Eric Papalaya will begin his trip to Helsinki Saturday night with a last concert in Vienna. Although he will already be on the road to Helsinki Sunday, he will not arrive until May 3 when many of the delegations also begin arriving to prepare for the first rehearsals. Eric's Vienna concert on Saturday kicks off a promo tour that will take him to 15 cities and carry him all the way to Helsinki. The single for Get a life – get alive is also hitting stores in Austria today (20 April).

Eric will say farewell to the home crowd Saturday night on the Heldenplatz in Vienna. From there he will begin his long trip to Helsinki. Sunday night he will already be appearing in Budapest. Before he makes it to Helsinki he will have carried his message and his song to 15 countries in Northern and Eastern Europe.

The full promo schedule – and blog of his roadtrip – can be found on Eric's English language homepage here.

According to the home page "Eric stands up for more tolerance and more freedom – for awareness concerning AIDS. The goal is to reach as many people as possible with this message." The promo tour is being sponsored by donations from AKG, BP, Volksbank and Universal. Of course as Eric told our partner site Eurovision Austria earlier in the week, he's also making the tour to "win a few points" for Austria (full interview in German here).

Finally Eric will also perform Get a life – get alive tonight (20 April) on the Austrian program "Dancing Stars" broadcast on ORF. This performance will probably be a good indication of what the stage show will look like in Helskinki.

Eric's Eurovision Song Contest entry is also this year's Life Ball theme song. Life Ball is the annual Vienna AIDS fundraiser patterned after the elegant, traditional Vienna Opera Ball held during Carnival season. The Life Ball fund raiser is known for for it's elegance mixed with more then a touch of kitsch and glam. Observers expect Eric to bring this sensibility to his Song Contest performance as well.