Playing Marco Polo

Our third day at PartySan was good but not particularly blog-inspiring. We went back into town, back to the little restaurant and this time got the schnitzel meals we had seen being served the day before. We charged all our chargeables, got a couple of things from the supermarket and went back to camp with very full stomachs.

Courts went and showered and I promptly fell asleep, which is how he left me when he went searching for friends to drink with. The previous day he had bought a dozen beers and completely forgotten he couldn’t take glass into the campgrounds. Luckily he had also bought a massive 5 litre bottle of water so he emptied it out and filled it with beer, which almost filled the bottle. So there he is walking around camp with this ridiculously huge bottle of beer – he doesn’t do things by halves!

Courts looked for his friend from home in the vague direction of where she said her tent was but couldn’t find her. He went to a camp where there was a New Zealand flag amongst others but the Kiwi wasn’t home and the others weren’t particularly welcoming. And so it is that he found himself asking a German group if they had seen any other Kiwi flags and not really leaving their camp. Well, he did for a minute, until one ran after him to ask if he was really from New Zealand and before you know it he’s sharing his massive beer bottle and having a good old time.

Meanwhile, I had woken up and was packing what I could in preparation for an early start the next day. Courts had said he would be in the festival grounds at a particular time and so knowing him and his timekeeping habits I headed into the grounds an hour after said time. I did a loop of the field which is small enough that every other time we’ve used this method of searching for each other it’s worked. It doesn’t work if the person you’re searching for is still at the other end of the run way, which is where Courts was still happily socializing. I watched Hail of Bullets from Courtney’s favourite spot to the right of the stage figuring if he was off getting beer or at the toilet, he’d come back to this point.

After half an hour (and some very cool pyrotechnics) I got bored and did another loop to no avail and so decided to hunt for these Kiwi camps myself. I walked the entire length of the camp looking and listening for any sign of a loud long haired boy and then looped back at the end of the run way and started for camp. I figured if he wasn’t there, I’d go back into the festival for dinner and then go to bed – after all it was closing in on 10pm by this time.

Courts wasn’t at the tent but his almost empty beer bottle was so I figured he was inside. As I walked towards the entrance, he walked towards me, having been looking for me for an hour or so. Turns out as I walked forward through the Hail of Bullets crowd to do my second loop of the field. He had pretty much walked up to take my place in the crowd, where he stood to watch the end of Hail of Bullets. We missed each other by minutes if not seconds and so when Hail of Bullets had finished he had done a loop of his own and then gone back towards the tent, which is when we found each other.

We watched Watain’s set - which featured a very cool stage filled with burning goblets and tridents – ate our last festival dinner and then went back to the tent. Courts left again at one point to watch Enslaved but gave up on At The Gates when the set was over 45 minutes late and it started pouring with rain. So we slept, again to the sound of rain drowning out the last of the music.

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Good Food Makes Everything Better

Day two of Party San had a very slow start for us. I woke at 7.30am, on the early side of normal for me, and kind of sat up like ‘what now?’. There isn’t much to do here before the gates open – a bar outside the gates, a shuttle to the supermarket, and that’s about it. The laptop battery was dead, the phone battery on its way out, the solar panel already empty of charge, and Courts snoozing away happily. Of course many campers are hungover so an early start is not necessarily something that needs to be catered for in general!

I ate breakfast, drank a cold Nesquik (our beloved Billy is out of gas and we haven’t been able to find gas since Amsterdam) and then used up the last of the battery charge playing backgammon. When Courts woke up he had his own breakfast and then at the ripe old hour of 9.30am we had a three hour nap. I think I must still be getting rid of the flu bug because I can’t usually nap or sleep in no matter how hard I try.

When we woke up at 11.30am the supermarket shuttle had started up so we made our way into the village, bypassing the supermarket to explore the streets. We had pizza and sneakily charged the phone and laptop at a little restaurant, vowing to return the next day after spotting some of the other meals leaving the kitchen. German food is the best comfort food in the world. When we get home and it’s raining or I’m sick, I want schnitzel, fried potatoes and chunky mushroom gravy.

When we got back, Courts watched Skeletonwitch, who we saw at Wacken, while I ate chocolate and blogged in the tent. We had plans to meet up half an hour later which didn’t get off to a great start when I waited until 15 minutes after we were supposed to meet and then found Courts drinking beer with the Facebook girl. Some boys never learn!

Courts got dinner – half a roast chicken for 3.50 – and ate that while we watched Primordial, who were really good. I got a crepe in the break between bands and ate it watching Melechesh. I hadn’t realized how cold it was when I left the insulation of the tent so when I finished eating I got a massive 4 Euro Doner Kebab and went back to warm up and get my jumper. Courts meanwhile watched Belphegor with a friend from home. She had been at Wacken as well but we didn’t know she would be here until Courts ran into her.

The highlight of the night was Ensiferum, one of Courts favourite bands and a huge part of the reason we got tickets to PartySan. We watched with the friend from home and her travel buddy, and despite the set being cut short by time restraints it was a really good show while it was on. I don’t know if it’s the sort of music I’d listen to at home but on stage I could happily watch them for hours.

As the set ended the heavens opened up and everyone ran for shelter. Courts wasn’t interested in staying to see the nights headliner, Morbid Angel, in the rain. He saw them at Wacken so decided the tent was a better option and we fell asleep with the sound of rain on the tent drowning out any sound from the stage.

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Building a Bridge

After picking up my bottom lip I went into the festival grounds with a whole different attitude. I was thinking in general about the first friends I had that were into the same music as me. They liked metal but they liked a huge range of old and new rock and metal and they would have made themselves fit in. That’s the same attitude I would have normally had, confident and enjoying myself and probably not noticing any of the negativity. I think the fact that I felt like I was invisible to Courtney and that he was indifferent to my presence is what amplified everything else.

For some reason I had an old friend, the hairdresser I’ve mentioned, in my head at the time. She liked some music the rest of us didn’t but she would crank it out and try and get us into it. She would have loved it here, hit the guys that were ‘possessed with fire and darkness’ with a comeback and kept drinking. It helped that when I walked from camp to the stage I passed a group of friends sat smack bang in the middle of the run way, one filming, most watching, and one singing and playing guitar. He looked exactly like the friend that inspired my dragon tattoo (I can’t hyperlink from here but search ‘Why Teenagers Shouldn’t Get Tattoos’) and sounded like my friends best friend. A bizarre amalgamation of the two, doing exactly what we would have been doing if they were here.

