone call from my compatriot Robbie.

His opening line was uncharacteristically short. ‘Dude, do you like polar bears?’

‘No’,  I said, ‘Not really. I don’t think you can cook them properly..’

‘Don’t be an ass,’ he replied, ‘Here’s the story. We’ve just been offered 10 gigs in Norway. Arctic Circle! Viking Village!! Polar bears!!! You’re going to love it, dude, trust me!!!’ 

Usually, when Rob says, ‘Trust me,’  a little alarm bell starts ringing inside my head. 

‘What do we play?’ I asked.  

‘Irish trad, what else?’ replied Rob, sounding genuinely surprised.

‘You know I don’t play Irish trad, right?’

Rob wasn’t having any of it, ‘Don’t worry. I’m in charge of the music, you’ll have charts and we’re going to rehearse before we go. We will be tight, trust me!’

Eventually I gave up. Rob is like a freight train. You can say, ‘No’ as much as you like, but he’ll just keep coming. Also, I like Norway and I like Norwegians. They eat boiled sheep heads and they don’t talk much. I said I’ll go but it didn’t really matter as Rob hung up in the middle of the conversation. 

Rob is a very responsible and organised person. He sent me a GPS location of the rehearsal venue and said I need to be there in time as we have a lot of new music to learn. I arrived in time, stopped the car and checked my GPS. It said ‘You have reached your destination…’

I got out of and looked around. There was no venue in sight. There was a big pub though. Locals were watching soccer on a flat screen, drinking, smoking and having a good time. It didn’t look like a rehearsal venue, but there was nothing else around, so I thought I’d check it out anyway. I took my violin and walked in. The place was packed. I saw Rob straight away. He had a glass of Jameson in one hand and he was having a speech. He was addressing a group of lads who didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying. They were trying to sort out their drinks. Their instruments were tucked in a corner. A wet piece of paper was stuck to the table. It looked like a setlist.

I recognised some of the participants. Like me, most of them had nothing to do with Irish folk. Our vocalist was an operatic singer, our guitarist was a young rock prodigy and our accordionist was a re-formatted Jazz pianist.

We were as far from being the ‘Irish’ band as ‘The Spice Girls’.

I made my way to the table and started to introduce myself, sounding very much like a newcomer at the ‘AA’ meeting,

‘Hi, my name is Oleg, I am a violin player and I have no idea why I am here. I’ll have a double Jameson, please.’

Our vocalist was trying to write a setlist but with all this drinking and shouting it wasn’t going anywhere.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rob. ‘Don’t worry, all is well organised, I am in charge, you’ll have charts and all, so just relax. We will be bringing the very best of Irish folk to the wilderness of Scandinavia. It is going to be a massive cultural mission. We will connect our countries, we will build a bridge, a cultural bridge, Ze Bridge we will build. We will highlight our similarities in music, history, art and literature!!!’ 

The Jameson in his hand clearly wasn’t the first one, so it was easier to agree with everything he said. He was still going on about ‘Ze bridge’, so I asked one of the musicians, ‘What’s the story? Are we going to rehearse? What are the tunes?’

‘I dunno, ‘Whiskey in a Jar’?’ was the answer…

‘Jesus Christ!!!’

I tried to get through to Rob, ‘Dude… Dude??? What about the rehearsal?’

I got another blast of ‘Ze cultural bridge’.

I gave up. Our soloist ordered another round of drinks… The setlist got completely wet.

It was our one and only rehearsal. We left for Norway five days later. Me and Rob were booked on the same flight. At some point of our journey we decided to get something to eat. I was broke as usual, so it was Rob who had to buy us a glass of wine and a sandwich each. Our lunch cost him 97 Euros. We entered Scandinavia!

It took us one full day and five flights to get to our little island. With each transfer, our planes were getting progressively smaller and smaller. The plane number five was the smallest and noisiest one of them all. It didn’t look like a plane, it looked more like a propeller-driven moped. It was flying so low that I was able to use my phone for the entire 12 minutes of the flight. Also, my window was leaking.

We landed and taxied to something which resembled a grocery shop. We got out. The scenery was breathtaking. We were greeted by the sight of a majestic fjord on the right, rocky mountains on the left and Chinese tourists with selfie sticks in the middle. A uniformed lady officer ignored our arrival as she and the entire airport security force (all two of them) were busy trying to stop the Chinese group from making selfies.

Taking photos near the shore was a big no-no. Eight or nine years ago, a Russian submarine was detected in one of the fjords. Or so they say. They saw something big in the water, couldn’t identify it properly and decided it was a submarine. It wasn’t Norwegian, so it had to be unfriendly and being unfriendly it had to be Russian. Obviously.

It was a very exciting time for the local population. They were happy and busy, they were on the news, they were giving interviews, they had something to talk about and the whole area was on a red alert since then.

We were waved through, got our bags and went out to look for our hosts. There was a lonely minibus sitting in a parking lot. It was our ride to the hotel. Except it was not. The driver told us that yes, he is our host indeed, but instead of the hotel we will be staying on his very own ship. He said we were going to sail from island to island, giving impromptu performances whenever we went. The only problem was that the ship’s rudder got broken, which means the ship was permanently ‘grounded’ and we were going to drive to the gigs instead.

I was tired. I didn’t care. I wanted to go bed and not to see anyone for the next fifteen years. I had enough of the  flying mopeds, spy submarines and Chinese tourists for one day. I just wanted to sleep, so I said, ‘Great! Fantastic! Let’s go…’

Twenty minutes later we entered a small harbour and saw our ship….

 

 

A beautiful white old schooner she was, sails, teak and all. Unfortunately, as we arrived last, there was only one cabin left. That was not good. We shared a room with Rob once. I was traumatised for years.

We checked in. I went straight to bed and Rob went out for a walk. He said, ‘I will explore a bit. Don’t worry, I won’t be long and I’ll be quiet.’ He came back at 4am. He woke everyone up. At 4.30 he started to snore. At 5am I decided I don’t like him anymore. At around 6am, I decided I had enough.

 Intermezzo.

In music, an intermezzo is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work…

Wikipedia

 

I’m grateful to the members of the Soviet government, who in their wisdom decided that throwing a violin student into the army was the only way to create a properly educated and motivated Soviet musician. Cleaning toilets, singing patriotic songs and shooting at various things didn’t add much to my music education but to be fair, there was something useful I’ve learned, so it wasn’t a total waste of time after all. I learned how to deal with snorers….

 I’ll give you a tip or two if you’re interested.

A note to the beginner. There is a variety of set techniques you can employ, but as in every creative discipline, there’s always a room for improvisation and improvement. I’d say, let your imagination run free, don’t be afraid to experiment, try to think outside the box. You never know what will work best and what will produce the best results. For example, painting offender’s face with shoe polish or toothpaste might not stop him snoring, but it’ll make you feel that at least some degree of justice has been served. If you want practical results, try blocking his nose or placing a pillow on his face. Inserting various objects into the offender can be very effective. If you have a bucket handy, you are in luck. All you need is some cold water and an escape route. The possibilities are endless. As I said, learn, practise and don’t be afraid to improvise. 

In 1984, I had a great opportunity to try a few different techniques and approaches, using my own Sergeant as a test subject. His nickname was ‘Chuma’, (plaque) and even in our unit of low-lifes, delinquents and hoodlums he was considered to be a full-scale lunatic. He was mad but I liked him a lot.

You might argue that my Sergeant from the year 1984 has nothing to do with the piece of music called ‘Swedish Polka’. I will respectfully disagree. Everything in our world is connected. Chuma, Robbie, ‘NoCrows’, Norwegian ship, Irish Trad, my dear Madeleine, Polar Bears, they all are but tiny beads, resting on the insanely complex and intricate net which is our Universe. 

As I said, our Sergeant was a full-scale lunatic. Even our officers felt uncomfortable when Chuma was hanging around. His other nickname was ‘Bespredel’ (a someone who has no concept of rules, laws or limits, someone with no self-preservation instinct, no fear and no morals). He liked being called ‘Bespredel’. He was also called a ‘Nosorog’ (a rhinoceros) behind his back, because he had quite a sizeable nose. That nickname he didn’t like at all. If you called him a ‘Nosorog’, he’d beat you up. Severely. If he suspected that you wanted to call him a ‘Nosorog’, he’d beat you up. If he saw you looking at his nose, he’d beat you up. He’d beat you up regardless, without a reason and without a warning. He’d bite your nose off, he’d scratch your eyes out and he’d tear your ears off. I saw him diving into the crowd of Georgian soldiers for no apparent reason. He started to kick, to bite, to scratch and to scream at everyone. Needless to say, all of them run away in total panic, the way big and strong men would run away from a tiny but furious rat.

Before we met our Sergeant, our ‘Dedu’, (old soldiers) were trying to put a fear in us by saying, ‘You just wait. Chuma will come back from the ‘Guba’ (a garrison prison), he will sort you out, you just waaaaait!!!!’ We couldn’t care less because we had a couple of our own ‘Bespredel’ characters, who’d routinely attack anything within their reach. I was actually looking forward to the ‘Meeting of the spirits’, but of course it was me alone who was lucky enough to welcome Chuma to our unit.

One day I was on the sentry duty when I heard someone banging at the barracks door. Soon banging stopped and shouting started, ‘Open up, you corpses!!! Mummy’s home, brought you some milk, have only one titty, so get in a line, boys!!!!’ I remember thinking, ‘What a force of nature! What a colour, what a character!!!’. It could only be our missing Sergeant. I couldn’t wait to meet the owner of this voice. I stuck a magazine into my AK, moved the fire selector to a ‘single shot’, came down and opened the door.

Chuma turned out to be a little, skinny kid with the broken nose and golden teeth. He was totally crazy. I liked him from the first moment. He made a move but I said, ‘Dude. Don’t. You are nervous, I am nervous. You jump me, I’ll shoot. You want a smoke?’

We ended up sitting on a toilet window and singing old Jewish prison songs from Odessa. Chuma smoked all my cigarettes. Funny enough, he turned out to be quite a talented singer.

Chuma was one of the worst and persistent snorers I’ve ever encountered. I found that the most effective way of dealing with his habit was to tie his boot to one of his ’parts’ with the piece of string and then gently lower the mentioned boot on his face. This process required a surgical precision and total concentration, by the way. It was cruel, but it worked. Imagine waking up with the boot on your face? What would be your first reaction? You will grab it and you’ll throw it away. The fact that it was tied to your reproductive organs would strengthen the effect immensely. It will definitely stop you from snoring. For a while at least. And as I mentioned before, the escape route is a must, as you can’t always expect a reasonable response from your opponent.

For those who think it was not the kindest way of treating a fellow human being, I have to mention that his methods were also quite radical. Chuma bribed our lieutenant once and found out the date and time of our next 25km run. Shortly before the kick-off he put a brick in my rucksack and tied it with the marine knot. You can’t stop during the run, you don’t have a single second to waste, so I had it banging against my back for two hours. My back was blue and black and my left kidney was not functioning for a week. I wasn’t impressed though. It was effective but it lacked imagination and finesse.

My answer was far more sophisticated. Chuma was regularly stealing my smokes but I could never catch him in the act. He would then have a smoke in a front of me, smiling and smirking. I’d know for sure it was one of mine, but wouldn’t be able to say anything as he’d deny it and act unfairly accused. I prepared a cigarette, put some compressed gunpowder in the middle, covered it with tobacco and left it sticking out of my pocket. He fell for it.

His brows and eyelashes grew back fairly soon though.

A few days later, I found something nasty and smelly under my pillow. It was expected but it was disappointing. That was the thing about my sergeant. Chuma didn’t have much imagination. His methods were crude and childish. Our exchange was going on for nearly a year…..but he still snored.

It all might sound barbaric, but those of you who were exposed to this horrendous sound, even for a short while, will understand. They would also understand despair, anger and hurt which I felt when I realised that all known old and approved methods were useless in Robbie’s case. Tying up anything to his private parts was not an option for many reasons, ethical and physical. Mainly physical, I have to say. Inserting things into Rob was not an option, as I felt I might be misunderstood by the rest of the crew. Putting a pillow on his face seemed to be the only option, but we had 10 concerts to perform and we needed a guitar player. I didn’t know what to do and then I had an idea. I took out my iPad and recorded a minute or so of his snoring. I played it back to Rob at a maximum volume on a loop for 20 minutes. It didn’t work. I gave up. I went out for a cigarette, came back and somehow fell asleep, only to be woken up two hours later by the cheerful sounds of the Rob’s morning bathroom routine……don’t even ask. 

