The Shows

On this, the 30-day anniversary of our return from the Balkans, I’ve realized that I haven’t provided any photos from our actual shows! Most of these were taken by the official CF Show Tour photographer; the ones that are out of focus are all mine… 😉

The opening of our two hour-plus entertainment extravangza featured a re-working of the very tired Second City Riverdance sketch, for the sole purpose of introducing Mr. Shawn Clements, aka Dr. Evil.

A rare shot of Mr. John Landry’s tongue…

This is as close as the Internet can get to recreating the excitement of the Shags in performance. Pretty sad, huh?

The multi-talented Bobby Bruce added another character to his growing arsenal for our show.

Anchoring all this madness was the big beat of Mr. Kyle Radomsky, aka Fat Bastard.

Here’s yours truly, making all of Atlantic Canada proud.

The climax of our two hour-plus entertainment extravaganza, looking remarkably similar to the beginning.

The Road Home

The carrot dangled in front of our noses for the entire tour was this, The Opera Hotel, in Zagreb, Croatia. We spent but one night here after our last show before flying to Zurich, then on to Canada.

I’m guessing that the hotel gets its name from this opera house, located just down the street.

After a gourmet dinner at the hotel, some of us (from the left: Lisa, Shawn, myself, Rebeca and Christy) decided to whoop it up at a local nightclub.

The next day, we all enjoyed the eight-hour flight back to Toronto in our own ways.

The closest I’ll ever get to Iceland? We’ll just have to see…

Merlin

To get from Sarajevo to our last gig in Banja Luca we somehow scored a ride on two British Navy Merlin Helicopters.

Peter Sherk had a little trouble with his in-flight headset.

Our gruff but lovable flight engineer kindly lowered the back ramp of the aircraft in mid-flight, for whoever wanted to dangle their footsies off of it.

The one and only time I didn’t mind a tight-fitting belt — it was the only thing securing me to the helicopter.

Myself and Marc Hickox enjoying the view. It was actually quite serene out there, until the hotshot pilots decided to pull some fancy maneouvres on us…

Sarajevo II

After my Turkish coffee, I went for a bit of a stroll, only to see more signs of devastation from the war.

This is Sarajevo’s main cemetary. Many casualties of the war were buried here, but not all. Funerals were, if you can believe it, a favourite target for snipers. So the dead had to be buried either under cover of darkness or anywhere else that was relatively safe, like public parks.

Kyle, Peter, myself and Lisa stop by the monument to Josef Tito.

And even here, we couldn’t escape the signs of fighting.

During the siege of the city, the UN took control of the airport and citizens took advantage of it, building a tunnel underneath to smuggle people out and supplies in.

The twenty meteres or so of tunnel that remains has been turned into a museum, so that younger generations of Bosnians will be able to understand what their country went through. He also has kittens!

Sarajevo

This is one of the gates leading to Camp Butmir, in Sarajevo. The multi-national facility was certainly impressive, but the city proper had much more to offer in the way of photo opps…

This pleasant block of apartments sits within the jurisdiction of the United Nations-supported local government.

And literally across the street is this mess, under the jurisdiction of the breakaway government and not supported by the United Nations. Think the UN is trying to send a message to someone?

If you didn’t already know, Sarajevo was synonymous with war even before its thousand-day siege. This is the bridge where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Serbia was assassinated in 1914, the event which kicked off the First World War.

Signs of gunfire from the latter half of the century can still be seen throughout the city.

That’s not to say, of course, that Sarajevo isn’t a pleasant place to spend an afternoon. Here’s me enjoying a good, strong cup of Turkish coffee.