When I entered the festival grounds, they seemed like a drop in the ocean compared to any festival I’d ever been to before. It’s only a very short walk from the tent as it is, and you enter through a huge marquee on the side of the campground. That first night, the bands were on a stage inside that tent, very small, very up close and personal. Passing through that marquee the grounds opened up into a big square. On one side was the singular mainstage and around the edges were merchandise and food stalls. You could have stood at the furthest possible point from the stage and still seen the band clearly. There were no big screens at all, because they just weren’t necessary.

I wandered around the stalls and eventually bumped into Courtney. We wandered some more around the t-shirt stands and then decided to stop for dinner while there was a break between good bands. On each of the three days of the festival, the bands play successively, one at a time with a 15 minute break in between for changing over gear. There is no overlapping of bands, no timetable clashes, no racing to get to the next stage. No alternatives when the band that is on isn’t one you want to see. Between bands, the entire crowd disperses and doesn’t reconvene in front of the stage until they hear the first song. If you want to be front row, you can just walk there as the band starts, except maybe for each night’s headliner.

On this first night though, there were no bands on the mainstage, just inside the marquee. We stood to the side of the stage just outside the marquee eating currywurst and fries only metres from the band. When they finished we picked a spot to sit on the field and finish dinner before heading back to the tent. Courts left at one point to see another band but it’s really easy to do that. The grounds are so compact that you can go to your tent between every band if you really want.

And so day one was over, I survived, Courts was happy, and my love of mayonnaise on fries (which is normal over here) was once again renewed.

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Going to the Extreme

Maybe metal isn’t the answer to world peace*. Maybe Wacken is just an isolated happy place, because Party San doesn’t feel like a home away from home, or friends you just haven’t met yet. The ride from Prague was average, a mix of boring highways and countryside detours. We stopped for an early lunch of schnitzel and potatoes with mushrooms and gravy along the way and cemented my thoughts that German food is fast becoming my favourite from the trip so far.

Eventually, we found Schlotheim. Going from a 75,000 person festival to a 10,000 person festival I knew it would be a lot different, and that was proven from the get go. There were no Party San cars on the road, in fact very few cars at all, and the 2 or 3 groups of metalheads in town gave me a buzz that was shortlived. There were tiny signs pointing the way, none of the fanfare of Wacken that added bit by bit to the buzz and excitement. But I knew it would be different and none of this set me back, it was still metal, still music, just smaller.

The sign above the entrance said ‘Welcome to Hell’ and as opposed to the friendly ‘Welcome Metalheads!’ signs that signaled Wacken, it kind of felt like they were trying too hard to be hard or dark. I liked that Wacken was just happy and that from hours away you could feel a good vibe and a celebratory mood. Courtney liked the sign and so I was outvoted.

We waited in a queue that turned out to be unnecessary – from what we can gather cars need to pay a garbage and parking fee but bikes don’t. We think. People walking past the queue laughed at those waiting and further set PartySan apart from Wacken. Maybe it happened there too, but I didn’t see it, so I recognized it as a difference.

Party San occupies part of an airfield and so it was that we set up camp alongside the runway. Courts helped a guy next door who was struggling with his tent in the wind while I put all our stuff away and set up the beds. Of course with his gift of the gab this meant I heard but didn’t see Courts for 20 minutes as I recreated ‘home’ again and he had a beer with his new friend. After a difficult ride in strong wind, he deserved a rest. I wanted to just sit for a minute myself – the tent always looks the same but the view is always different, so it’s nice to just sit for a few minutes after everything is in some kind of order and regather my thoughts and sense of home. It’s only a few minutes but it helps, so Courtney was left to his new friend.

I went to the toilet wearing my jeans and a white singlet with a picture of a high heel on the front, which earned me pointed fingers and laughs from a marquee of diehard metalheads I passed. When I returned to the tent I changed into my Wacken shirt before we went to join the queue for wristbands. Far from the likes of FiberFIB and PartySan it took about 10 minutes to get to the front, if that. We searched for the shuttle bus to the supermarket but discovered it had stopped running for the day so instead we decided to grab a beer and settle into festival mode. Courtney being Courtney had already found someone he kind of knew while in the toilet queue earlier and she was seated near the bar so we joined the table. How he recognized her, someone he’s never met but has seen on Facebook through a mutual friend, I’ll never know – I’m terrible with faces.

It was nice to see people that could become familiar faces, but the girl was deep in German conversation with another friend and Courts started a conversation with the third member of their party while I looked at the program to see who was playing that night. PartySan doesn’t have the big names like Ozzy and Judas Priest that have entered the mainstream and I guess that’s why some of the people that come here choose PartySan over Wacken. The guy Courts was talking to seemed to be on that train of thought as he explained he wasn’t interested in Wacken for similar reasons and the boys got to talking about the bands that were appearing over the coming days.

As we know I am only a talker when I’m in comfortable territory (which is when you can’t shut me up) but otherwise conversation doesn’t come so naturally to me. I tried to find a way into the conversation, I really did, but I didn’t know anything about any of the bands they were talking about and neither of them looked at me or even noticed I was there. Courts wasn’t consciously ignoring me of course but he was turned away towards his new friend and I felt very conspicuous sitting at the end of the table so I went for a beer.

There was a group of boys near the bar who had obviously been there awhile and were chanting at the barmaid that she was possessed by darkness and fire. She was laughing, and eventually they turned their attention to other patrons, chanting ‘The man with the sunglasses is possessed by darkness and fire!’ or ‘Those three men are possessed by darkness and fire!’.  It was a compliment, and so when I heard ‘She is not  possessed by darkness and fire!’ I turned around. They were laughing at me and when they saw me look up one said ‘You are not possessed with darkness and fire’. I don’t know why. I was standing there with two empty beer glasses to be refilled, in a Wacken shirt, having an ‘I-don’t-speak-your-language-but-I-understand’ body language conversation with the guy next to me (who had been waiting to be served since I had been at the back of the queue).

