ARTmania festival – пресечната точка на изкуството и забавата

Here I am…the first weekend of September…sitting by the pool…thinking about the most powerful summer festival for me! And I want to share this emotion with all of you. It’s an annual festival – every second week of August. There are a lot of seminars, parties, exhibitions and of course, concerts.

I have been there for the third year in a row but this was the first time I enjoyed both days. Although the cultural events have been started on Monday we went there for Friday (Tarja & Helloween) and Saturday (Lacuna Coil & Sonata Arctica) concert days. We have been decided to catch the bus on Wednesday, at midnight, because there were almost 700km to our final destination. For the 7-8 hours on the road the only “interesting” thing was some African guy who tried to cross the border with no visa and there was a moment when the police wanted the whole bus to go back and leave him in Bulgaria…But we got lucky and we moved on. We were in Bucharest at 8 am and went straight to the metro station – we had a few things to do there. First thing was to get tickets for the bus to Sibiu. We knew how things work there – only one counter and a lot of waiting people…When we got to the serving lady we showed her our online reservations and asked her which was our bus. But finally she managed to explain us (with motions and waves because she spoke no English at all) something disturbing – they didn’t sell tickets for this bus and no one could tell us where else we could buy them…We didn’t have so much time so we went on to the next mission – to find Hard Rock Café and buy tickets for Hammerfall and Amaranthe’s show there. But it was far away (more that we expected…). That made the time for our next stop shorter – we had an arrangement with a Romanian friend. We were waiting for him in front of the Mall when I saw a counter particulary for tickets. And guess what – 5 minutes later I had three Hammerfall tickets in my hands! 🙂 We had a quick chat (about half an hour) and went to the station. There we bought tickets with our reservations directly from the driver with no problems. Another 5 hours on the road…and a lot of Bulgarian humor (some people were staring at us…) :). We arrived in Sibiu at 18 o’clock. There were 15 minutes to our hostel – nice place with apartmens (I have been there before) nearby the big square. We didn’t waste time – unpacked, ate fast and prepared for our town walk!

Casa Romina - in front of our apartment

The architecture and atmosphere of this part of town is incredible. Not surprisingly, the city was the cultural capital of Europe in 2007. It is worth visiting even for the sake of walking around
it and many tourists do that.

The small square (between our hostel and the big square)

We had to begin by finding an ATM…This was the firs time when me and Katina had no tickets for the festival and our budget was bad estimated. We had few beers and went back to the hostel – we were really tired (almost 20 hours on the road).

And here was the alarm clock – it’s already Friday, the first important day of the festival. Some of us went to the near Billa to buy some food. And when the last person was awake and ready we reached the station again to buy return tickets to Bucharest. The faster of us were waiting for the others in front of the Clock Tower. And this was a really good decision – 2 minutes later a van arrived with Michael Weikath and Markus Grosskopf from Helloween and their tour manager Kosta Zafiriou from Pink Cream 69. We all were so smiley on the pictures we had together. 😀 Then we had to find the place where we could get festival bracelets and to ask if metalhangar18.com was on the accreditation list (we had no verification from the managers). When the same polite girls from last year could not find us on the list they registered me at the moment and I had a special bracelet for reporters. At this time my friends were at the hostel. We went back there, too, ate and left some thing we didn’t need. It was time to prepare for the concert. When we went back to the square Tarja was doing her soundcheck. One of the good things there was that you are allowed to be at the square till 5 o’clock and you could play with the fountain there!

All Bulgarian fans and Lubo behind the camera 🙂

We continued with our “preparation” drinking at some place behind the stage.

Could anyone assume what was the band that day? 😀

We had the chance to meet some famous people there before…on the street, at the coffee shop and this picture proved that:

Dani, Michael & Markus

As we were sitting there we saw all Tarja’s crew including her. A lot of girls asked her and begged her for an autograph. She said she couldn’t now but she would came back …and she didn’t (and this wasn’t just one time). But we were there to enjoy musicians talent not judge their personality.

