Wacken trip, part 1
Aug. 10th, 2008 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarkprojectConsider these the edited highlights. Obviously it'll still be quite long though.
Monday 28th July: after work, I checked clothes, camping gear, backpack, and packed it all. Then slept...
Tuesday 29th July: ...until 4am. Met Chris outside at 4:45am, and walked into town with the heaviest backpack I've ever carried. As the forecast had predicted, it started raining very heavily at a little after 5am, so I got out my waterproof jacket. That ended up being the only time I used it on this trip. We got to Broadmarsh coach station where one other person was waiting for the bus; a young pseudo-gothic Polish girl, who was looking rather dressed-up for a 5:30am coach journey. Anyway, the coach was right on time and took us on a tedious 4 hour journey to London Stansted, which was heaving with holidaymakers. At one point, the check-in procedure was completely broken and every single queue for RyanAir flights was static, but luckily that rectified itself and we got checked in with plenty of time remaining. I bought a German phrase book on the way to the plane; Chris, being Chris, bought a Japanese phrase book.
The flight was quite spectacular, in its way. It was only the 3rd time I've flown anyway, but this was quite special as the skies were almost completely clear over the North Sea. I was lucky, in that once we were flying over Holland towards Germany, I could actually look back out of the window and see England, its familiarly shaped coastline from Kent up to North Yorkshire clearly visible. I doubt many people have been able to do that.
We arrived at Bremenwarehouse airport 'on time', ie. about 20 minutes late, and our luggage was unceremoniously dumped in a corridor, but once that was resolved, all was good. Chris and I met Lisa in the arrivals area as planned and went for a wander round Bremen in the blazing sunshine before heading back to her abode in Emden. That evening we went out for a surreal but pleasant meal before heading back for a last night of comfortable sleep before the camping experience proper.
Wednesday 30th July: a tale of 4 trains. Specifically, Emden to Bremen, Bremen to Hamburg, Hamburg to Elmshorn, and Elmshorn to Itzehoe. Each train was crammed with people, each one more full of Wacken-bound people than the previous. Trying to fit in tiny spaces, often standing, while carrying a massive backpack, is quite awkward. Still, it seemed to go ok, despite almost missing our change at Bremen, and despite the only other annoying people encountered on the trains being British kids. Listening to the cries of 'Wacken!' echoing around Hamburg's main train station was quite special, too.
Once at Itzehoe, the shuttle bus took us to the festival site about 20 minutes later, and we had arrived. It was about 3pm, the sun was oppressively hot, and our friends that we were supposed to meet weren't there yet despite us all aiming for 2pm. When they did arrive, we'd been sat around for 2 hours, and most of the other campers had already arrived, so a fair amount of tent-moving and rotating (Tentris?) needed to be done in order to get our tents to fit near each other. I was introduced to "Allan's Danes" who we were camping with - all seemed like cool people.
There wasn't much else to do on this first day apart from explore the festival shopping area, and go to the village supermarket to stock up on supplies. Sadly there was pretty much nothing I wanted to drink at the supermarket so I ended up spending the entire festival sober, which in hindsight was good in some ways (as I appreciated everything a bit more) but bad in others (as generally I wasn't socialising when the others were). Food was similarly restricted, so I ended up with a handful of fruit and some cereal bars.
I saw Keltic Jihad Rod outside the supermarket, and had a quick chat about how cool it was to be there, and so on. It's strange to be 500 miles from home and still see people who you see at the local pub or club. On the other hand, the whole event was a little strange in the opposite way, in that you could come to recognise certain faces and pass them 3 or 4 times a day, yet other people, often quite distinctive, who I saw on the train or on the first day, would never be seen again. And some people I know from Nottingham went to Wacken, and I never saw them even once. I suppose that's testament to the scale of the thing, ie. 65,000 people in one place.
Allan told me that the Wednesday night is the main one for socialising, as there are no bands playing so people just sit around and get drunk. Since I wasn't getting drunk, I loitered around for a bit before getting an early night, or at least attempting to. Rock and roll.
Next time, tales of ACTUAL BANDS and the like. Stay tuned.
Monday 28th July: after work, I checked clothes, camping gear, backpack, and packed it all. Then slept...
Tuesday 29th July: ...until 4am. Met Chris outside at 4:45am, and walked into town with the heaviest backpack I've ever carried. As the forecast had predicted, it started raining very heavily at a little after 5am, so I got out my waterproof jacket. That ended up being the only time I used it on this trip. We got to Broadmarsh coach station where one other person was waiting for the bus; a young pseudo-gothic Polish girl, who was looking rather dressed-up for a 5:30am coach journey. Anyway, the coach was right on time and took us on a tedious 4 hour journey to London Stansted, which was heaving with holidaymakers. At one point, the check-in procedure was completely broken and every single queue for RyanAir flights was static, but luckily that rectified itself and we got checked in with plenty of time remaining. I bought a German phrase book on the way to the plane; Chris, being Chris, bought a Japanese phrase book.
The flight was quite spectacular, in its way. It was only the 3rd time I've flown anyway, but this was quite special as the skies were almost completely clear over the North Sea. I was lucky, in that once we were flying over Holland towards Germany, I could actually look back out of the window and see England, its familiarly shaped coastline from Kent up to North Yorkshire clearly visible. I doubt many people have been able to do that.
We arrived at Bremen
Wednesday 30th July: a tale of 4 trains. Specifically, Emden to Bremen, Bremen to Hamburg, Hamburg to Elmshorn, and Elmshorn to Itzehoe. Each train was crammed with people, each one more full of Wacken-bound people than the previous. Trying to fit in tiny spaces, often standing, while carrying a massive backpack, is quite awkward. Still, it seemed to go ok, despite almost missing our change at Bremen, and despite the only other annoying people encountered on the trains being British kids. Listening to the cries of 'Wacken!' echoing around Hamburg's main train station was quite special, too.
Once at Itzehoe, the shuttle bus took us to the festival site about 20 minutes later, and we had arrived. It was about 3pm, the sun was oppressively hot, and our friends that we were supposed to meet weren't there yet despite us all aiming for 2pm. When they did arrive, we'd been sat around for 2 hours, and most of the other campers had already arrived, so a fair amount of tent-moving and rotating (Tentris?) needed to be done in order to get our tents to fit near each other. I was introduced to "Allan's Danes" who we were camping with - all seemed like cool people.
There wasn't much else to do on this first day apart from explore the festival shopping area, and go to the village supermarket to stock up on supplies. Sadly there was pretty much nothing I wanted to drink at the supermarket so I ended up spending the entire festival sober, which in hindsight was good in some ways (as I appreciated everything a bit more) but bad in others (as generally I wasn't socialising when the others were). Food was similarly restricted, so I ended up with a handful of fruit and some cereal bars.
I saw Keltic Jihad Rod outside the supermarket, and had a quick chat about how cool it was to be there, and so on. It's strange to be 500 miles from home and still see people who you see at the local pub or club. On the other hand, the whole event was a little strange in the opposite way, in that you could come to recognise certain faces and pass them 3 or 4 times a day, yet other people, often quite distinctive, who I saw on the train or on the first day, would never be seen again. And some people I know from Nottingham went to Wacken, and I never saw them even once. I suppose that's testament to the scale of the thing, ie. 65,000 people in one place.
Allan told me that the Wednesday night is the main one for socialising, as there are no bands playing so people just sit around and get drunk. Since I wasn't getting drunk, I loitered around for a bit before getting an early night, or at least attempting to. Rock and roll.
Next time, tales of ACTUAL BANDS and the like. Stay tuned.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 12:38 am (UTC)Word is going round that it was 70,000 this year.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 11:19 pm (UTC)*comedy trombone noise*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 08:55 am (UTC)