#Plamen Dimov | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

222daysoflight · 7 years ago

Text

A Journey Through Kitee, Finland: Birthplace of Nightwish

So as some of you know and I’ve made a few random posts about, last December I visited Kitee, Finland, the birthplace of Nightwish and (arguably) of symphonic metal. I’ve been wanting to make a full post about it for a long time, but I really want to do it justice. It’s a long story, so I’ve put it under a cut, but I feel like there’s some good info in there.

I’m going to try to give it what it deserves, but the long and short of it is: Kitee’s the most magical place I’ve ever visited. And that’s not something I say lightly, or with anything but sincerity. I’ve been to a fair amount of places, but Kitee feels like nowhere else I’ve ever been.

I can see how it created something like Nightwish.

So, bits of background: Nightwish has been my favourite band since I was about 10. It was the first thing I remember ever autonomously liking, and I’ve pretty much always liked them with the intensity I do now, but I was very embarrassed about it and kept it a secret until I was about 16. Why that is is a different matter entirely, but my point in explaining this is to hammer home (as if the whole “Nightwish blog” didn’t do that already) is that Nightwish is something massively important and personal to me, and has been for more than half my life. Going to Kitee was like a pilgrimage.

Anyway, more practical things: I was in Europe in December. I had no intention of flying back to the States for Christmas, and I wanted to go somewhere. Ergo, Finland. Now, several years ago, in the early days of this blog, I was talking to someone who had gone to Kitee, and they had mentioned a name to me: Plamen Dimov. I found him on facebook and sent him a message asking if he would recommend some places to see in Kitee. He replied for me to text him the time my train would get into town, and he’d come pick me up.

So one cold December morning after Christmas, I got on a train from Joensuu, where I was staying, to Kitee, about a half hour south. I texted Plamen, got off the train, waited for everyone else to get into their cars and leave, and then approached the only car that remained.

It was the right car, fortunately, so I got in and introduced myself properly to Plamen Dimov. Essentially, his claim to fame is that he is the music teacher in the Kitee high school who originally taught Tarja, Tuomas, Emppu, Jukka, and Sami. He was instrumental in their earlier stuff, though since they’ve gotten bigger, he’s taken more of a step back. But (as I’ll talk about later) he’s still very close to Tuomas and the Holopainen family, and has, of course, taken on the role of tour guide to people who have somehow found his name and are juuuust obsessed enough to come to town.

He’s also a big, loud, intimidating Bulgarian man.That should definitely be noted. We realised afterwards that we hadn’t taken a picture together, and I regret that.

First stop after the train station was Plamen’s house, because he had lost the keys to the museum where all the Nightwish stuff was. On the way, he told me about how as kids around my age, the entire original lineup of Nightwish used to sleep at his house so that they could stay up together and finish the demo that would become Angels Fall First.

It was there, he said, that they actually came up with the name Nightwish for the band, basing it off the song of the same name. I was thrilled to learn this, since I had been wondering about that for years and the internet was not forthcoming. Plamen eventually found his keys, and we left again.

Stop 2 was actually the local convenience store, because I’m not very smart and had not bought a return ticket to Joensuu, and apparently they sell out. When the lady checked, the last train with tickets available was the 6pm train. Plamen said it really wouldn’t take us that long and he had afternoon appointments. I said it was fine, I would just wander around for a while, and then we would meet up again and he would take me to the train. This ended up being a lovely bit of luck, but I didn’t know that yet.

Kitee is a tiny town. The municipality (also called Kitee) it’s in has a population of about 10 000, but the town itself is essentially just one street with shops on either side, clusteres of houses on little side streets, and then farms and lakes and forests. Your classic small town, at first glance.

And Plamen knew everybody. Before we even made it to the museum, he had already stopped three times to chat with random people. He’s large and sort of scary looking, but also very, very friendly and charismatic. He also seemed to take great joy in interrupting his Finnish conversation to go “and this my visiting Canadian!” while pointing at me. This didn’t really ease how intimidated I was by him, but y’know, that’s just my personality.

Eventually though we did make it to the museum, which was an old barn converted for the purpose. We went in, and it had apparently originally been a museum about logging in the area, but Nightwish stuff was slowly starting to creep its way down the stairs to probably take over the building.

The upstairs area, as it were, was already cramped with artefacts in cases (for the ones that really couldn’t be left out in an uninsulated barn), and sort of roughly organised in another area (for the things that could get a bit cold or wet). And it was small, don’t get me wrong-- this isn’t a high-budget operation, and Kitee is a tiny town to have anything that big-- but it was fascinating what was in there. All of the editions of all of the albums. The original lyric sheet for “Eva”. The original artwork for the cover of Century Child. The certifications for when the albums had gone silver, gold, platinum. There was even a poster, inexplicably, from the Nightwish show that I had been to in Toronto two years prior.

