Chong-what?

Chongqing, China. That´s where we spent last weekend, in one of the biggest cities in the world with approximately 32 millions habitants. Why, one might ask? Well it all begun with a phone call from Finnair with the very common question "would you like to perform on an airplane on a flight to Chongqing?" To which we answered "yes, of course. Chong-what?"

First there was the soundcheck. The sound system on board an aircraft is of course slightly different to what we are used to and as you can sense on Gregs expression he is not totally convinced.

At least the loudspeakers were nice looking and easy to carry on...We had four of these which covered about ten rows at a time.

Backstage. There is always time to pose. This time the time was limited because just as we were ready to start singing the Captain turned on the seat belt sign because of heavy turbulence and we had to go back to our seats. The guy in the seat next to me gave me a very strange and a bit scared look...

Performing up in the air. Our audience had literally nowhere to run but luckily they didn´t seem to mind at all. We divided the aircraft into five sections and moved our "loadspeakers" between every performance. And as always the wildest party was happening in the back of the plane.

Afterwards champagne. Of course. In Finnish designed glasses. Of course.

We arrived to Chongqing early Thursday morning. The city is a mix of high technology/high fashion/high humidity/cars/people/more people/Chinese language/ spicy food/ grocery stores where a woman actually chops the hen´s head off before you put it in your Louis Vuitton bag on your way home/blinking lights/ very load pop music from not so good loudspeakers/friendly people/not so much English/local people taking pictures of tall giants from Europe with big noses/ very few Europeans.

We had time to do a short cruise on the Yangtze river. We took pictures of the city, the Chinese took pictures of us.

We had some very delicious local street food, no idea what we ate but it was good! I did try to show that I wanted chicken, with the moves and everything, but maybe the chickens move differently in Chongqing because the Chinese cook just looked at me like I was insane.

Yes, we did work as well, we had a concert at a party arranged by Finnair. In the beginning the audience was a bit like question marks even if Jonte did his absolutely best to speak some fluent Chinese but when the second set started people where up dancing and singing along. Did I mention it is humid in Chongqing?

Greg had his own groupies. Look at his happy smile.

When it was time to fly home Finnair had a surprise for us. Business class! It is a quite mean thing to do because how can we ever fly tourist class after this?

Happy people flying home to Helsinki. Thank you Chongqing and Finnair.
Next week we have some Casino shows in Helsinki and then we are off to the German Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen!