#©mcrmadness

[mcrmadness]

I took "a few" videos at the Rammstein concert in Helsinki on May 28th - I also took tons of photos which I'm planning on maybe posting somewhere one day. Here's a video compilation I made from the clips I took, it's 50 minutes long cos I again wasn't able to control myself.

©mcrmadness

[mcrmadness]

I'm from Finland, from the eastern Finland to be exact, and my city has been rebuilt or renovated a lot after the wars (for non-war related reasons too) but just recently I learnt from my dad that the old iron bridge for trains (and pedestrians) still has old bullet holes on it. I'm a bit bad at history so I don't remember exactly from which war, but probably from WW2 as Winter War took place in the east, and because I do know also our church etc. got bombed at some point but was then renovated so you can't really see that anymore.

Here's the bridge (photo by me), altho the bullet holes are not visible from this far, and I'm not sure where exactly they are:

Also, my paternal grandpa, and my maternal great-grandpa both fought in the WW2 (both survived). Granpa wrote a journal during his duty, I haven't read it but my dad has been trying to write it down on computer. There are also other papers we recently got from granpa's other children, and it's crazy to browse those as they show when and where he was commanded to go, how they kept traveling the country and what was his job there. I never met neither of them in person as they died long before I was born, but I have heard stories from my parents. I think my great-grandpa lost a finger in war because he used to "scare" his grandkids with that often, as they found it so fascinating, and it's one of the memories my mom often keeps telling about him.

About Finland in general, cities have these parts at graveyards called "sankarihauta" which means "a hero grave". All people who died during wars and could be brought back home, were buried there. My city alone has several rows of these along with a plaque with the names of all those people, and a huge statue for remembering the people who served there to protect the country. Here people who died in wars have always been deemed as heroes because for Finland it's always been about protecting the country from the invaders, rather than us trying to invade more land for us. All we have ever wanted is peace, and to get and then keep our independence.

Here are a couple of photos from the said graves:

Photos ©mcrmadness. If you recognize the place from these photos, please keep it quiet as I'd like to keep my privacy :D

People (me included) have repeatedly talked about how Usamericans have a different relationship to war because they haven’t had one in their own country, but I don’t think anyone has explained what we mean by that. So let me try to elaborate.

When there’s been war in your country, its traces can be seen even decades later. It’s practically a part of daily life. If you pay attention, you are constantly reminded of the damage caused.

This church in Berlin was destroyed in WW2 and never fully rebuilt after, as a memorial to the horrors of war

The current university of Mainz was founded in 1946, and has repurposed military barracks the nazis built in 1938 into university buildings.

Several of these giant concrete towers can be found in Vienna and were built during WW2 to defend the city against air raids. Some have been repurposed, but they cannot be destroyed safely. Similar buildings can be found for example in Hamburg.

Bullet holes in the wall of a Berlin school, also from WW2.

Postcards from Warsaw and Cologne that I have on my wall. Cologne lost more than 3/4 of its population in WW2.

Not to mention the millions of civilians that were displaced and not only lost their homes to bombings but in some cases their entire home regions to enemy nations. Finland Poland and even Germany have a few stories to tell about that. The maps of Europe have been redrawn over and over again because of war, and it’s always the regular people that pay the price. And I haven‘t even touched on the after effects of communism in Eastern Europe, the Holocaust or the Balkan war. This right here is barely the tip of the ice berg.

Most of these examples are from Germany because that’s where I‘m from so I‘m more familiar with it. Obviously these can be found in many many countries, often times worse and much more recent than here. And often times caused by Germans, I don’t want to downplay that.

The point is: when you go through life seeing the legacy of these wars, you automatically have a different view on it. When it’s not „just“ your soldiers, but also civilians that are affected, and when your cities had to be rebuilt form the rubble. For most people, war is not a distant thing that happens Somewhere Else.

[mcrmadness]

Just wanted to tell you that i think finland is truly beautiful! I'd love to visit it someday ♥

Finland is! Especially during summer, when the sun also never really sets for a 2-3 months. Winters, on the other hand, are often really long and dark, but if the sun decides to show up for once, you can get really beautiful photos!

Actually, a few of photos I took in winter/spring in January 2021:

Here are also some summer photos... August 2017:

May 2020:

So, definitely visit Finland whenever you have a chance! :)

All photos © mcrmadness.

[mcrmadness]

Finland 10.12.2012 /©mcrmadness

[mcrmadness]

I tried to get some photos of the sunset. Not my best photos, the sun had already disappeared before the islands almost fully, but here's still something... also I think Tumblr is doing something to the quality. The original images are not this unsharp so opening them in a new window/tab on computer (when using desktop) might help.