And then it was a breakfast time. Our breakfasts on the ship were spectacular. I grew up in the North, so I am well used to all this marinated herring, moose sausage, fermented gherkins, crayfish tails, aspic, cod liver, salted fish roe and such. I was ok with everything. My conservative Irish friends were not. Their favourite Norwegian food was beer. Our captain tried to explain the purpose and origins of every dish, but it didn’t improve the situation much. They would only eat salmon and eggs and nothing else. Rob was ok though. He is from the East, which means he can eat anything. He’d happily fill himself with the stuff our Irish friends wouldn’t touch even if you put a gun to their heads. 

The first question at the Irish breakfast table traditionally is, ‘How did you sleep?’ which means, ‘How much did you have to drink, what time did you come home, what is it you are wearing, what about this dent in my car and who is this dude sleeping under the table?’ In our case, everyone just looked at me without asking. I guess I looked a bit off. I didn’t say anything. I took out my iPad and put on my recording of Robbie’s nocturnal activities. Nobody spoke. One of the musicians looked at me and said, ‘Right. Take my cabin, I’ll move in with Conor…’

God bless his soul! He saved me from going insane and he saved Rob from being strangled in his sleep. It did improve the situation slightly, but being on a boat with very thin walls, I still could hear this deep rumbling noise, which seemed to penetrate the very fabric of the universe.

Justice and fairness only exists in numerous pocket-size books, which you can buy in the airport shops. This kind of book would usually have a picture of a well-breasted lady in distress, a hero with a serrated weapon in a muscular hand and a thin, hairy and evil villain who will be trying to sneak on the distressed lady. We all know the villain will be punished and the rest of the book will live happily after. We also know that in a real life, the villain often walks free and the breasted ladies end up watching romantic comedies on Netflix. Alone, while their heroes drink beer with their mates. Not in this case though. My suffering was rewarded in full. 

After the breakfast our host invited us to go for a ride on one of the local torture devices. It was called a ‘Rib’ and it was made from the rubber and some wooden planks. It had two outboard motors, five million horsepower each, which transformed this ‘Rig’ device into a fighter jet, so in order to survive, you’d have to wear a full protective gear, helmet, goggles, gloves, vests etc. It also included a kamikaze pilot with no sense of humour, so in order to stay sane you’d have to be completely drunk.

The main point of the cruise was to scare the passengers, obviously. Also, there was a chance of seeing a rare Norwegian eagle in one of the fjords. The eagle was not around, so after 30 minutes of bouncing up and down around the fjord at 5000 miles an hour, our guide decided we had enough of the local colour and it was time to go back. He did a U-turn, which felt more like a V-turn and gunned the engines. And that’s when we saw one of the eagles. God was looking out for the unfairly treated on this particular day. We were going at full speed when I heard a loud ‘thud’, which reverberated across the fjord. The eagle relieved himself on a Rob’s helmet and nearly tore his head off. Later, we were trying to calculate the force of the impact and came up with some impressive numbers, but for a while I was simply enjoying the sense of justice and fairness.

Rob was ok though. He managed to take a picture of the eagle. I was hoping he’d drop his iPhone into the water, but he didn’t. 

You can’t have it all, they say.

Our next day was going to be safe, quiet and boring. No drama, no powerboats, no diving-bomber eagles or kamikaze pilots. We were going to play a small acoustic gig for the small number of people in a private house somewhere high up in the mountains.

All started well. It was a beautiful and sunny day. We were having a coffee in the harbour coffee shop while waiting for our driver. A minibus came, we loaded up and started to drive. We left our little harbour and drove towards the mountains.

Soon we found out that our driver was a learner. A bad one. His driving was erratic, he would routinely miss the gear and stall the engine. It stopped being funny soon after we started to drive on icy mountain roads. We drove for another three hours. We got lost four or five times, our GPS gave up and our phones stopped functioning as there was no signal at this altitude. We were getting higher and higher, the road was getting smaller, it was getting colder and darker every minute and our driver was getting more and more erratic. He would occasionally try to put the minibus in reverse, while changing up from the third gear. The minibus would stall and skid, he would get embarrassed and irritated and we would just sit there quietly, wishing for this to be over soon. I remember thinking that I’d rather be back on the ‘Rig’ instead – it felt much safer, to be honest. Obviously our driver was able to feel the tension inside the minibus, so he decided to entertain us a little. He gave us a full-scale lecture about the creatures who live and roam in those parts, trolls being the most pleasant of them all. It was quite fascinating. I actually asked him for the names and put them down in my iPhone to get the full story later.