It seems silly I know - who cares whether a bunch of drunks think I am possessed by darkness and fire? - for me though it summed up my first impressions of PartySan – I was an outcast, not metal enough to be here. When our company departed the table I said as much to Courts – just that the general vibe of the place was metal and metal only, no non-diehard metalheads allowed. He agreed, so it was somewhat of a relief to know it wasn’t just me being paranoid and picking up the weird vibe. He also said he thought it was fair enough though, which after the previous couple of hours made me feel like I really shouldn’t be there. I tried to converse with him, to say that if metal culture is really as welcoming and better-than-everything as he says it is, shouldn’t they welcome anyone that wants to join in? I don’t tell a potential nail client who has only had acrylics on once, that she’s not nail enough to wear my nails (bad example, but I’ve got nails on the brain and hopefully you get the idea).

I feel like there’s a music hierarchy – pop isn’t cool enough for ska and punk, punk isn’t cool enough for alternative, alt isn’t cool enough for  rock, rock isn’t cool enough for heavy metal, and now heavy metal isn’t cool enough for black metal. I see it all the time, every sub-group of friends I have that is into music, thinks their music is the music and anything softer is lame. Funnily enough I don’t recall a debate about heavier music not being ‘real’ music but I’ve been in and amongst hundreds of debates about softer (sometimes microscopically softer) music that’s not ‘real’. I just want to love music, I prefer great guitar solos and I’ll always turn to 80’s rock and metal, but I’ll give anything a go. At Wacken there was plenty of debate about favourite bands but I never heard anyone speak down about anyone elses tastes and it was refreshing.

Anyway, when I said to Courts that if metalheads were that awesome they would want everyone to join in, he felt like his opinion was being attacked and I felt like I was just trying to talk about a vibe I had noticed. He thought I was being negative and I was, but in response to the perceived negativity around me. What could have been a mature conversation about the differences in metal subcultures (and what at the time I thought could be an opportunity for him to make me feel at ease – but boys don’t see these opportunities) turned into an argument and we retreated to the tent to sit in silence.

So here I am, watching the battery go flat and venting. I will go into the festival grounds tonight with an open mind - after all, when I went to the toilet again a minute ago, a guy wearing fluffy pig ears shook my hand. I will have fun, I’ll try out the new bands I haven’t heard before and I will be positive and step out of my comfort zone and talk to people the way Courtney does – naturally and with ease - as if I’m at home, or a friend’s house party, or a gig at home with eyeliner and black boots. But, when all is said and done and you guys stop reading this blog, it will still be a log of the memories I’ve long forgotten, so I’ll post this anyway. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to. And then, to make up for it, I’ll make a better story happen for next time.

*Maybe it’s Heavy Metal  that’s the answer, because Courts has just informed me PartySan is extreme metal - closer to the just-noise music often associated with metalheads by non-metal lovers.

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The Answer to World Peace is Heavy Metal

Stereotypes of Heavy Metal are often very unkind. Negative, rude, dark, drunken… when we put on a black band t-shirt, we become these things in the eyes of many (not all) people. It doesn’t phase me, I’ll be nice to you anyway and if you’re not interested I’ll go back to my friends and our music. The thing is though, the stereotypes are wrong.

In New Zealand, there are plenty of drunken idiots, but they’re not genre-specific. Squish and I saw plenty of examples of that at the Katy Perry concert, just as many idiots as we’ve seen at any metal gig. I’m almost inclined to say it’s a kiwi thing, although my patriotic side doesn’t want to say so. We have a binge drinking culture, we know it, but many of us haven’t been out in the world and seen partying done any other way to learn differently.

I’m also inclined to guess that our drinking habits at home stem from our English roots and our close ties with Australia, because the English are the only drunken idiots we’ve seen in Europe - other than the opening ceremony for San Fermin where everyone was drunk and the worst were Australians and New Zealanders. We honestly haven’t really seen anyone truly wasted in any other country. When we were at the FiberFIB music festival, we were definitely surrounded by drunken idiots but anyone will tell you the majority of the crowd was English.

I digress. The point is, that at Wacken, everyone was positive, happy, friendly… the opposite of the heavy metal stereotype. 99% of the people that passed by were dressed in black, camo or tartan, wearing band t-shirts and heavy boots. The other 1% were grown men in tutus but that’s another post entirely.

On our way to Wacken, hands were thrown up in horns from car to car, anytime someone spotted another car that had been labeled W:O:A (Wacken Open Air). As we entered the town, people were everywhere but there was no trouble. When we arrived at camp, a group of strangers ran towards us with a board to balance the bike stand on in the mud and offers of just-cooked dinner. The only yelling we heard, drunken or sober, was cries of ‘Wackeeeennnn!’ by excited festival goers. As we waited in the queue to get our wrist bands, Courtney was offered a sip from someone elses beer for the first of countless times during the festival.

We heard that in 2009 when some of our friends went for the first time, despite 75,000 festival goers, there was no damage done to the town or local property, no police incidents and the majority of injuries were people that fell asleep in the sun. I don’t know what the stats were like this year but we didn’t see anything worse than that other than one guy in a crowd who threatened a crowd surfer who had accidentally kicked his girlfriend in the face.

We made friends with everyone we cared to, Courtney had beers with several groups of strangers of various occasions, our entire camp was made up mostly of people our friends from home had met the last time they were at Wacken. Everyone was just friendly and happy to be there.

The Wacken Promoters themselves spout that the festival itself is the headline act and the bands play their greatest hits. It’s true too, despite missing Motorhead for being sick, I didn’t really feel like I was missing out because lying in my tent I could hear and feel the Wacken vibe and it just felt awesome to be at Wacken, whether in a tent or in a crowd or somewhere in between. It’s just a huge celebration of a genre of music that really brings everyone together. People were drunk but not making nuisances of themselves. There were 60 year olds and 5 year olds all in the mix. One of the groups of people Courtney had beers with didn’t speak English but it didn’t matter.

I may be biased but I really don’t think this could happen with many other kinds of music. I’m sure the festivals held at wineries at home with singer-songwriter acts supporting names like Lionel Richie are calm enough. You might even make friends with the people on the picnic blanket next to yours. Try pop or RnB or dance, all of which I’ve experienced first hand. People get wasted, get into fights, destroy property. And that’s at small concerts, not 75,000 people.