I was surprised to see how much ice there was still left! I also need to get some sort of a cleaning kit for my camera - I can't get those little dust things out of the camera at all. I have tried everything but still they are always visible in my photos and make otherwise nice photos into something that just looks... bad.

And a bonus:

I tried to get some artsy photos from this angle but I couldn't get the camera to listen to me, and then my bladder decided it's time to go back home and I couldn't finish what I was doing, and apparently I also forgot about the aspect ratio - which was narrower than what I was seeing through the camera. The photo on the left was very dark and I edited its brightness etc. afterwards so it looks a bit funny because of that.

[mcrmadness]

One year from this gig and this clip is still too funny :D

It’s 6:30 here in Finland and I should be sleeping but instead I’m watching my videos from Die Ärzte’s gig in Poland and I’m laughing too much at Farin’s random reactions to his mic stand being too short and one of their crew touching the mic stand afterwards and I need to make gifs out of these or something I can’t with these ::D:D::D:D:DDD::D:Ddddd

///Edit: seriously I’m already cry-laughing here ::DDd I can’t stop watching this

[mcrmadness]

We finally got snow!!! All the previous snow (not much of it) already melted away because it just kept raining for days. The priority number one for Christmas is always to have white Christmas. It doesn't feel like Christmas if it's raining and black and dark everywhere, so I hope it stays like this for tomorrow at least.

[mcrmadness]

16, 17, 18 pls <3

Thaaaaanks ♥ For the photo questions I chose something I took with my DSLR camera because take way too many photos with my phone. I went through some of those too but apparently I have tons of photos but nothing that would be worth releasing (plus the amount of cat photos... insane).

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16. Post a picture from the beginning of the year

This is from February. I never go to anywhere (and when I do I’m too lazy to bring the camera with me...) so majority of my photos are taken from my kitchen window so they get very boring in the end when the subject does not change and I STILL try to make it work - especially if there’s moon, I just try to take The Perfect Photo every now and then but I always fail. And then I try again but never learn.

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17. Post a picture from the end of the year

I’m gonna post two, again from my kitchen window, they both look shit, tho.

The first one is from the end of October - there was again a full moon and I got some okay photos of that one too but this was the only one that I kinda like? Tumblr butchers the quality but the white dots are actually just the ISO, not stars lmao.

And this one I took last week as it was nearly 9am and I was going to sleep but actually witnessed something called “daylight” for the first time in weeks. Even with a sunrise! Usually the winter daylight here is always accompanied with clouds so even if it was “bright”, it’s still gloomy and the sun doesn’t show up and sometimes the days are just 5 hour long morning that skip the day and turn into an evening. The sunrise made the sky look nice so I tried to take a photo of it and its colors. The stress on the word “tried”.

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18. A memorable meal this year?

Maybe the macaroni casserole I made a month ago. It’s very simple meal with pasta, minced meat and egg-milk thing and eaten with ketchup. And oh my god nothing has tasted as good as that food in a while??? For that week my favorite moment of the day was to eat that and I couldn’t wait that I get to eat that food again, and every time I opened my fridge I just wanted to take the food out and eat all of it :::DDDD I have made that food a few times before but I don’t know why suddenly I had this dopamine rush with this food, so much so I bought more minced meat and planned on cooking the same food the next week too. I didn’t tho, executive dysfunction happened and I ended up not eating warm meals for almost 5 days...

[mcrmadness]

I might have put some posters on the wall :D And finally, after 5 full years, I found proper frames for those two big ones (IKEA frames work just fine!) and actually also hung them at the wall without procrastinating for 67834730 years beforehand.

With the small ones the 80s Bravo poster is the new one, these four others I have had here for some time now and recently bought this one OLD Bravo magazine someone was selling online in Finland (I guess miracles still happen...), and then I bought a matching frames for it from Ikea. And yes, I know the images are a bit lopsided but it’s because the things at the back of those frames are lopsided!!! Also my living room is too small even for my camera, I barely could fit the whole view in one photo :D

(And my camera lense is dirty because why the heck not </3 I actually used my actual camera with these as my phone camera seems to think that, after 3 years of use, it’s its time to turn into a potato...)

[mcrmadness]

cute asks ♡ : 4, 10, 19, 22, 26, 33? Have a nice day!! x

Thanks! I hope you also had a nice day today! :)

4. what color are your eyes? do you like them?

Blue-grey. In bright light you there’s also some tiny green spots here and there but they usually like to hide under the pupils which is why they are visible only when it’s very bright. (But then I’m wearing sunglasses so you can’t see my eyes at all lol.) And in a way I do like them but I’ve always liked light green eyes more (you know, the color of Bela’s eyes :D) and as a teenager I was obsessed with this one toilet at school because the light was so yellow it made my eyes look green so I just spent my breaks in that toilet staring at my eyes and trying to come to the conclusion that I have green eyes instad of blue. Needles to say - they never were actually green XD (Idk why I’m obsessed with green eyes over blue ones because what comes to those as colors, I like blue but I don’t really care about any shades of green!)