One of those creatures is called Huldra. She has a long blonde hair, a long tail and spends most of her time looking for the lost travellers in order to sleep with them first and to eat them later. Another one is called Nattmara, which means a ‘Nightmare’ in Norwegian. She will give you sleep paralysis and tuberculosis, she will sit on you, tangle your hair and then she will eat you. The next one is called Nokken. He is a shape-shifter who lives near the lakes and rivers. He will lure you into the water, he will drown you and then he will eat you. Fenrir is the werewolf who is generally not interested in any foreplay. He will eat you straight away. The best one is called Gjenganger. It’s actually ‘she’, and she is the most sophisticated one of all. She is known for spreading disease by scratching and biting sleeping people. Their flesh then will turn necrotic and they will die. Then Gjenganger will eat them. The little and nasty creature called Nisse is the odd one. He is the only one who would not eat humans. He would kill and eat their livestock instead. They all are moderately unpleasant creatures, they all look different, they have a different modus operandi but their final objective is always the same. They will always eat you in the end.

We started to feel a bit unsettled. I’m pretty sure I saw something big and hairy standing between the trees and watching us as we drove by. And then suddenly our driver hit the brakes and announced that we have arrived. We got out of the minibus and looked around. There was a house surrounded by trees, a wood shredder and a tractor. It was a perfect place for the group of foreign musicians to disappear.

The door opened and a specimen of gargantuan proportions came out.

‘Hallo, hallo!!! How good it is to meet you all’ 

It was the owner of the house and our employer for tonight. He looked like Barry White on steroids, but much bigger and much scarier. His neck was wider than his head. His beard looked like a shovel. I didn’t have a chance to count his teeth but I think the total number was somewhere in the region of forty or fifty. He was wearing a ‘Hard Rock Cafe’ t-shirt and a pair of very tight ‘Levi’s 501′. Too tight, I might add. We started to shake hands while trying not to look at his nether region. His wife came out to say ‘Hi.’ She looked comparatively small as she was just under two meters tall.

They invited us in. There was nobody inside. The house was empty. ‘We didn’t want to share you with anyone,’ said our host and gave us a wink, ‘We told everyone the gig was cancelled. We are going to have a great time….We’ll eat first and have fun later.’ He was not very clear about what kind of ‘fun’ we were going to have. To me, it didn’t sound good at all. Our guitarist started to look like he’d rather be somewhere else but Rob was delighted. He kept saying, ‘What a nice house! What a nice people!’ 

‘We are going to have a moose stew!’ announced Barry White. I suspect the moose was beaten up first and then strangled by our host.

‘I am not sure….’ started one of the musicians, but it didn’t look like we had any choice. I was ok with whatever was on the menu as long as it wasn’t one of us.

Our host started to serve chunks of meat and distribute bottles and cans. Finally he sat down, we filled our glasses (Rob made a speech about ‘Ze bridge’) and started to eat. The stew was delicious, by the way. Our host finished a full glass of whisky in one go, put it on the table and turned himself into the automated processing line. The food was delivered to the industrial shredder which was his mouth and was followed by the waterfalls of beer, wine and whisky with such a speed and vigour that it stopped being entertaining at some point. It felt a bit disturbing, to be honest. Rob tried to start a conversation but all we could hear in reply was an occasional grunt or groan from our host.

His wife turned out to be a very nice woman. She ate very little and she wasn’t much of a talker, so she just sat there, smiling and humming. Soon the stew was gone. Another bottle of whisky was brought from the kitchen. Our host started ‘to have fun’. He said he was a member of the local rock band once. He said he didn’t want us to play. He said we should relax on the couch and he will play for us instead. He went out of the room and came back with his guitar. For the next two hours we were treated to the bizarre combination of local rock music and ‘The best of 1960’.

I desperately wanted to smoke so I rolled myself a cigarette and started to move towards the door…. ‘No!!!’ roared our host, ‘You don’t go, you smoke here!’  The rest of the band looked at me like they were trying to say, ‘Please don’t go….do what he says!’