Frankly, even despite its mediocre organisation and small size, it was a little bit overwhelming. It was like everything that had been so important in my life all in one room.

(I blame my poor photography skills on glare)

Plamen let me look around for a bit, then asked me what my favourite Nightwish album was. My answer for that is actually about four pages long, but I just said Once, because that’s the conclusion of those four pages.

On the way out he had me sign a guestbook, which was pretty fun to leaf through. It wasn’t signed very often, but the places that people had come from were pretty amazing: Mexico, Brazil, Japan, all over Europe. I put in my own name and a nice word in for Montreal, and then we left.

Next stop was the Kitee high school, which I thought was strange, but it turns out that Finnish high schools have recording studios in their basements (don’t tell me if not all Finnish high schools do, I want to believe), and that all of the Nightwish albums until Dark Passion Play were recorded in said high school basement. I think it’s technically called “Caverock” or something, but it’s totally just a recording studio below a school.

Now, this is the only recording studio I’ve ever actually been into, but from my inexperienced perspective (and you can tell me yes or no from the pictures) but that place is swanky. There were a few rooms that you sort of snaked through, but eventually you made it to the back, where there was what I would call a Nightwish shrine.

This thing is huge, and filled with signatures. It was sort of like the guestbook, but it had all of the members of Nightwish, their families, their crew, everybody who was important or had visited the town where it all began. Plamen gave me a marker and I dutifully added my name, country of origin, and date to the shrine. Not gonna lie, I felt a little bit proud with my name there alongside everyone else’s.

Then Plamen opened up a little storage closet, pushed aside some cleaning supplies, and pulled out a microphone. I know I already posted this once, but I just feel like it bears repeating.

P: Here, it’s the microphone Tarja used to record Once. Want to hold it? Me: Oh god no, I’m going to break it. P: You’re not going to break it, it’s already broken Me: No no, I’m going to break it more P: ... Just take it

And so I held the microphone used to record Once, my favourite Nightwish album, the one that Rolling Stone said was really good or something. It was just a broken microphone, but I think you can tell be the look on my face. I was absolutely smitten.

So when we were looking at the shrine wall, Plamen had pointed out the signature of John Finburg. He’s Nightwish’s North American tour manager, and if you’re from North America and have seen Nightwish or various others before, he runs the ticket ordering service Enter the Vault. And, much like his ticket ordering service, John Finburg is terrible. Horribly misogynistic and racist. I don’t want to get too much into it here (or why people use him), but my point is that he’s a scummy human being and I hate him with a passion.

I don’t know why, but as we were walking back to the car, I mentioned this to Plamen. He turned back to me and looked sort of angry, and I was afraid I had said something bad, but I was wrong. I will never forget what he said next:

“John Finburg is a giant piece of shit. The way he treats women-- I told him, if you lay a hand on any one of the girls, I will kill you.”

Needless to say, Plamen and I got along swimmingly after that.

We got back into the car and drove for a while after that.The above picture is the very far edge of the Meadows of Heaven, which is apparently an actual place and not just a metaphor in a song (which I had always assumed). I wish I had a better picture, but they were on the left and Plamen’s head was in the way, but essentially it’s just this huuuuge open meadow, dark pine trees behind it, lake just barely visible in the distance. It was covered in snow because of the time of year, and Plamen said it was absolutely beautiful in summer, filled with wildflowers and the like.I don’t know, I thought it was pretty with the snow on it.

All the while Plamen chatted, giving interesting tidbits about Finland, which I found fascinating but isn’t worth relaying here. But, once we had bonded over our mutual hatred of John Finburg (or something), he also started to talk about other Nightwish things, especially Tuomas. About how he had once had to pull a girl off Tuomas and then talk her down. About that girl who had tried to get Tuomas to sign a marriage certificate. And how Tuomas had had to set up security around his house, because of people figuring out where he lived then going there (???). I asked if my belief was correct, that Tuomas is just a quiet Finnish man who would just like to write music in peace. The answer to that is yes.

Oh, and also, Plamen loves Floor. Obviously he had a special connection with Tarja, and he liked Anette, but he was on my page that Floor is a perfect fit for the band.

“Before with the other two, they were always a band and a soloist, a band and a soloist,” he said. “Now, with Floor, they’re just a band.”

