I'm with Ermz on the questioning things. Being one OF THOSE bands he's speaking about, it's very hard to find the motivation to try to crack into the worldwide scene from here. And it's not easy to merely pack our bags and leave.
In Europe/ US... Jump in a fucking van and go across 5 countries/ 5 states... and back here you've managed to go through like 1 state and maybe played to a collective of 400 people. It's very disheartening.
I don't know about you guys, but even in Finland there is way over 200 places to gig and there is only 5 million people living here. But music export wise it's actually VERY similar with Finland, as music export wise Finland is "an island": There is a sea in the west, sea in the south, north pole in the north and Russia in the east, and each time you want to make an European tour, you have to travel +3000km just to get there and back, which makes it really expensive to make European tours.
If excluding Hanoi Rocks, Stratovarius and Amorphis (and possibly some other bands that I fail to remember right now that made big it in 1980-1990's), that is one of the reasons why there hasn't been many famous Finnish bands before the Internet got big in the late 1990's - early's 2000's (HIM, The Rasmus, Nightwish, Children of Bodom etc).
I don't have any personal experience, but I've heard from a few colleagues that still currently Eastern Europe is really horrible place to gig because the income levels are really low and most of the countries "just" got out of the Soviet rule in early 1990's, so the pay sucks, equipment and venue quality varies a lot, but in general it's pretty shitty. That is why you want to go to Central Europe, where things are a bit better.
To get from Helsinki to Hamburg, you have three travel routes: thru Baltics (~2000km) or thru Sweden (~1500km) or straight to Germany (longer time wise, but shorter travel wise). If you take the easier route via Scandinavia, you first have to travel one full day with a ferry to Sweden, then travel one full day thru Sweden and Denmark, and after that you are at Central Europe, where there is lots of places to go to. If you want to skip straight to Germany, you have to travel for 2 days (or is it 3?) to Rostock on the ferry. If you want to travel the Baltic route, you first have to travel a few hours from Helsinki to Estonia, then Latvia, Lithuania and then about after 2 days of traveling you arrive to Poland.
But yeah, Australia is still pretty much more fucked with the travel thing than we are, eh? :zombie:
