vip the morning after
“sandstorms forced my mate to get drunk through a sieve. you don’t get that at matterley bowl”
Over there When things go wrong at a foreign festival, the language barrier is the least of your problems. It’s worth it, though…
F
estivalling abroad is about new experiences. Sunshine, for instance. Cheap beer. Competent organisation. And, of course, global bonding. The latter should begin as soon as you pitch your tent. After just one friendly hello, your German neighbours will be engineering ‘stay-dry’ rain trenches around the kampingplatz, whilst the Dutch offer you pickles and drug-finding advice. Go and get the first round in and you’ll even guarantee yourself an international neighbourhood watch scheme, which, if you’re liable to get robbed three times in the same week (like me), becomes particularly useful. Better still, you’ve just earned yourself some hilarious new mates for the remainder of the week, mates who are now less likely to piss on your tent.
[[1L]] MAY 2010
Like a smaller, more inebriated United Nations, you’re now a multi-national task force working towards a common goal: getting to the main stage in time for Booka Shade. You’ve got a wallet stuffed with funny money and the invincible holiday vibe is radiating from within. Which is good, because at a foreign festival extreme catastrophe is always just around the corner. Sure, Glastonbury’s had mud and lightning, and Gatecrasher Summer Sound System a few years back felt more like a naked picnic in the Arctic, but on foreign soil things get epic. Take my friend Andy’s Benicassim experience last year: forest fires, power cuts and winds so strong the stage fell apart. Then there’s my mate Corinne’s trip to Burning Man in the US, where apocalyptic sandstorms forced her to get drunk through a sieve.
PHIL DUDMAN
Phil Dudman is a regular contributor to Mixmag. He lost his wallet in El Segundo
You don’t get that at Matterley Bowl. Risks and danger arguably make overseas festivals all the more attractive. I once went on a go-kart at a festival in Hungary where the ‘engineer’ had just mended the brake pedal with a coat hanger while holding a lit cigarette over the gas tank. Not only was it fucking fast, it was the perfect end to an action-packed day of zip-lining over crowds, giant-tomato sumo wrestling and puking on a bucking bronco. The risk of death somehow meant everything was just a lot more laid back. Even when Euroscrotes robbed our German neighbour’s tent for her money and passport, then stole my washbag, we just had a whip round for her and puzzled over what kind of twat would actually want my mouldy flannel. And somehow, at a foreign festival, the language barrier disappears. As a budding young blagger, this was a revelation. Seeing double and unsteadily wobbling across the baked, dusty soil of a strange, mudless world I suddenly understood my excitable new companions who just hours ago seemed to be speaking in little more than beeps and whistles. I was chuffed. In fact it was hard not to start spouting “but Master Luke!” at five minute intervals. Convinced I’d been soaking up input like Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 (I also had a girlfriend called Ste-fan-ie and a laser-pen keyring taped to my shoulder), here I was, at home in a foreign land, living the 80s robot dream and destined to work as Daft Punk’s beer-swigging robot polyglot. As time goes on, you start creating a series of universal greeting customs, a cocktail of hellos, handshakes and gestures designed to tip the hat to every culture going to avoid causing any conceivable offence. These can range from bowing like a wise ninja to a fellow dancer, thus honouring his deft mastery of the ‘big box, little box’ technique; deploying the continental ‘double cheek’ kiss on newfound lady friends (making it a ‘L’Oréal’ triple if she’s worth it), or simply shouting “Let’s make some party, ja!?” to your new mate Jürgen in a freshly invented ‘Germish’ dialect. It’s all part of your peacekeeper’s arsenal: tried and tested techniques for negotiating international obstacles of every kind. The fact that in reality you’re as far from becoming multilingual as you are from beans on toast and a clean bog is barely worth mentioning. At 4am on an island of dance tents it’s not like anyone can hear you, anyway. The truth is that sometimes a chemically altered smile and a high-five is all you need. And your passport. OK, and a sieve. ILLUSTRATION BY GRAHAM SAMUELS