At FiberFIB, the vast majority of festival goers didn’t care about the music. They might want to see one or two bands but they were there to get wasted, and many people shared this view with us, including people we met that had been before. FiberFIB was an extreme though, and in light of Courtney’s hatred not only for FiberFIB itself but all things not-metal, I was very defensive of the festival and non-metal lovers in general. I told him time and time again that it was a festival, there were lots of people and lots of idiots and people drink and get stupid and there are crowds and rubbish and insanity and it would be not too dissimilar at Wacken.

At Wacken, I’m sure there were idiots. There were probably fights and all sorts of carry on, but we didn’t see any, and that has to mean the concentration was lower than at the places we’ve seen several. The vibe was just happier, everyone wanted to be friends with everyone else and enjoy the festival. We didn’t see any drunk people that were aggressive or sleazy or anything but happy and having fun. We didn’t see a single person stumbling and falling over themselves. We didn’t even get drunk ourselves, at first due to a lack of alcohol but then because we literally almost forgot about it. We had beers, we had spirits, we drank every day but we never made it past slightly tipsy, and we didn’t care.

It all makes me wonder what would happen if the village of Wacken was all metal, all the time. Only metalheads or people that at least liked metal lived there, bands played regularly… or if the festival was permanent, a band played every night instead of a concentration of bands over a short period. You could turn up, pitch your tent, stay as long as you liked and leave when you had your fill. A metal-holiday park. If Wacken was essentially a permanent village with a rotating fill of bands and music-lovers, would the vibe last? Would the novelty wear off and the drink come on stronger and the fights start and so on?

It’s an interesting idea. Maybe all the world-peace-hopeful beauty queens need to wear more black and listen to Judas Priest and start promoting heavy metal. 

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Moshpit Fever

Somewhere between Judas Priest and our tent, I got sick. I arrived at the tent with sniffles I hadn’t had before and woke up well and truly flu-ridden. Someone at camp called it Moshpit Fever and they’re probably right – after the insanity of the Judas Priest pit, all those people, and the feeling I was getting run down before that, I would have been lucky not to catch a cold.

Although I was the only sick one, everyone at camp was pretty run down on day three. Some of them had spent 15 hours inside the festival to see the earliest and latest bands with no break and so the general consensus was that a slow start was to be had. We ate breakfast, mucked around, chatted, and I mixed this up by blowing my nose every 2 minutes back at the tent.

Eventually we could no longer justify missing the bands that were on at any given time and we made our way into the festival grounds. A few of us wanted to see Mayhem so we headed towards their stage. Courts and I have seen them before – I suppose if you’re not into metal, they’re the sort of music that’s ‘just noise’ as opposed to one of the many other metal genres with clean singing. The lead singer usually wears corpse paint and a costume but in the late afternoon light of their time slot at Wacken, he was just in jeans.

The crowd at Wacken was better than we we saw them at a small venue back home, but neither of us were in the mood for something so dark at that time of day. Mayhem are known for being very extreme in attitude and the singer dedicated a song to ‘all the religious leaders in the world’ screaming ‘time to die’ before launching into it. We obviously don’t follow them for these views, just the music, and while I knew to expect such statements, at Wacken it put me off the show. The thing about Wacken is that it’s nothing like the stereotypes of heavy metal, everyone is happy and peaceful, celebrating music and making new friends. It just didn’t feel like the time to be spouting negative anti-religious crap in such a positive environment. I suppose their reputation is all part of their act now in a way, they almost had to say it. Almost.

After Mayhem we saw Iced Earth, one of Courtney’s must-see acts of the festival. I didn’t really like them so Courts would probably be better off describing the show. He loved it and thought they played really well but thought that Matt Barlow needed to sing true to his own talents instead of trying to replicate Ripper Owens (who had replaced him in the band at one stage). I guess I agree, although I hadn’t heard them before. The main reason I didn’t like them was that Barlow was singing… wrong. I can’t compare him to Ripper Owens in terms of Iced Earth but even without that comparison, you could easily tell when he was singing songs written for him and when he was singing songs written during the Ripper era. He has a much lower, gravely voice than Ripper Owens but in the songs written for Ripper he would try and replicate the higher pitch and clean screams he does. He just didn’t work and came across like he was pushing himself unnaturally. Oh well, Courts still loved it.

We caught the last 10 minutes of Skeletonwitch, a lesser known American band who played in the Headbangers Ballroom – a tent set up for the smaller bands. We had a break then and so made our way back into the Medieval Market to have that delicious food one last time. I wish we had it every day, it’s so good. A little too good in fact because we ended up rushing to get back to the stages for Avantasia. Avantasia are a metal super group who I hadn’t heard much of before. They were on Courtney’s list of ‘Important Bands I Had to See with Him’ but by this time I was exhausted and entirely sick of walking around, unable to breathe and blowing my nose all the time. We made a deal, and I saw the first four songs before leaving him with friends we found from camp.

As it turns out I saw more of them anyway as I had to pick up our phone from the charge station on the way back to camp and there was a big screen nearby showing the act. It’s quite good because they have this screen set up well away from the insanity and if you want to see an act but aren’t quite up to the crowds you can go there instead. Everyone sits on the ground and eats and drinks and watches it as though it’s a movie – in fact after the headliner finishes each night they do show a metal-related movie there.

Eventually I made it back to camp but even with earplugs I could still hear Motorhead (gutted I missed them) playing a good 20 minute walk away and that was on top of the various stereos around. Between that and being unable to breathe it took me a good two hours to get to sleep. In that time, Courts watched the rest of Avantasia and then Kreator before making his way back to check on me. He didn’t quite make it that far, making friends with random Germans as he does, and playing drinking games at their camp for a couple of hours.

It sucks that I missed a couple of awesome bands I wanted to see, but I was exhausted, I couldn’t do it any longer. As far as festivals go though, Wacken wins. I discovered Helloween, (sort-of) saw Ozzy, saw Primal Fear and caught Judas Priest on their farewell tour. For that alone (and the fried apple skewers at the market) Wacken was worth it.

Day three down, time to move on.

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Legends at Our Fingertips

Our second full day at Wacken started early with an opening set by Primal Fear. Only at Wacken does a midday opening band have a crowd that stretches further than the eye can see. Yet, we walked straight up to the front, and the set was awesome. That man can really sing!