Eventually, we stopped and got out of the car at the above house. Plamen explained that it was the Holopai’s house, Tuomas’ parents, and that they weren’t home at the time otherwise they would probably love to come out and meet me (Tuomas’ uncle/godfather lives in the red house to the side, hence the footprints). So I was like okay, cool, Tuomas grew up really really far from everything. We were about 10km from the Russian border, in pretty much the middle of nowhere.

Then Plamen lead me down a little path that went to the edge of the lake, looking out over the quiet, frozen emptiness.

“Over there, on that island,” he said,

“was where the idea for Nightwish was born.”

I took the picture, the sun (kindly) cooperating with me, and then I just... stood there. I stood there and stared for a long time. Plamen silently smoked a cigarette behind me, letting me be all weird and caught up in the mythos of it all. Do I really believe that Nightwish started there? I’m not sure. But it’s a nice story, and that’s what Nightwish is all about, right?

After a while, Plamen came back to stand by me again. Some dogs had started barking in the distance, and Plamen asked me if I knew what that meant. I said no.

“Wolves,” he said simply.

It was a few more senconds, and then there was the distinctive howl of a wolf, silencing all the dogs. It was one of the oddest things I had ever experienced. Absolutely eerie.

We stopped a few other places, but nowhere particularly worth noting in this already very long post. As I said, my train didn’t arrive for several more hours, and Plamen had some afternoon commitments, so we drove to the supermarket parking lot and he dropped me off. I said I was okay to just wander around a few hours, that I was used to the cold. He told me that if anything came up, I was supposed to go into the pizzeria and say “puhelin Plamen” (which means “telephone Plamen,” but like it’s being said by a child who doesn’t understand grammar). I agreed, and he drove off.

So then I had several hours to kill in a town that only had one road. I went into the supermarket to get some food, because it was around lunch time. For some reason, this supermarket had a music section, and so I waltzed on in and looked at some of the titles. Normal stuff, mostly-- all the Nightwish CDs-- and all organised in alphabetical order, like normal.

Except when I got to the letter “T”, I found this:

I don’t know why I found this little thing so strange, but I did. That CD should not have been classed under “T”, it should be under “H” for Holopainen. And yet it most definitely was not. I didn’t take a picture in the store, but I did stand there for a long while, thinking to myself how weird it was. Tuomas was so normal in that town, it would have been unusual to put his own album under his last name.

I didn’t own Life and Times of Scrooge, so I bought it along with my weird bagel things* and some hummus, and then set back out into the day, not really knowing what I was going to do.

It wasn’t a cold day at all, compared to some of those I’ve experienced in Montreal. Still, it was hovering around -4 C, and I didn’t have my proper winter gear with me, so it was a bit chilly. Plus, the minute I left the store, it started to snow as well, which was not helped by the fact that none of my clothes were waterproof. But it wasn’t wholly unpleasant, as far as days go, especially given December in Finland. Plus I was eager to explore.

As mentioned, Kitee “downtown” is just one street, so I decided it best to go out into the “outskirts” a bit. Being a proper wannabe goth (tm), the first place this lead me to was a series of graveyards. For a town of so few, Kitee has A LOT of graveyards, and you can make of that what you will with regards to Nightwish.

Next order of business was weird abandoned mill thing. Look, I have no idea, I had time to kill, and have a terrible sense of self preservation. I went through some of the outbuildings, with most everything being too dark to photograph and I just... I don’t know what this place was, really. One of the places seemed like a house, abandoned and with its door gaping open, with snow blowing in. Like nobody cared.

However, when I reached the far edge of the mill-area, I realised that there was, in fact, an occupied building on the property, and that there were lights on in it. I was fairly certain that I wasn’t supposed to be there. If I got caught I doubted I’d be able to explain myself, and I was too far from the pizzeria for me to emergency call Plamen for Finnish help.

So I bolted into the woods.

This was, perhaps, a mistake.

Now you see, the entirety of Kitee is surrounded by forest on the edge of a lake, so I knew that is I kept the lake in my sights I would be able to find my way back into the town. This is an excellent theory. However, as I mentioned, I didn’t have proper snow gear, and while my boots were okay and I had tucked my socks correctly, there was probably 8 inches of the snow on the ground in the forest, beautiful and pristine and utterly impossible to walk through.

But I had committed, and I didn’t really want to turn back and risk having anyone ask me questions. So I set off again, this time slogging through the woods.

I was never lost, per se, but I didn’t really know where I was going. I always kept the lake at my side, and knew I would get there eventually. At one point I ended up alongside a freeway before going back into the woods. It would snow, then stop, then snow again. Things were starting to melt onto me.

