Aeterna's Blog

Some days of work after my United States/Canada holiday, on the friday I was leaving again to go to Germany for a festival. This hardly left me time to unpack and pack and the jetlag also had me a bit worried. So my friend was coming to my town as she lives on the opposite site of the festival from where I live, so that made sense.

So she got here (late… but hey, the public transport is weird around the 4 days’ marches) and we somehow missed eachother at the platform. So she walked to my building and as I walked back there I saw my boss leave the building and see her standing there. Somehow, those 2 meeting and my boss pointing at me was very scary.. it’s like 2 different parts of my life colliding all of a sudden.

So I drove us over to Germany and we had sadly missed some bands we both wanted to see, but that’s what you get if you still have to work. But we set up our tent and quickly moved to the festival area where In Flames was playing. They played a good show and it’s actually a nice way to start a festival.

After that we sat around a bit and had a couple of drinks and then proceeded to go to the afterparty until they asked people to leave around… 2 or 3am. Then we walked out where the bus was supposed to still be, but nope… instead, taxi’s. There was a group of people standing there and we ended up talking to them for a bit and they had some weed which they all did, but me.. so after that we took a taxi to the camping.

I say we took a taxi, but she hardly remembers that and definitely not anything after that. She was seriously tripping and I had to drag her back to the tent and lay her down there and she immediately fell asleep in some seconds so I figured I’d at least throw a sleeping bag over her. That night I really didn’t get much of any sleep, I was just lying awake and maybe picked up an hour or 2 of sleep in total.

So the next day we went and saw a bunch more bands among others: Mr. Irish Bastard, Alestorm, Legion of the Damned, Skindred,  Overkill, Amorphis, Sabaton and Hatebreed. All I can say about that day is that it was awesome. The bands were great and the atmosphere was really amazing among the crowd. So after Hatebreed was done we decided we’d go to the camping directly this time as we had quite a stock of drinks with us so we sat down at one of the benches and ended up talking throughout the whole night, getting wasted in the process, good times.

On the sunday I had actually gotten some hours of sleep… well, around 4 I think. So I woke up fine and dandy, unlike the missus who woke up with a bad hangover. This day though the festival wasn’t outside but in the concerthall that was right next to the area, which is a bit weird. It did help give the bands more “oomph” though due to the nature of the hall, which would’ve been great for some of the bands. In fact, they could’ve easily made it bigger by making that hall the 3rd stage of the festival and placing thrash/deathmetal bands there.

Anyway, we ended up seeing Biohazard, Powerwolf, Thin Lizzy, Royal Republic and Ignite. That’s mainly because we didn’t care for the first couple of bands and just ended up chilling at the camping as a lot of people were doing. Getting there buzzed from some vodka-slushies and other drinks was nice as well. After powerwolf had played, I was already happy with the day, they’re simply such a good (live)band. Seeing Royal Republic was amazing, they basically ooze fun on-stage. They fuck around, mocking themselves about being a rock band on a metal festival and started randomly playing some Slayer and Metallica in the middle of songs even!

After Ignite ended at around 1am after Thin Lizzy was 45min late and everything got pushed back, we headed for the camping to finish with more drunken talking which as always with good company is fun. It was actually one of those moments when you learn to know someone from a completely different side. So good times were had and once it was nearly 7am we figured we should go get some sleep.

In short then: It was a terrific weekend filled with good times, good company and lots of booze.