After Primal Fear we had a break so we made our way to the toilets. While I was in the girls queue, the two boys long finished, they made friends with a couple of Germans, one called Mario who was about 45 and a 20-something guy who didn’t seem to speak as much English. Mario had at least 10 Wacken wristbands on from years gone by and was stoked to learn the boys were from New Zealand. Once I made it back to the group, he asked us if we wanted a beer at the nearby pub stand and then wouldn’t let us pay.  I don’t know how he does it, but Courtney attracts free beer. Aside from these full beers we had bought for us, random strangers frequently offer him sips from their mugs.

After drawing us a map to find their camp, we left Mario to continue the day. I wanted to get our phone charged and swap the t-shirt I had bought the day before so I left Courts with one of our friends from camp and they went off to see Morbid Angel (from the second row again might I add) and I went off to the Metal Market. I swapped my shirt, bought Courts a Blind Guardian shirt and left the phone at the charging station before heading back down to the stages.

I was able to catch the end of Sodom, the second band the boys saw without me, and do so sitting on the ground with a drink, relaxing in the reluctant sun (I say because it’s been raining every night from the wee hours until after breakfast). Even from my spot on the ground I could see the stage. I met up with the boys again in the few minutes we had before Rhapsody started at the next stage over, we were able to walk straight to the front for that too. It is epic being able to see legends play that close up, and without a struggle. People who are on the front bar are obviously there to stay but everyone else is fine as long as they can see.

We picked up the phone and had a break in the tent for an hour before we made our way back to the festival for Judas Priest. The set was part of their Farewell Tour and as such they had two and a half hours of stage time to fill. We entered the gates 15 minutes before they started and made our way forward. About 30 rows from the front we hit a patch of rowdy circle pit moshers and decided to try and get past them to the calm spots that tend to occur right at the front. The problem we found here though was that there was a slight uphill incline right at the front and it was almost impossible to reach. We ended up in the midst of a massive crush, being toppled by crowd surfers every few seconds with little chance to recover. It wouldn’t have been so bad except for having my glasses on and trying to protect them. We ended up retreating back behind the initial rowdy moshers and finding a good spot with breathing room and a good view.

Despite having no idea whatsoever what happened on stage during our few minutes at the front, the rest of the Judas Priest set was incredible. The boys were completely on form, starting with pyrotechnics right from the first song and bringing motorbikes and all sorts on stage. The band was incredible and made for a definite highlight of the festival if not the whole trip.

Two days down, one to go!Our second full day at Wacken started early with an opening set by Primal Fear. Only at Wacken does a midday opening band have a crowd that stretches further than the eye can see. Yet, we walked straight up to the front, and the set was awesome. That man can really sing!

After Primal Fear we had a break so we made our way to the toilets. While I was in the girls queue, the two boys long finished, they made friends with a couple of Germans, one called Mario who was about 45 and a 20-something guy who didn’t seem to speak as much English. Mario had at least 10 Wacken wristbands on from years gone by and was stoked to learn the boys were from New Zealand. Once I made it back to the group, he asked us if we wanted a beer at the nearby pub stand and then wouldn’t let us pay.  I don’t know how he does it, but Courtney attracts free beer. Aside from these full beers we had bought for us, random strangers frequently offer him sips from their mugs.

After drawing us a map to find their camp, we left Mario to continue the day. I wanted to get our phone charged and swap the t-shirt I had bought the day before so I left Courts with one of our friends from camp and they went off to see Morbid Angel (from the second row again might I add) and I went off to the Metal Market. I swapped my shirt, bought Courts a Blind Guardian shirt and left the phone at the charging station before heading back down to the stages.

I was able to catch the end of Sodom, the second band the boys saw without me, and do so sitting on the ground with a drink, relaxing in the reluctant sun (I say because it’s been raining every night from the wee hours until after breakfast). Even from my spot on the ground I could see the stage. I met up with the boys again in the few minutes we had before Rhapsody started at the next stage over, we were able to walk straight to the front for that too. It is epic being able to see legends play that close up, and without a struggle. People who are on the front bar are obviously there to stay but everyone else is fine as long as they can see.

We picked up the phone and had a break in the tent for an hour before we made our way back to the festival for Judas Priest. The set was part of their Farewell Tour and as such they had two and a half hours of stage time to fill. We entered the gates 15 minutes before they started and made our way forward. About 30 rows from the front we hit a patch of rowdy circle pit moshers and decided to try and get past them to the calm spots that tend to occur right at the front. The problem we found here though was that there was a slight uphill incline right at the front and it was almost impossible to reach. We ended up in the midst of a massive crush, being toppled by crowd surfers every few seconds with little chance to recover. It wouldn’t have been so bad except for having my glasses on and trying to protect them. We ended up retreating back behind the initial rowdy moshers and finding a good spot with breathing room and a good view.

Despite having no idea whatsoever what happened on stage during our few minutes at the front, the rest of the Judas Priest set was incredible. The boys were completely on form, starting with pyrotechnics right from the first song and bringing motorbikes and all sorts on stage. The band was incredible and made for a definite highlight of the festival if not the whole trip.

Two days down, one to go!

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Surprises, Good and Bad

There was a slow start to our first full day at Wacken. We had brought a small amount of food with us but we couldn’t carry the weight of milk or the mass of bread so we were without staples. There’s really no easy way to go to town to shop and we hadn’t yet realized how well stocked the mini markets on site were, so we begged and borrowed some milk for our muesli and took in the sights and sounds of camp.

We went into the festival grounds with a few people from camp around lunch time and after watching a knight battle, a weaponry demonstration, and some poor guy getting pelted with slops and cream pies while in the stocks, we finally made it beyond the Medieval Market and the wristband booth. For all the crazy things we saw the night previous, we hadn’t even scratched the surface. We waited at one of the many Merchandise tents for an hour or so to get t-shirts and a programme and then headed into the Metal Market.

Everyone at camp had been very keen for us to see the spectacle that is the Metal Market and we weren’t disappointed. Rows and rows of stalls selling everything I’ve ever wanted. I mentally spent at least a thousand dollars but didn’t let myself actually buy anything – for the time being. Merchandise for every metal and almost-metal band you could think of, and far more varied than what we get at home. Motley Crue miniskirts, jeans, shorts, dresses… heaven. Handbags, alternative clothing, animal hats, zombie high heels, corsets, amazing cuffs and jewellery as well as dragons and armour and anything else that could possibly fit into the theme.

It made me wish Squish was there because it’s the sort of stuff we email each other pictures of all day, but right there, in front of me and potentially mine, right then and there. I didn’t have my camera with me but made a mental note to take it in at some point to take pictures to show Squish and Soul Buddy, if only to have them bandaid my upset at how little I could afford or fit on the bike.

We went back to camp for an hour to relax before the big bands started – strange to think how much we had seen and done and we hadn’t even seen a band yet. There is a stage in the Medieval Market but the main stages are through in a 4^th and final area of the festival grounds – the only place I’ve had to show my wristband. When we walked through the gates the sight was incredible – the biggest number of people I’ve seen at any one time, ever. The stages are really well positioned, very slightly uphill but just enough so that those who don’t want to be front row can see no matter how far back they are.

Of course being us, we wanted to be as close as possible for the first band, Helloween. Taking turns leading the way we navigated the crowds and got within 10 rows of the front. It was nothing like trying to get to the front in New Zealand. The vast majority of the massive crowd was happy to let us through, and even at the front there was space to breathe. Still a tight pack, but nothing like the crush you would have at home.

I never knew I loved Helloween until I saw them live. I’m sure Courtney has played me there songs but he plays me a lot of songs, I didn’t know any of their songs before we saw them and at one point briefly considered not going in for them at all. I’m so glad I did though, they put on a really good show, and played until they essentially got asked to leave, making up for a couple of hitches at the start when the power went out on them twice. Halfway through their set I was thinking if I saw no other band at all at Wacken, it would be worth it.

The two main stages at Wacken are next to each other as at other festivals I’ve been to, and essentially take turns – one has a band on while the other is being set up for the next and so on – but they’re quite far apart and with the intense crowd it takes a long time to get between the two. Still, the next band was Courtney’s favourite, the one he was most excited to see – Blind Guardian. The crowd was a lot tighter for this one but we pushed our way back and across, out of the crush a little but towards centre stage. We ended up maybe 30 rows back – close enough to see everything but far enough away that we could breathe.

I didn’t love Blind Guardian as much as Helloween but Courts was in his element. There was a constant stream of crowd surfers overhead, including a girl we knew from home. I had to wear my glasses into the festival instead of contacts so I was ducking every time a crowd surfer came over to save them. The people around us changed as the crowd surged and moved around but no matter what, someone always tapped me on the back to let me know someone was surfing their way over.

Ozzy Osbourne was on the same stage as Helloween had been, immediately after Blind Guardian. I really wanted to see him upclose because I’ve seen him before but from the back of a crowd. We made our way to a good position but Courtney needed to pee and in a stroke of gentlemanliness, refused to just pee in a corner like everyone else. There was no way we would find each other again and he had the tent key, so I followed him out.

Getting out of that crowd was an insane experience. It took over half an hour and it was seriously hard work, never mind that when we eventually got to the back the only exit was on the opposite side. We ended up in a part of the festival grounds we still hadn’t seen, so we completely lost our bearings. Courts did eventually get to a toilet though, and we never bothered trying to get back in the crowd for Ozzy. We did go back through the gates but we stayed right at the back and watched the big screen. As much as I wanted to see him, we wouldn’t have been physically able to get as close as we had been in the length of his set, and there was no point fighting the crowd just to still watch the big screen.

As it turned out, as much as I wanted to see Ozzy up close, there was little value in hearing him. We heard that at a festival a couple of weeks ago he hadn’t sung a word and he may have been better off repeating that act. I love Ozzy Osbourne, but he had no voice whatsoever. On the easiest of notes it cracked and broke. I don’t know if he was sick or tired or just old but when I saw him 4 years ago he was amazing and this time, he just couldn’t sing. He relied even more heavily on screaming ‘I can’t hear you’ and on letting the musicians do epic 15 minute solos – both things he used the first time I saw him. It was genuinely sad to see a legend put on such a poor show and we left for camp half way through, after Warpigs. We could hear echoes of his set almost all the way back to camp and that was enough – I wanted to keep the memory of the first time I saw him more than create a new memory of a really sad performance.

Three epic acts down, two whole days to go. Anyone have any Redbull?

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Arriving at Wacken

First things first. If you have ever considered going to Wacken Open Air, do it. It is not ‘too’ expensive or ‘too’ far away, there aren’t too many people and it’s not too dirty. And it’s worth sleeping in a tent no matter how much you hate tents. Wacken is everything you’ve ever dreamed it might be, but on steroids. It’s everything you ever imagined it would be, multiplied by the amount you love music, squared by the amount you love your Mum.

Back to where we left off. After Anne Frank Huis we still had a full day left in Amsterdam but we lazed it away with Courtney making a run to the Laundromat and the Supermarket and me half-packing, sewing one of Courtney’s must-needed metal shirts back up and posting blogs. We ate a Billy-cooked feast of chicken, mashed potatos and gravy, so much that we didn’t have room for the strawberries and canned whipped cream and had to eat them for breakfast instead. They couldn’t go on the bike, we had no choice!

People in Wacken seemed impressed that we drove all the way from Amsterdam but for us it was a regular ride day. We set off late, around 9.30 or 10am and only made one wrong turn – that we know of. Courtney says he noticed the landscape change between the Netherlands and Germany just as we noticed it change between France and Spain but if it did, I was oblivious. It was, however, very exciting to see the mark of the border and to finally be in the home of Wacken.

I’ve wanted to go to Wacken ever since I saw a guy in front of me in a moshpit wearing a Wacken t-shirt and realized something like it existed. Germany really holds little interest for me other than Wacken, where as Courtney would have been happy visiting Germany and only Germany, just for the music. This is really Courtney’s leg of the trip in many ways, but the bike had a little extra power running through it from the buzz we had the second we saw the first car with ‘WOA’ in masking tape on the back windshield.

As we neared Hamburg, the closest city to Wacken, and then passed it and got closer and closer to the small village of Wacken itself, more and more of these WOA cars drove past, at times as many as 4 or 5 in a row displaying their pride at attending metal mecca. It made me feel like I was really part of something big, and it felt even more awesome knowing it was a love of music powering half the cars on the autobahn (which, as an aside is the slowest and least daunting of the highways we’ve driven so far despite many warnings from people at home). As excitement grew, it felt like we were all 7 year olds racing towards Christmas morning together, the first sighting of the turn off to Wacken like seeing reindeer in the sky.