The nearest entrance and the fans waiting under the hot sun

It was almost 5 and the police was “cleaning” out the square. Our gang took the distanced entrance because there were already Tarja’s fens on the nearby one. This is the place to say that we don’t really accept this men-women separation…It’s all around Romania and may be it’s easier for the security but that make people who came together to be divided for long hours…Luckily, this year we were enough from both sex and waiting wasn’t boring. Some guy from the staff was trying to explain me something…But I didn’t know Romanian and German and he didn’t speak Bulgarian and English. Finally, other girl from the staff translated to me that I could go in with my pass earlier than the other fans. No, I really didn’t take this opportunity… 🙂 After only an hour first row was taken by familiar faces from Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania. Oh, and I have one more black mark on the organization – this piece of fence above the cables wasn’t fixed as it had to be and there was time when it could smash us down. And just pictured the moment of a crazy fan out there on this same piece of fence…:

from www.metalhead.ro

Above all we were alive! I had no other notes. Everything else was perfect even the drinks – there were no queues (so typical for Bulgaria).

It was 7 and we could see the german gothic metals – Lacrimas Profundere. I had no idea about their music and the vocalist reminded me of a bad Ville Valo version. They had some melodic moments what kind of saved them. The funniest thing was that all of us were just looking at the stage but Venko (one of my friends) was so whole-hearted and scared the gilrs next to him to death! We all was watching him on both big screens and he became very popular not only for the journalist but the cameraman, too. 🙂

We could hear the intro of „Who Is Mr. Madman“ at 8;30 – Dani Löble was on the stage and “let’s get the party started”. With no surprises the german heavy metal legends performed the most popular song from their last album – „Are You Metal?“. All fans were screaming and singing on the top of their voices. This was the first time I could hear Andi Deris’ voice so clear (all 5 times in Bulgaria the sound was awful in our “halls”)! The band was great at all points. Well, it was a bit boring to watch the same jokes between Andi and Dani 3 times for 7 months (about Andi’s great whiskey and how Dani mixed it with coka-cola :)). I want to watch them performing song from Andi’s time. I think there are a lot of new songs which would sound incredibly live. Above all, we enjoyed the almost hour and a half show.

Helloween at ARTmania festival 2011

Set list:
01. Are You Metal?

02. Eagle Fly Free

03. March Of Time

04. Where The Sinners Go

05. Drum Solo

06. I’m Alive

07. If I Could Fly

08. Medley – Keeper Of The Seven Keys /  The King For A 1000 Years / Halloween

09. Future World

10. Dr. Stein

Encore:

11. I Want Out

Some of my friends was there just for Helloween so after them they went to have some beers. The rest of us were waiting for the second part of the show. 🙂

from ARTmania Festival facebook page

Few minutes past 10:00 lights were turned off again. The first thing we saw and heard was the Max Lilja’s cello and first chords of „Dark Star“. The mail parts were taken by the bass player Doug Wimbish. We slowed down a little bit with “My Little Phoenix“ but after that – another aggressive step back to the latest album (which I like more) with „Falling Awake“. After „I Walk Alone“ (the most popular Tarja’s song) it was Mike Terrana’s time! This was enough time for the finnish singer to change. This was a record – only two pieces of clothes for a whole concert! If I had the chance to know what would „Little Lies“ do to my neck…I was satisfied with Nightwish’s songs selection. I enjoyed my favourite song – Until My Last Breath“. The performance was about hour and 20 minutes – there were no unnecessary encore. 🙂 This was the best Tarja’s concert for me (I have seen her 4 times).

Tarja at ARTmania festival 2011

Set list:

01. Dark Star

02. My Little Phoenix

03. Falling Awake

04. I Walk Alone

05. Drum Solo

06. Little Lies

07. Underneath

08. End Of All Hope

09. Ciaran’s Well

10. In For A Kill

11. Medley – Where Were You Last Night / Heaven Is A Place On Earth / Living On A Prayer

12. Die Alive

13. Over The Hills And Far Away

14. Until My Last Breath

We somehow managed to get together after the concert and went for quick dinner at the hostel. We didn’t want to stay home so we came back to the square looking for some kind of afterparty. We found Ilie there – some dude from the staff who spoke Bulgarian perfect! We met his friends and spent the rest of the night together. I would just mention the fact that a waitress laughed at us when we ordered Tropic Tuborg…(I think it was kids beer). 🙂

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Saturday! We have provided the food for the next two days so some of us went to take a majour tour in Sibiu.

Liars Bridge

May be we had something like a habit…There was a van passing us by and what we saw – Lacuna Coil! Made a call to Venko to come and take the advantage to listen their soundcheck. We kept on with our little tour till 2 o’clock.

