November 2005; Alphaville was invited to Russia again – this time to perform at the Disco of the 80s festival organized by Autoradio in Moscow and St.Petersburg. This festival was famous for gathering stars (mostly German and Italian) who used to be on top 20 years ago, but were forgotten since then earning mostly from such short performances, though they are still popular with Russian people who are very nostalgic about their Soviet past. I was deeply hurt that my favourite band is considered as such an ex-star of the 80s, since they don't enjoy full playback and just 3 songs on the setlist felt like a weird joke… Since I was never a fan of playback concerts, I never visited such festivals, however I had to force myself this time – just couldn’t miss Alphaville performing in my native city.

I’d like to emphasize that the band has always been very kind to its loyal fans giving free concert tickets to the fanclub leaders, and we gladly used this opportunity – Autoradio has set incredibly high prices for this festival. We were four: myself, Lena (Alien), Sveta and Slava (three girls and a guy). On that day, November 25, it got really cold outside; November was breathing with frosty freshness, we were freezing and without delays entered the huge Olimpic stadium to get the right position at the stage.

But some people came before us and occupied the most prestigious space near the stage, so we had to stand in front of the left part of the stage, opposite the synthesizers. The stage was T-shaped; there was a catwalk meant for vocalists, while other band members and dancers were supposed to stay on the main part. Dying from boredom, I was watching full playback performances of Eddie Huntington, Mike Mareen, Radiorama, Mr.Zhivago, Righeira, together with even more boring domestic stars. Autoradio was smart enough to prepare dance routines of half naked girls and boys on some performances, and it was obvious that foreign ex-stars were sincerely surprised by this addition. Our suffering was rewarded by an sms message from Steffi, Alphaville’s tour manager, which we were desperately looking forward to get – she has made an appointment at the backstage entrance, as promised. Just a little more waiting...

About an hour since the beginning of the concert Alphaville was announced – and we were really happy about our location, for Rudy Nielson who was their keyboard player during this trip stood right in front of us. He almost immediately saw us in the huge crowd, recognized (I briefly saw him in Germany and we also exchanged a few emails), and during the whole performance we were throwing expressive glances at each other. We were bursting out with excitement! The audience was happy to sing and dance to ‘Dance With Me’, “Forever Young” and “Big In Japan”, which Marian Gold tried his best to sing live, however the loud recording didn’t allow to hear his real voice. The musicians took a bow and rushed backstage since the next performers were approaching, and we started breaking through the crowd to the agreed place where Steffi was supposed to find us.