The benefits of a bike became extremely apparent almost the second we entered the outskirts of the village of Wacken. We zipped up the middle of the street, ducking in to the massive queue of cars whenever a car came the other way. Even then it took us a long time to get into the festival grounds and an even longer time to find Campground Y, which is where our friends had said they were set up. One of the only negatives I can push myself to think of for Wacken is that the many many campgrounds aren’t labeled very clearly, but this is only an issue if you’re looking for someone. Then again, if you’re looking for someone in the city that is the Wacken campground, good luck. Hundreds of flags fly high above the sea of campervans and tents, and those flags are the only way we found our friends.

The people of FiberFIB have obviously never been here. We pitched our tent in the huge section our friends had staked their claim on. There were no mind games, no rushing, no fighting – just a massive space that no one had protested the reservation of. With 20-plus people all joining our group at some point or another, we all fit in, including our vehicles and with room to spare. As we pulled up, the group of people next door (complete strangers to us and our friends) ran over with a plank of wood for the bike stand and then offered us dinner, which we politely declined as we set up our tent.

Setting up was so easy and calm, other than the race between finding our friends and running out of petrol. You can park your car or bike or whatever you have, anywhere you want. As you drive into the campground a person tears off one of the two stubs on your ticket and hands it back to you. You drive anywhere you want, take as much space as you want, and when you’re ready you head into the festival grounds to exchange the second ticket stub for a wristband that will allow you access anywhere in the complex. Compared to FiberFIB, where no employees knew where the carpark was and we had to get wristbands before we were allowed anywhere near the overcrowded campground, it’s like going to a tropical resort.

When we had set up we had a couple of drinks with our friends and met the rest of the people they were camping with. After awhile though, the itch to see what we had just entered into took over and we made our way towards the action. Throughout the massive camping grounds there were mini supermarkets and breakfast bars scattered around, and we spotted areas of pay-to-use toilets and showers if you wanted to upgrade from the portaloos. So you have to pay to shower – Amsterdam got us used to that, maybe it’s a northern thing – but the facilities here are awesome.

Once we hit the edge of the tent city, we entered the first section of the festival grounds – the medieval market. A living, breathing source of sensory overload. You can buy drinking horns, hand crafted metal jewellery and leather wristbands, never mind the swords, helmets and chainmail. Everyone is dressed up and as we later found, there’s an area where people who regularly live like this demonstrate parts of medieval life. It was a little weird to walk past some poor kid being strung up on a real working torture rack!

Throughout the day there are Bruchenball tournaments, Viking battles, and knight combat with swords and all kinds of insane weapons. You can just see the area where they stage these things from your position next to the Viking boat. Not just any Viking boat – this one is full of medieval folk that serve you honey or cherry mead. The awesome thing about drinking at Wacken is that they give you Wacken branded cups when you buy alcohol. There is a deposit for the cup – 5 Euros for the clay mug the mead came in, 1 Euro for a small plastic beer glass or 3 Euro for a massive plastic beer stein – and if you return the cup, you get it back. If you don’t return the cup no one cares, and you have an awesome and cheap Wacken souvenir.

Of course if you’re drinking you’re probably wanting to eat too. You can get Chinese, Dutch or Middle Eastern food amongst the burgers and pizzas but the food in the Medieval Market makes me seriously wonder why this food isn’t more common in every day life. Massive skewers piercing huge chunks of turkey which then has some sort of savoury donut-like dough wrapped around it before the whole thing is fried. Battered apple slices deep fried and then skewered together and covered in cinnamon sugar. Hot bread rolls fresh from the oven, covered in sour cream and chives and filled with more cheese and ham than the casing can handle. There’s a reason they give you several napkins.

Eventually we convinced ourselves to leave the Medieval Market and we did get our wrist bands, from a booth in the second section of the festival grounds. We had to wait an hour in the queue, but the sweeten the deal by giving you a goodie bag with your wristband. We now have Wacken branded ponchos, earplugs, condoms, bumbags, lanyard tags, posters and rubix cubes. We really didn’t look beyond the booth, instead heading back through the Medieval Market towards camp.

We spent a good while socializing with the group that had gathered at camp but after awhile I went to bed. It had been a long day and to be honest it was quite overwhelming chatting to new people again. I used to be very shy when I was younger and I pushed myself out of that shell when I was a teenager. At home I have my amazing friends and I’m happy being outgoing and chatty when I’m in a situation I’m happy and comfortable in, which is most situations. In Europe I’ve met and chatted with plenty of people but if Courtney isn’t the one that starts the conversation, he usually naturally takes it over with his gift of the gab. I didn’t realize until Wacken, but I’ve become accustomed to letting Courts do the talking while I sit back, so after pushing myself to actively converse for an hour or so, our tent was calling.

All this and it’s only arrival day!

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What to See and Do in Benicassim

What to See

The Beach – It’s awesome. It’s huge so you can usually find a spot that suits you. It’s varied too – there are areas of white sand, areas of pebbles, rougher water, calmer water, and manmade lines of rocks that jut out every few hundred metres that you can fish off. There are awesome facilities – you can hire cushioned beach chairs and permanent shade stands, 2 chairs and a stand for 12 Euro a day – an entire day. You can hire paddle boats that have water slides on them for 15 Euro an hour and there is no shortage of beachside shops to sell you inflatables and beach wear at crazy cheap prices (Lilos 4 Euro, towels 4 Euro, Boardshorts 7 Euro). There are heaps of food outlets overlooking the beach and even more across the road, everything from 3 Euro hamburgers and hotdogs to expensive restaurant meals. There’s also a supermarket across the road.

Valencia – It’s an hour away but if you’re that close, it’s worth a visit. We got combo tickets for the Hop-on Hop-off tour which is normally 15 Euro each and BioParc which is normally around 21 Euro each and paid a grand total of 52 Euro for the both of us. Considering the discount, I’d say both are definitely worth the money. We went back to Valencia for Oceanographique, the Aquarium, and already knew where it was and what was there thanks to the tour, so over the 2 days we spent there, we saw a decent amount of the city and got to see two awesome attractions, both of which were the best of their kind we had ever been to.

