Red Right Hand

So a week has passed and I’m sitting in my new aesthetically pleasing, Scandinavian-influenced temporary room. Temperatures hit 30 degrees in Berlin today and everyone’s having a sook, but here inside lovely. My room overlooks our courtyard and the place is entirely silent except for the faint sounds of a woman singing soprano a few streets away. It’s rather moving, actually. As the Mayor Klaus Wowereit said, “Berlin is poor, but sexy”. The most beautiful things in Berlin come for free.

My exam angst has begun and my contact with the outside world, let alone correspondence with those living outside Berlin, has stuttered to a halt. So because I’ve got nothing really interesting to say about my life at the moment (which revolves entirely around the constitutional sovereignty of Afghanistan) I’m gonna tell you about my festival attending adventures.

So it’s summer in Europe. Finally, I’m on the same continent at the same time as the music festivals I’ve been dreaming of ever since I was a So Fresh/Smash Hits adolescent. Glastonbury, Roskilde, Sziget – überfestivals, with headliners the likes of which The Big Day Out has yet to see; with lineups so potent the sight of them makes your ears ache and your feet ska-dance around all on their own.

Germany’s version is the Hurricane festival: a 3-day, 70,000 people musical bloodbath held in a paddock somewhere to the north of Hamburg. To miss it would mean a lifetime of regret. So carrying a tent, gumboots and about eight litres of vodka, we made our way there to be a part of it.

We decided to travel in style so we took the ICE train there. ICE is the super-fast train which reaches speeds of 250km/h when it’s really fanging it. It also has an alarmingly high suit-to-casual-clothing ratio. I’ve mentioned before that Berlin is an exceedingly dressed-down city. There’s one square block in Mitte where you may occasionally spot a suit on her way to lunch, but that’s about it. On the ICE, we were the only non-suiters in a sea of cheerless commuters. Not exactly a good pre-festival atmosphere, but it didn’t matter to us. And it mattered even less on the return journey, after 4 days without showers and negligible sleep.

After arriving, finding a place and (embarrassingly, for the Australians) struggling to erect our tent for an hour or so, we went for a wander around the campsite. The campsite of Hurricane is vast. Kilometres across. Most people looked like they’d done it before – many campsites came complete with tarps grills, tables, chairs and musical equipment. There was an ever-threatening storm overhead. And there was an astounding number of men urinating in public. At all times of day and night, against anything at all (often just towards other people) and sometimes when the designated urinal was two metres away. By the end of the 4th day, the situation was toxic.

The festival itself was overwhelming. 70,000 attendees may be pushing the upper limits of feasible. And it was very commercial – you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing a sponsor’s logo. But it was great fun. I saw heaps of great music. I consumed obscene amounts of fat and sugar and met friendly Germans. I had my life turned upside down and inside out and my definition of joy exploded by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. We barely felt the rain (maybe thanks, in part, to the 8 litres vodka). And I had a great time with the people I went with, especially the Dutch – every jolly, always up for fun, fantastic festival companions.

I have less than a month left in Berlin. I had a list of things-to-do, but I’ve lost it somewhere in the move from my last address. What should I do, reading audience? Is there anything I’ve missed?