.: Posted by Kristian Niemann :: January 10, 2002 :.

THE SECRET OF THE RUNES TOUR 2001 - SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA

* Best Food: Sao Paulo - That steakhouse....WWWOOOOOWWWWW!!! Every kind of meat you can imagine; all perfectly prepared. Un-beliavable!

* Best Backstage: Monterrey - Candles, fresh coffee all day, Absolut Vodka, Single Malt Whisky, superfresh food/snacks, great beer. Big, big room with nice leather couches and everything else you could want. Worldclass!

* Worst Backstage: Chihuahua - Outdoors right behind the stage with no roof or anything. Not even a tent. Not cool. Well actually it got pretty cool when the wind picked up...

* Coolest venue: Mexico City - An old theater I think. 3300 capacity. Really big, nice place! Marble in the foyer...

* Crappiest venue: Guadlajara - A stinky cold concrete box. Great crowd though, one of the best shows of the tour.

* Best Onstage Sound: Bogota, 2nd show - Great big hall with good equipment and cool techguys. Seems like a simple concept, but......

* Worst Onstage Sound: Mexico City - Nothing wrong with anything I think. It just sounded incredibly bad. Simply atrocious.

* Interesting Nighttime Activity: Warpspeed cabride through Mexico City at 3 a.m., not stopping for red lights, other cars or anything. I seriously thought my time on earth was over...but what fun it was!!!

* Best Hotel: Intercontinental Presidente Mexico City - The name says it all. Just like the movies. We got treated like royalty.

* The "Most-money-spent-on-the-lobby-none-on-the-room" Award goes to: Hotel Intercontinental Bogota - Incredible lobby, entrance and foyer. Nice posh shops inside and great restaurants too. However, our room looked like a black and white Ingmar Bergman movie. Very depressing.

*Best playing by KN: Curitiba - Second show of the tour. I guess I got lucky...

*Worst playing by KN: Sao Paulo - Third show of the tour. My 30th birthday. Unbelieavably bad playing.

*Quietest audience-turned-loudest: Buenos Aires - It resembled a funeral at first; very quiet, very reserved, everybody sitting down. When we got to playing To Mega... and Cults... however, it was total pandemonium!

*Hottest gig: Cochabamba - 2000 people crammed together in a hall without airconditioning. I almost passed out in the middle of the set. I could just BARELY breathe! I can´t imagine what it must have been like in front of the stage!

*Coldest gig: La Paz - Quite an experience playing outdoors in the highest located capitol in the world. The thin air of course made it hard to breathe but the COLD!!!! Wasn´t it supposed to be summer? Therion members sporting hats and thick jackets onstage.

*Most disappointing event: Not playing Sucre. For various reasons beyond our control the gig had to be cancelled. Mostly because it was raining pretty heavily and the outdoor site for the show didn´t have a roof over the stage.

*Most scary event: 20-30 angry fans in Sucre outside our hotel. Some threw bricks through the hotel windows and shouted some very angry words including *"@@%&¤!!! and []@!@££$!!! I wanted to go home to mommy.

*Warmest welcome: Cochabamba - 300 crazy fans screaming and waving Therion banners as we got off the airplane in the middle of the night! Incredible! I really felt like Michael Jackson there for a minute!

*Most annoying occurence: Having to get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning after sleeping 2 hours to catch a flight, only to wait 5 hours in transit at the airport to catch a connecting flight!!

*Best beer: Bogota - ...but I can´t for the life of me remember the name of it. Must have been a DARN good beer!

*Most frequently spoken phrase by a band member: "I´m soooo tired...I REALLY need to go to bed!"

*Best show: Bogota, 1st show - One of those rare occasions when everything works. Good performance, great sound, great audience.

*Funny moment 1: The British Airways purser trying to keep us in a good mood when told that we´ll be sitting in the plane waiting for take-off for another HOUR. (in heavy british accent): "Well folks, remember that time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana!"

*Biggest surprise: We didn´t get ill!

*Funny moment 2: Our soundengineer Richard commenting on Andy Engberg singing a Russian folksong during soundcheck:"Hmm...Andy...all your vocals seem to be coming out in Russian...must be a reversed cable somewhere..."

*Loudest audience: Cochabamba - 2000 totally crazy metal maniacs! We love it! During the set, we could feel how the stage was literally being PUSHED BACK centimeter by centimeter!

.: Posted by Kristian Niemann :: January 10, 2002 :.