I suppose I should start at the beginning. And the beginning was a long, long time ago – early Spring, actually. I was told that a private university here in Tallinn was holding a verbal translation competition. I entered, and won. The prize was a travel certificate. Initially I hoped it would be considerable, around €500, but as it turned out there was only 2000EEK. Which is insufficient for pretty much anything as far as travel goes, but was (almost) enough for ferry tickets to Stockholm and back. Considering that I missed my first chance to see E-type live (back on the LMS tour, when I was too young to get into the club), and my second one (in Ekenäs, because the hostel was full by the time I got around to calling them), the choice was pretty natural. And so on June 26th, 2002, I embarked on the m/s Regina Baltica, heading for what is so far a serious contender for the best day of my life.

My biggest concern in going to Stockholm was getting around, but it wasn’t my first time there, and with the little help of a map I was able to get from the bus to the familiar part of the city with no particular trouble. The center of the Swedish capital is very distinct, with the three islands – Gamla Stan, Skeppsholmen and Djurgården – containing a huge outdoor museum, my accomodation (the hostel ‘af Chapman’, more on that later) and Gröna Lund, the site of the venue.

Like I already mentioned, I’ve been to Stockholm before, but contrary to the previous two times (a cruise with my father some four years ago and a short stay this spring on my way back from a trip to Norway), now I had an enormous amount of time to kill. And Stockholm suddenly seemed much more interesting than I remembered it. I visited the Royal Palace with its museums, and had a nice walk on Drottninggatan, the shopping street right in the center of the city. I am still wondering how is it that a T-shirt store in the beginning of ‘the’ place for tourist shopping in the capital of Sweden could contain memorabilia for most of the currently popular bands, but no Swedish acts? Another challenge was finding ‘Sveakampen’ – not for me, as I know exactly two words in Swedish (Hej and Tack), but for Rainbow, another EDK-member who wanted to come badly but couldn’t. I scoured almost the entire length of Drottninggatan before I found it. Nobody had it, not even Åhléns – and Åhléns is supposed to have everything!

So after that I checked into the hostel, located conveniently on Skeppsholmen. It consists of two parts, the building and the actual ‘af Chapman’, a really old sailing boat. I was staying on the latter. It’s rather exotic, but fortunately the waters surrounding the islands of Stockholm are calm, so it didn’t feel very special.

And it was finally time to set off for Djurgården and Gröna Lund. It took me about an hour’s slow walk to get around the bay and through Nybroplan square, as I chose not to spend money on Stockholm’s insanely expensive public transportation, but I did return on the river tram – actually the fastest way from Djurgården to Slussen (in the south of Gamla Stan) or Nybroplan, since it takes a straight line and doesn’t have to weave through the narrow and crooked streets of the city, nor avoid traffic.

I was sitting on a bench outside the entrance to Gröna Lund around 6pm, when they were supposed to start letting people in for the concert. It was quiet at first… and then it seemed as the gates of hell had opened! But no – it was just the gates of the ferry terminal.

E-type was scheduled to come on stage at 7.30, but I knew I wanted to be right there in the front row. If you’ve read the other entries in the EDK Tour Diary, you know that the security sprayed water on the people in the first layer of the solid crowd of fans. This time it was taken care of by the viking gods, since just after 6pm, it started to rain. Heavily. After a minute, I was wet; after two, I was dripping. But I came all the way from Estonia, and a little bit of humidity wasn’t going to stop me from enjoying the show.

I did get the chance to buy that T-shirt though; but by the time the tour arrived in Stockholm, they were out of my sizes, so I had to make due with just a poster. Not too shabby either, considering it’s only the third official E-type poster I know of. And yes, it was quite a task keeping it dry.

I wasn’t the only one who was prepared to wait for an hour and a half to ensure front row spots. Although I was dissapointed that nobody else from the EDK community was able to make it, at least I met representatives of the older generation of the E-type fanbase. Actually, I was really surprised at the diversity of people who could be bothered to come out for the concert in this weather. From little children to black-leather-clad gentlemen who looked like they parked their Harley-Davidsons outside. One fan even put on the contents of a small make-up store to be different, as you will see from the pictures; I can only guess what happened to it in the rain. The square in front of the main stage of Gröna Lund was packed to the brim with fans of E-type, and a reasonable amount of specific Dee-fans.

At 7.30, the crowd went wild as the flying speakers came alive with the sounds of Norby IV Ever. After it was done, the floodlights behind the stage came on and the shadows of E-type and Dee were visible through the enormous Swedish flag. And then, with the first few beats of Life, it dropped…

The show was awesome, if a bit short, and lacking Banca Banca despite the crowd’s cheering. The rain wasn’t as heavy any more, and between E-type’s own energy and the heat of the fireworks going off, the crowd dried pretty quickly. No words can do the show justice, every E-type fan needs to see it for themselves. There may be other bands who spend much more time, money, effort and gunpowder on their live shows, but all this doesn’t matter when Roger Gustafsson is attempting to destroy his electric guitar while E-type hands him the power tools… And even if you’re not as hardcore a fan as the rest of us, the sight of Dee shaking it on the stage in very little clothing will be very pleasing to the eye… and the backup vocalists aren’t that bad either! ;)

Unlike NetRoam or Myra, I can’t provide the playlist, but all the classic E-type tracks were there, from Set The World On Fire to Africa. Many of the people in the crowd came to hear “Campione”, because of the World Cup no doubt, and they got their wish. But Banca Banca wasn’t on the list, curiously, despite it being just two days after the single’s release.

E-type talked to the audience a lot, and provided memorable souveniers, like towels and drumsticks after his solo. One depressing moment was a few younger fans fighting for the towel in the front row, but that was broken apart efficiently by security. He got a souvenier himself as well… in the form of a bra! Oh well, if there were guys there that wanted to see Dee for her talents besides dancing, then why not the other way around?

That’s it for the Stockholm entry of the Euro IV Ever Tour Diary on etype.dk. And I’m still hoping he’ll come back to Tallinn one of these days...