Former NIGHTWISH singer TARJA TURUNEN kicked of her first solo tour in Berlin, Germany at Columbia Club on November 25th - the tour is in support of her debut solo effort, My Winter Storm, that was released recently by Universal Music worldwide. She has issued the following road update:

"The first show in Berlin was just great!! Everybody in the band including myself was really nervous. Is normal that in the first show some things are not really working yet. We were ready to have a total catastrophe in the middle of the concert, but luckily it didn’t happen! I sensed that the audience was really listening everything carefully and I got the feeling that they enjoyed the show. That makes me very happy and delighted.

There was a good spirit.

It was funny to see the entire band including two drum sets in a small stage! But our crew managed to make us fit there…

I am sure that things are getting better from now on. As for the first show, Berlin was amazing beginning for us.

Thanks so much for all the nice and wonderful persons in the audience. I felt your support and love. You made a bit difficult for me to continue singing at some points during the concert. Just to bring down the myth that German people is cold. I think you were great and very, very warm.

I also had a nice dinner with VIP guests’ night before the Berlin concert and I got to see them after the concert too. They seemed to be happy with everything. We took some crazy pictures together, I guess you’ll see them somewhere later on

I saw already some amazing photos from the show taken from fans in different forums and fan pages. I though it was going to be easy to choose the good ones from the not so good, but I am sure I was wrong… It will be a very hard task to select the best ones. But that will be a part of a contest later on. Hopefully the photos from the next shows are as good as the ones from Berlin.

Yesterday I had another dinner here in Budapest and we shared very nice evening with people from Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Austria.

At the moment I am concentrating for tonight’s show. Let’s see how it goes…

I am wishing to have the same feeling that I have always felt when performing for Hungarian audience. They are welcoming the artists very warmly here.

I’ll get back to you soon."