But I didn’t really care. As I walked along-- sometimes finding paths, sometimes through the woods-- it was the weirdest feeling. Like I was just suuuper aware of my surroundings, of the silence, of everything, and it was all... pleasant. Like when you’re warm and cozy in bed with the knowledge you don’t have to be anywhere for a little bit. I don’t like to bandy about words like magical, but that’s the closest I can come to describing it.

There would sometimes be weird little bits of life left behind in the woods, like this chimney with nothing else still visible around it. Sometimes there would be things like the freeway or a house. But for the most part, it was just trees, and snow, and views like the picture above this one, of a vast, frozen lake.

It may sound boring, the way I’ve described it. Snow and trees and ruined structures. But that’s not how I felt, and I think the most telling thing was that I didn’t listen to anything. Ever since I got my first iPod nearing on ten years ago, I’ve had headphones in constantly. I probably listen to about 5 hours of music a day, on average. It’s a compulsion, and has to do with some mental health issues that I won’t get into, but suffice it to say that I usually get very stressed if I’m out and not listening to music.

But walking through those woods, for pretty much the first time since I was 12, I didn’t feel the need to listen to music. Not Nightwish, not anything. Actually, at one point I put my headphones in, then took them out again, because it felt so wrong.

It sounds sort of silly, all typed out. “Kitee cured my anxiety,” or whatever. But it felt real at the time, and I swear to god, there something weird about that place. Maybe it was all in my head, but hey, so is the music, in the end.

I did eventually make it back to town, crossing through a metal pipe under the freeway (?) and eventually seeing the main stretch. It was pretty dark at that point, too, so I was pretty glad when I saw the entrance to town and the glow of the ABC minimart/gas station in the distance.

(don’t forget to rake your tits)

Plamen had suggested that if I got too cold I could go into the minimart to wait for him, and I felt like that was just what I needed. I went, got a coffee, and sat at a table in a far corner. There was wifi, so I made this post, and checked some stuff, but mostly I just wrote all of this down, everything that had happened, but mostly about how fucking weird I felt.

I listening to old men play slot machines and teenagers fuck around two tables over from me. I watched as cars drove by in the dark. Life went on while I was having a very small existential crisis with some mediocre coffee in a gas station.

As such, I managed to accidentally miss the time that I was supposed to meet Plamen back in the supermarket parking lot, and had to run to get back there. I was only a few minutes late, but he was extremely worried about me, even though I had plenty of time before my train.

Anyway, his son Nikolai had for some reason tagged along to drive me back to the station, but honestly I was very glad for the company. Things seemed more normal with them there, and we talked and laughed about languages, and Canada and Finland, and metal and circus. They told me to come back again anytime, but especially in the summer, as that was when things got really beautiful. I thanked Plamen and said goodbye to Nikolai, and got out to wait for my now-late train.

The lake wasn’t frozen over back up in Joensuu. I don’t know why. The next day I was back to listening to music again, exploring Joensuu and the woods there, but it wasn’t quite the same. Nothing was quite the same, and part of me doubts that I’ll ever find anything else that is.

There’s something weird about Kitee, and it’s not just Nightwish. And I really, really like it.

*if ANYONE knows what the weird bagel things are, I will love you forever. They’re more like rings of dough, so the hole in the centre is huge, and they’re a lot sweeter than normal bagels. I think I ate about 4 a day when I was in Joensuu, but I cannot for the life of me remember what they are called.

#personal #nightwish #kitee #long post #shit yeah originally i didn't have it under a cut but that would be... excessive #too many pictures #anyway this was really nice to write #it's been like... 8 months but as i mentioned i wrote down everything after it happened #so this is as accurate as i can assume anything is that happened in that town #seriously did i like temporarily step through a wormhole to some other dimension?#like ok this romanticises it a bit but... that's what it felt like #and i romanticise like nothing #and the music thing may seem small but you've got to realise that that is one of the weirdest things i've ever experienced #not wanting to listen to music #also i wanted to post a picture of my signature on the wall (i'm standing in front of it in the picture)#but it's defs my full name #and i ain't doing that #uh anyway if you're even in that neck of the woods 10/10 go visit kitee #and go through plamen #i can provide introduction if anyone needs #man there's so much more stuff but like this post is forever long #and here i am just rambling in the tags #wait later addition to tags #just because i feel like i need to make a note of something #that these pictures are not necessarily in the order i took them in #i just matched them to where they fit best in the story #all of them are mine and from kitee though #with the exception of the second to last one which is actually joensuu

29 notes · View notes