Some raindrops and an energetic start of day Two
I started day 2 of Ilosaarirock again with strolling around the festival site and having a look around.
Here just a small note about the area - after having seen all the garbage lying around in the late yesterday evening I was pretty amazed to see the whole area almost totally clean, the workers must have been cleaning almost half night.
Well, back to the show - the day opened with a fun football game between the FC “Fun-Girls” and the Ylex-team. Finnish festival folk seems to consist mostly out of early risers, I was astonished how many people came by for watching it. The game ended after penalty shootout with a vicory for the girl’s team and as every important game, also this game had it’s own naked guy running across the field.
First surprise of the day - the first band appeared at the main stage and the space in front of the stage was fully crowed with people. Really surprising for me, as I was used that early-afternoon concerts are mainly not getting a big attendance. I was told some that some time ago, that Finns would often need a longer time to warm up before they can make party. Today it wasn’t like this at all, it seemed, as if they continued where they stopped yesterday.
Eläkeläiset and their energetic music made the crowds dance Humppa and forget their hang-over, or as it is called in Finnish “krapula”. No real festival without at least a few raindrops, as it happened just a short time ago. So there was no need for the workers to cool the crowd with water as the rain made sure that everybody get his own cooling.
So, let’s hope for more sun and see what the second day will bring.
Text: Katharina Mörtl
Pictures: Markus Korpi-Hallila and Matti Immonen