Camera's self-timer is a great inventiontion 😀

After a quick lunch we went back to the “ours” coffee shop behind the stage. Some of my friends were already there and had the chance to meet the lovely Cristina Scabbia. From all musician Italians were the most friendly. They didn’t have the scary look my favourite Tony Kakko. 🙂 At this particular café I finally sat and talked to Natasha – a friend from Serbia.

We all want to be on first row again so we went to the further entrance.  Déjà-vu get the situation of the 2009^th. Fans from the nearby entrance were already let in! The guard from our side didn’t want to let us in, too – 2-3min to them were nothing but for us…Thanks to my special pass I went trough the security fast, Katina came after me and then Venko arrived and made himself some space…that made some Romanian girls angry…We could see something different this evening – there weren’t Bulgarian flags only, Finnish and Romanian also. That made the festival looked more international as it was!

7;30 – we all could see three people who took part in a strange group – Republica. The first thing crashed into my mind was “Where, the f*ck, is the drummer of that band?” Well, techno-pop punk rock bands like this didn’t need a drummer! All we could hear was really hard bass and the only people who enjoyed the show were the ones on the stage.. The song we all know, „Ready To Go“, was left to shut out the show. We were all ready to say “goodbye” to this band.

A very nice young man asked Republica a question 😀

Right on time at 8;30 a sound became from the stage – instrumental version of Everything Fades To Gray“. This was the begging of my trip’s climax!

from www.metalhead.ro

Sonata Arctica started their show with „Flag In The Ground“ again. „The Last Amazing Grays“ started but I was shocked by the sound! Nothing common between this and the one in Kavarna a month ago! Tony was hardly heard. As I was complaining to Katina – a radical change! Then everything was perfect. The show was almost the same as it was in Bulgaria. Apart of their German colleagues the Scandinavian guys were more original in their jokes. At that time we all were singing „Total Eclipse Of The Heart“. 🙂 As we saw in the sky it was time for my favourite „Fullmoon“. I might say that this hour and 15 minutes show were the best for me this year and the show wasn’t even finished yet!

Sonata Arctica at ARTmania Festival 2011

Set list:

01. Intro – Everything Fades To Gray

02. Flag In The Ground

03. The Last Amazing Grays

04. Blinded No More

05. Paid In Full

06. Victoria’s Secret

07. Last Drop Falls

08. Juliet

09. Black Sheep

10. Sing In Silence

11. Caleb

12. Replica

13. FullMoon

14. Don’t Say A Word

15. Vodka

The female part of our gang went back for beers and let us waiting for someone beautiful on the stage. 🙂 10;30 and Crisi (Cristina Scabbia) and co captured the stage. The pictures below are indicative.

from ARTmania Festival facebook page

The first song we were blessed to hear was “Underdog“. Actually everything was so fast and imperceptible…Hit after hit…Venko and I were thinking about a boring song so we could only watch at Cristina. Oh, I had to tell about some „Bad Romance“ by Lady Gaga and when it was time for encore Cristina came with…Harley Davidson (there was an exposure of their motorcycles). You could only experience the rest of it…(I count on Bulgarian promoters about that).

Lacuna Coil at ARTmania Festival 2011

Set list (without one song):

01. Underdog

02. I Won’t Tell You

03. Fragments Of Faith

04. Closer

05. I’m Not Afraid

06. 1.19

07. To The Edge

08. Heaven’s A Lie

09. Enjoy The Silence

10. Swamped

11. Fragile

Encore:

12. Survive

13. Spellbound

14. Our Truth

I go to concerts a lot but I can’t remember when the last time I have had such pain in my neck was. I couldn’t be much more satisfied from this year’s edition of the festival. After the concert I went directly to the bathroom so I would have 2 hours to sleep before we had to catch our bus – at 5:00 in the morning…Rest of my friends decided it was better not to sleep until the bus at all. We were in Bucharest around 11 and we had 5 hours ‘till we leave. We took a lot of funny pictures and people looked at us – might be because of the language or the same ARTmania Festival 2011 ‘s T-shirts we have bought…:)

ARTMANIACS

There are a lot of things I may not tell you but most of you are already asleep before the end of this story. But I think this was enough to convince the fans of beautiful places, power and symphonic metal that this is their festival! There are already promo tickets for the festival in 2012 – 60lei for both days. You can check the info at http://www.artmaniafestival.ro/ or at our page because we are there next year for sure! 🙂

Translated by Lois