What not to see

I’m pretty sure by now you know my opinion on FiberFIB and whether it’s the sort of thing you would enjoy or not. So in other news –

Nothing. If you have a hotel room and a good book, all you need is the beach. We got bored because we didn’t have books or music or anything to do when we got out of the water, but it still took us 4 days to get bored.

What I’d do Differently

In all seriousness, I would have gone to Madrid, which we cut out of our itinerary for more time in San Sebastian (which was worth it). Slash played there at the Sonisphere festival which had way better bands than FiberFIB, and we would have got to see the Capital City as well. I could have also happily spent the week in Valencia. But none of this happened so in terms of Benicassim –

Get a Hotel – When you spend all day at the beach, it’s really nice to go back to a real bed and some home comforts. If I did it all again, I’d save enough to splurge on a room.

Take a Book – We don’t have room to carry books around and never thought much about how badly we would want them until we were here. I have a few audiobooks I’m working my way through (they aren’t quite the same as lying down with a good book but they’re good enough) and Courtney is slowly and painfully trying to download and set up an EBook reader on the phone using what little wifi we can get our hands on.

Go to Aquarama – There’s a waterpark near the festival venue that we never got round to visiting, but we could see the massive hydroslides and hear the screams, so we’d give it a go.

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Aquariums, Portishead and Moving On

You can all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to looking forward to new posts, if that is what you used to do, because we have left Benicassim. The last couple of days were good enough. Mumford and Sons were amazing, but we were near the back of the crowd and I am not a girl that likes to stay at the back.

At New Zealand and Australian festivals I’ve been to before, you cannot hear other stages from the stage you’re at. When you are at a stage, you can be in the thick of it, or you can be near the back. If you so choose, most stages have enough room for you to sit and relax near the back while still being in ear shot and being able to look up at the screens every now and then. If you’re not interested in the music, there is room for you to stop and chill out without annoying the people who are interested in the music.

At Benicassim, if you’re not directly in front of the stage you can hear other stages over the top. Since they seem to have just sold way too many tickets to cope with, there is also nowhere for people to chill out. There are very tiny areas where you can sit on the ground, but you will be stood on, because they are the same areas people walk through. If you want to just talk, you generally have to be in the vicinity of a stage, and you’ll probably be at the back. Which means those of us that just wanted to chill out and listen to Mumford and Sons from the back, without fighting for prime position, couldn’t really do so because we were surrounded by people chattering and being idiots, people that weren’t interested in Mumford and Sons in the slightest.

We moved forward into the crush to get away from the banter and the noise of other stages, and we enjoyed Mumford and Sons, they were awesome. We didn’t bother staying for Arctic Monkeys though, we had enough.

The following day, our last full day in Benicassim, we again escaped to Valencia. We went to Oceanographique, the aquarium. If you are an animal lover or you have a family, Valencia is the best place ever (Haakuturi I spent half the day thinking how much you would love it there). Oceanographique is massive, with separate areas dedicated to the Mediterranean, Southern Seas, Antarctic, Arctic, Wetlands, Sharks and Dolphins. They have the only Beluga Whales in Europe and they have Walrus’!

We had never seen Walruses before and they held our attention for about half an hour. They are really just massive blobs of fat, one was basking in the sun and when he decided to go for a swim it took him 10 minutes to roll himself into the water. Not long after, the female decided to get out of the water but after one massive heave that got her half way and a couple of minutes attempting to get further, she gave up and went swimming again. Watching them together was awesome though, the talk to each other and play, and the male would occasionally look up and watch people on the bridge that crossed the enclosure.

Unlike at home where our Aquarium has one glass tunnel, Oceanographique has several, the longest 70m long, and one dedicated entirely to Sharks. The highlight of the day was the Dolphin show though. I’ve seen one before in Australia, but they don’t get old. Courts hadn’t seen one before and we ended up going back to see it a second time just before we left.

Despite getting a bit lost trying to get out of the city, we made it back to Benicassim in time to see Portishead. We were about 6 rows from the front, and despite having permission to leave at anytime, Courts lasted the whole show. Portishead is really more suited to a chilled out winery tour, something where you can sit back and relax and take it all in, but the crowd still loved them. The show was awesome, and being a more chilled set, there was no mad crush near the front. Courts got a bit bored because it was so chilled but I think the lack of crush is the only thing that stopped him leaving. The band left the stage 10 minutes early with no encore, which was a bit weird, but I’m really glad I saw them, they’re one of my favourite Sunday afternoon bands and my Uncle introduced me to them many years ago, before he passed away. Even though we didn’t stay to see Arcade Fire afterwards, Portishead was a good way to end the festival.

Almost better than seeing Portishead was that when we got up the next day, it was overcast and cool – perfect weather for packing up and carting all our stuff back to the bike. Barcelona here we come!

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Summer Singalongs

Outside a tent each night, a few spaces away, a group of friends sit and play guitar and sing. Some of them are completely tone deaf but we only hear those voices late at night once the drinks have been flowing. Until then, one or two of them, who know all the words to all the songs, sing along and sing well. Everything from classic rock to Adele’s Rolling in the Deep, they know it.

Amongst the drunken slurs, sounds of tripping over tents, snarling winds and general drone, the singing is a welcome reprieve. Courts offers me one of his ear phones but I’d rather listen to the singalong. It reminds me of times when we used to all sit around and have singalongs on Summer afternoons, or over Winter roasts.

One or two who knew all the words, more and more joining in until everyone in on the chorus. Chorus closes, verses resume and slowly so does the chatter amongst everyone else, glasses clinking, knives and forks scraping, chips being dipped, dogs and cats being patted and played with until once again the energy builds, the pre-chorus triggers sub conscious recognition and the room builds again into a chorus of combined love for music, good times, good friends and good food and drink.

Last Summer, the guitars didn’t come out. Everyone was too busy or too shy, the previous ringleaders no longer present for various reasons, in different countries or mindsets. The core though, still here. We still love music, food, drink, each other. We are not lacking in very skilled guitarists. When I get home from the European Summer, it will just be easing into Summer Downunder. This Southern Summer, I’m buying a new barbeque, a new stereo, a new chilly bin and dusting off the guitar.

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