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10. do you prefer the ocean or the mountains?

To be honest, I have never seen either? I have seen the sea, the Gulf of Finland/Baltic Sea, a few times but that’s all. And Finland has no mountains, just random hills and I have never been to a country with actual mountains :D But I would still prefer mountains over sea - at the sea of course you get neat sunsets (I live in a city built on islands so we get nice lake sunsets every now and then!) but I think that would be the only pro since I don’t swim and usually beaches are for swimming... at mountains there would at least be lots of nature and peace and I really love those things.

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19. would you rather have 100 kittens or 100 puppies?

Kittens! I’m a 110% cat person. I do like dogs too but can’t help it, I was born to a house with 3 cats and we always had cats when I was growing up and the first time living in a place without cats was when I moved out at the age of 23, so I was designed to love cats :D

Plus cats eat less than dogs and I don’t really support tiny dogs that no longer look like dogs. Cats are harder to alter that way and I’m against every breed that is bred and created just because of the “cute” looks (in every animal species actually) but which have serious health problems just because humans think cute is better than healthy. This is why I never supported e.g. the Grumpy Cat because it made the cat dwarwism into a cute and desirable thing when these cats barely can live a full cat’s life because it literally is a genetic mutation with health problems and not just a funny looking cat. Whoops sorry, but as you can see, I really do love cats ::D

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22. favorite place in nature to be? describe what it looks like or post a photo of it?

I like forests. A lot. And we have them in Finland, a lot :D I think my favorite is huge spruce forests because they look like some magic forests as they are so dark yet create amazing sceneries with sunlight! Too bad they logged lots of spruces from one forest nearby so it no longer looks as majestic as before :( But anywhere, here’s a couple of photos of places I often go to when I go for a walk or go hunting sunsets:

(Both photos ©mcrmadness aka me. The first one from October 2018 and the second one from August 2017.)

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26. favorite fruit?

Banana. I also like pears and mandarins etc.

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33. have you ever dyed your hair before? what color(s)?

Yes. Naturally I’m blond (golden blond or something) but had dreamt about black hair since I was 15 and I finally dyed my hair black when I was still 19. I have been dyeing it black every month since that except for this one time (I was probably still 19 or 20) when I decided to go for red roots and that looked rad as hell! Mainly it looked like someone had hit me on the head with an axe but it looked really good with the black! Too bad the red color just wears out so fast - there’s actually some Farin quote/lyrics change over red hair that I agree so much with but I can’t find it, maybe it’s in the Meerschwein or however you people usually call that book :D Anyway, but I really felt that and I dyed the roots twice until they got a bit too long and then I dyed it all with black again and that’s how I still do - my mom’s supposed to dye my hair today, actually :D

Thanks for the ask again!

[mcrmadness]

Throwback to when I saw Yellowcard live in Helsinki in 2011 and it was my first (and so far the last :D) front row concert and omg the memories :D The quality of the video is bad but idc. This is the reason why I film at concerts even when people keep calling me off. I don’t give a fuck, I need my memories in concrete form instead of just shady images in my head (that I can’t even always trust).

After the concert we also got signatures from all of the guys in that band and it was... very interesting indeed! Didn’t even think something like that could ever happen :D

[mcrmadness]

Have you ever thought about what the behind the scenes of Rückkehr must have been like? Well, I did.

[mcrmadness]

PHOTOSET: 9.8.2019 - Rammstein @ Tampere, Finland, part 2/2

I realized I never posted any photos of this on Tumblr so here you go. The light and fire show was amazing, btw.

Photos ©mcrmadness, DO NOT copy, repost nor delete the caption.

[mcrmadness]

PHOTOSET: 9.8.2019 - Rammstein @ Tampere, Finland, part 1/2

I realized I never posted any photos of this on Tumblr so here you go. The light and fire show was amazing, btw.

Photos ©mcrmadness, DO NOT copy, repost nor delete the caption.

[mcrmadness]

The sky today was quite interesting, the photo turned out better than I expected.

[mcrmadness]

Omfg I can't I'm laughing so much now - I took this photo of one of our cats today:

And it isn't enough that Lauha was already her funny self but the longer I look at this photo, the more stuff I find. First I cracked up at the glowing cat eye photobomb at the right. Then I saw the dog's eyes glowing at the left and totally lost it. And I sent the photo to my siblings and my sister pointed out her toes are also in the photo and I can't, it's 5am and I'm sitting in my living room laughing at this photo now 😂