My Bloghttp://www.webjam.com/festival_fever/$my_blog/2008-07-31T13:49:00Zhttp://www.webjam.com/enFestival carnage and cornagehttp://www.webjam.com/festival_fever/$my_blog/2008/07/31/festival_carnage_and_cornagehttp://www.webjam.com/festival_fever/$my_blog/2008/07/31/festival_carnage_and_cornage#Comments2008-07-31T13:49:00Zfestival, poland, dinohttp://www.webjam.com/festival_fever/$my_blog/2008/07/31/festival_carnage_and_cornageAnother year another call of the mud! Fuelled by extra strong cider we listen to our favourite tunes trying our best to relive a trip into work in the morning on the tube in a field! Yes that's right, music festivals.

The UK has gone crazy for music festivals with pretty much every enterprising farmer turning their field/meadow into a vehicle for every young and old person to live their hedonistic dreams in a field...........covered by mud! Being an old hand at these festival things-yes I lived through 'that Glastonbury' and still went back last year, I drank a can of Tennants for breakfast at T in the Park yar de yar bla blar I knew the my festival future didn't have to clean me out of all of my hard earned mullar.

After spending the same on a very messy Glastonbury last year as a month long trip around Eastern Europe I had to think my festival choice through very hard. Sometimes my brain tends to work pretty slowly but mega expensive British festivals and expensive beer didn't add up. Wait a minute Eastern Europe has cheap beer, it is hotter than this country, the people are, by in large, friendlier AND it has music festivals.........The idea for going to Heineken Opener was born.

Heineken Opener  

The lovely people of Gdansk  throw a massive music festival every year in an old dis-used military air field in early July. Now I'm not sure how dis-used this place was with enough Polish friendly military to think the cold war is not a thing of the past any more! Actually I would say that was probably the only negative point of the festival, not that relaxed-regular checks at the gate-no smuggling past the gestapho style army staff. Watching my friend having to 'hide' his non regulation camera to get past the guards. When I say non regulation camera-that is anything that has above 3.2 megapixels etched on the camera. He had to go to the back of the queue with his high quality 5 megapixel camera. That had shades of the old cold war Poland all over it-controlling the media-even controlling people's personal photos! At least no guns were used, to my knowledge anyway! I couldn't get over the charge tent and watching the girls do their hair straightening-that is when I knew there wouldn't be the half coherent festival lasses that you can smell before you can see!! :) This was definately a different kind of festival!

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Life's a beach

The weather being up in North Poland was beautiful, every morning I awoke in my own night sweat about 9am after a hard night of drinking. The festival didn't even open until 3pm so it was either beer, Polish vodka or a wonder down to the local newsagents on the way to the beach. The selection of the food on the campsite was pretty poor with some wild and wonderful things available like gerkins from our own little supermarket. The pizza was like cardboard with tomato paste and the burgers made MacDonalds burger look like a Gourmet Burger Kitchen burger! We'd head down to the beach every day about 11ish after using the showers or using some of the well accessible and clean facilities. There was no Glastonbury hovering over mounds of shit going on! There was also a more than ample supply of toilet roll-that stuff is normally like gold dust! The beach was great complete with a purpose built marque for more drinking by the beach. We made a lot of friends down at the beach. I even got offered some lovely home made Gerkins in juice with Polish vodka-not bad for 11's! I get the feeling that the Pole's were more interested in my inflatable dinosaur, but who cares Dino is always a great man to watch in action!

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I love you guys.......you're crazy!

The music was fantastic with the Editors doing a fanstic set, all the Poles knew their songs better than I did. Embarassingly I actually enjoyed the Jay Z set-again the atmosphere made it. The funky house bunker was so much fun. Chemical brothers did quite a slow set and I was a little disappointed being a massive electronica fan but when it finally got going it was fantastic-the atmosphere was great and the light show and visuals were superb!

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3 zlotys: I'm not paying that, I'm English you know!

The food once you were inside the 'fortress' was pretty damn good. You tend to forget how cheap it still is when they say 3 vouchers you spit blood but that is actally less than 2 quid for a massive meal! 3 vouchers was like the universal price-it could get you a beer, a meal, a tattoo. My friend got a dragon tattoo so to compete I got a Dino tattoo! Yeah you're right we were pretty daft on this holiday! The Poles were so friendly, the music was great.  

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It was a well oiled festival machine and I would recomend to anyone who wants to try out a festival with better weather, less messed up Biritsh people (we were the only messed up Brits I bumped into) and more importantly cheap alcohol!

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 Why don't you just try a bit of culture..............................

 

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