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 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…

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…

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!

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.

Our ragtag team of merrymakers weren’t the only guests at Castle Greyskull; a Hungarian SFOR unit was stopping over as well. Here’s me hamming it up with some of ‘em, hoisting a variant of the famous Russian AK-47 above my knobby knees.

This is Maggie, an abused dog who was adopted by the base, and who stole everyone’s heart.

A group shot of the troupe in our emergency gear… In case the bus broke down in no-man’s land everyone who rode it was issued a hockey bag containing a helmet, flak jacket, gas mask and a day’s worth of rations.

As a further safety precaution we were escorted by jeep into the centre of Drvar. What our escorts didn’t know is that we had come into town the evening before, on bicycles.

Asshole of the world? Well, Drvar is pretty rundown, but no… This is the entrance to the caves where General Tito hid from the Nazis during the Second World War.

We didn’t get keys to the city, but Shag singer Sandra Volodoff did get some hand-picked flowers from a local goat-wrangler…

On the way to Drvar, our fourth stop, we stopped for coffee here, at an honest-to-goodness Bosnian brothel. I think army folks call it “The Purple Pickel” — and if they don’t then they should! Sadly for us, the freaks only come out at night.

As our aging bus made its way through the mountains, it had to negotiate through several sharp 180-degree turns, called switchbacks. It can be a little scary on a narrow road, especially if two large vehicles meet face to face!

Fortunately the driving was in the very capable hands of our dear friend Serge. Unfortunately for us, the drive to Drvar was his last with us.

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Click on the link above to see a panoramic view of the town of Drvar. The military base there is almost hidden in the hills on the other side of the valley, about halfway left from centre.

The Canadian army calls this converted flour mill “Castle Greyskull”. Wouldn’t you?

It doesn’t look like much, but this VIP tent had single beds in curtained-off private rooms, with an electric fan in each… Heaven!

The third stop on our tour was Camp Maple Leaf, in an area called Zgon. Though the air conditioning on our bus was definitely a joke, getting the bus into these camps was no laughing matter — that mirror is for spotting hidden cargo on the undersides of vehicles, like a bomb or a crack team of ninjas.

When stage manager Peter Sherk speaks you drop everything and listen, especially if he’s pointing a grenade launcher your way. I found out after taking this photo that the freakin’ thing was loaded!

Here’s me mistaking a brick of C4 explosive for one of those protein bars. Mmm… plastique-y!

Here are the famous urchins I wrote about in a previous post. In our hurry to shower these impoverished little ones with gifts and flags we failed to notice the BMX bike…

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Click on the link above to see a panoramic view of some castle ruins above the town of Kljuc. That cell tower in the background gave my Treo crystal-clear reception!

These are the kind military escorts that snuck us up the mountain to see said ruins. Check out the army’s standard-issue Kodiak Grebs!

The second of the six bases we visited was a converted car dealership in the town of Bihac. I think you can still lease that GMC van in the background…

To get there, our bus travelled through an hour and a half of pretty countryside. Here’s Shag drummer Kyle Radomsky eyeing a castle on the way…

One of the few minefields that are actually marked… The first thing the army tells you about mines is that they don’t act the way the Hollywood ones do — that is, click when you step on them and detonate when you step off. In the real world you step on one and it’s all over.

One of the things you gotta do in a two-hour outdoor show is pace yourself. Here are Shags Sandra Dominelli and Tiffany Hambrook providing some backup vocals, from backstage.

Only in the army can you sign autographs under barbed wire. Well, maybe prison…

There wasn’t much to do in VK proper, save for the pirate CD shops across the road — the only consistent evidence of an economy I saw on the entire tour. Here’s Warrant Officer Randy Lahaise, checking out the selection.

Thankfully, there were plenty of toys on base to keep us busy!

You’d think that handing a comedian an automatic weapon would be a bad idea. You’d be correct, and our army hosts wisely took the bullets out first. Here’s me fiddling with the Canadian Armed Forces standard issue rifle, the C7A1. We took the American M16 and made it better, though I’m clearly having some trouble with the quick-release strap.

Shag keyboardist Joel White tries out the military’s night vision goggles, captured by me courtesy of Sony’s Super NightShot technology.

And to top it all off we were treated to a tour of the Balkan countryside, by helicopter! An underpowered, Canadian-made helicopter, yes… But a helicopter nonetheless!

Christy Bruce and I, keeping our lunches down. I think.

An aerial view of the Ostrozac Castle, dating back to the 1600s.