I started to feel homesick.

In less than two hours our host managed to finish three bottles of whisky. We barely managed to finish one, I am ashamed to say. Our host finished the impromptu concert and put his guitar away. He said we will talk now. He said he wanted to know more about us and about our music. He started to get friendly. Too friendly, I’d say. At some point even Rob started to feel that something is not quite right. We started to make noises about us having a very long drive home, about the early gig, about us being tired and so on. It didn’t work. Our host was determined to become our friend. Our best friend, in fact.

Surprisingly, it was our driver who saved the day. He just stood up and announced that we are leaving. Right now!  At that moment I was ready to forgive him everything, including his suicidal driving antics.

They didn’t want us to go. They looked extremely sad and disappointed when we started to move towards the door, but they didn’t try to stop us.

Rob later said I completely misunderstood their intentions. He said I only see bad in people and he said I should learn that outside the Soviet Union people can be friendly without wanting to sleep with you.

Now, after taking a retrospective view I can agree with Rob. I don’t think our hosts had any romantic inclinations, they simply wanted to eat us, that’s all. 

On the way back our driver announced that we are going to visit a very important cultural and historical monument. He said we would have to make a detour to get there, but it was worth it. He said the monument symbolises the eternal struggle of Norwegian people. He didn’t specify who exactly they were struggling with, but at this stage it didn’t matter.

It was very late, we were completely overwhelmed by our unorthodox hosts, we were happy to be out alive and we were in our driver’s debt. We said, ‘Sure, why not…’   

We drove for about an hour, then our driver pulled over, stopped and said, ‘Here it is. I’m not going, I already saw it. You go. It’s about three hundred metres from here. Go through the rocks, you’ll see it.’  It took us good fifteen minutes to find our way through the rocks in the darkness, but eventually we got there without any injuries. We found a monument. It was a big mirror..

‘Look at the way it reflects the moonlight!’ exclaimed Rob, ‘What a brilliant idea!!!’

I didn’t have any energy left to hit him or to hurt him in any other way, so I just turned around and went back to the minibus. We sat there for another 20 minutes, waiting for Rob while he was trying to find a correct angle for the photo.

We got home safely, if only a slightly disoriented.

I am not going to tell you about the rest of the tour as it’ll take another two hours to write everything down. I can only tell you that it was getting from crazy to insane and back to crazy. In saying so, we visited some of the most beautiful places on Earth and met a lot of incredible characters. I am not sure about building ‘Ze bridges’, but the tour was definitely worth our time and effort.

 

P.S. Rob wasn’t lying when he said we are going to play in the ‘Viking Village’. We did. We played around the fire in the middle of the forest. Everyone in the village looked very believable. They were wearing Viking clothes. They were dirty. They lived in a tents, they had their faces painted and they were carrying knives, bows and arrows. Their iPhones and watches were safely stored somewhere outside the village. It all was very authentic. We had to look authentic as well, so we were given a pile of ‘Viking’ robes before the gig. We had to change in the bushes. Everyone was very excited, Rob was making selfies, and our bus driver said, ‘You look like a bunch of mental patients…’

 

 

It was our last gig. The next day we were going to fly home. At 7am we woke up. The ship’s plumbing system gave up. Something burst open and everything came out. The smell was horrible. Rob wasn’t on the ship. He took an earlier flight, lucky sod.

The breakfast was out of the question so we just just grabbed our bags and got out as fast as we could.

When we landed in Dublin, I was told that my bag was send to Hamburg instead and I’ll have to come back to the airport the next day. ‘But what about my equipment?’ I asked. ‘I am a musician and I have a gig tomorrow, seventy miles from Dublin. I need my cables, pedals and my DI box.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Scandinavian lady. ’You just buy whatever you need, give us your receipts and we’ll pay you back.’

I came home, made myself an espresso and rolled myself a smoke. I sat down, opened my iPad and found a tune called ‘Swedish Polka’. I pressed a ‘Play’ button. I didn’t like the tune. It wasn’t right. It was not Scandinavian enough. It wasn’t nearly as crazy as it should be, so I decided to give it to the ‘NoCrows’ to make it sound right.

It’s not Swedish and it’s not a polka anymore, but I don’t really care.