Learn the lesson. Big business sucks.
Gutted i wasn't there, my mates called me during the bard's song. I was sad, we sung that a lot while roving the streets drunk. Wish I coulda seen them live
it will be interesting to compare this one with a much smaller festival, Party.San, this coming weekend. I think there will be only like 15,000 to 20,000 people there. It should be a lot less busy!
And I would have loved to meet you, gozu!
But a job is more important so don't be too depressed. Once you get your first paycheck you'll realize that it was the right thing!
Edit: and according to the organizers there were 72,000 people at Wacken
And I would have loved to meet you, gozu!
But a job is more important so don't be too depressed. Once you get your first paycheck you'll realize that it was the right thing!
Edit: and according to the organizers there were 72,000 people at Wacken
I'm still feeling pretty dead too although I got home yesterday already...ugh.
There's nothing like a 14 hour sleep to recharge the batteries.
Tales from a first-timer
July 31st
Delayed in London by 5 hours because the bus coming to pick us up broke down in Oxford. Pick-up point is the Iron Duke, behind Victoria train station. Met these bastards:
(shot taken on ferry on way home)
L-R: Chris(London) Rob(Bury St Edmunds) Joe(London) Josh(Los Angeles)
August 1st
Picked up at 00:40-ish, 3 hour drive to Dover for the ferry.
Use the crossing to teach Josh about the wonder of Grolsch's flippy-top bottles, and how to make them pop the loudest, and grab 48 bottles of Stella for £15.
The mainland leg takes us through France, Belgium, The Netherlands and obviously Germany, punctuated by service station stops. On the way we pass dozens of cars and vans with WOA gaff-taped on their rear windows.
Traffic's heavy, and it takes us forever to reach Hamburg, where we drop off the people staying at the hotels there. There's a 6 hour queue getting into Wacken at that point, so our drivers decide to stop in Hamburg for an hour, to give the traffic jam the chance to shift. Time for a 6 litre beer tower and nachos with melted cheese between the 5 of us (we'd decided on the ferry to camp together. Except Rob, who was meeting other people there and was sharing their tent).
By the time we get through the gates at Wacken and get our wristbands....
...it's dark. We find a space on Iced Earth Road (a section of Site A, which is tents only) Thankfully i've had my tent a good few years so I was done in 10 minutes. Once all the tents are up (another half hour) I grab my maglite and we wander off to the festival area in search of food.
(Impromptu bedside table)
Knobi-brot mit Käse und Salami.
(or, garlic bread with cheese and salami. €2.50)
Food of the gods, seriously.
We browse around the metal market for awhile, I grab a longsleeve FF Archetype Tour shirt (the one with the bone pentagram) for €20 (£12) which is a bargain, as I remember that shirt costing about £18 or £20 (€27 or €30) at the gig.
August 2nd
On the way back from the market we get lost. We spend most of the morning with half a dozen Germans from the Black Forest. Thus begins the drinking, with Mat (one of the Germans) admitting that he was mainly at Wacken to see Chistina Scabbia's boobs. It starts to get cold so at 04:30-ish me and Josh go off in search of our tents.
*sleep*
Awake at 10:00 to discover that i'm cooking. The tent's a bloody oven.
A crappy fake panoramic, but it'll do. this is a TINY section of Site A, you can just about see my tent in the second picture, it's the green one just behind the grey one with light blue vents. Chris' tent is the one you can see 2 red "x" on.
We wander over to the metal market again for more Salami Knobi-brot and to have a look at the CD tent where I meet Lars.
....I awaken what feels like hours later, nauseous and disoriented.
Tales from a first-timer
July 31st
Delayed in London by 5 hours because the bus coming to pick us up broke down in Oxford. Pick-up point is the Iron Duke, behind Victoria train station. Met these bastards:
(shot taken on ferry on way home)
L-R: Chris(London) Rob(Bury St Edmunds) Joe(London) Josh(Los Angeles)
August 1st
Picked up at 00:40-ish, 3 hour drive to Dover for the ferry.
Use the crossing to teach Josh about the wonder of Grolsch's flippy-top bottles, and how to make them pop the loudest, and grab 48 bottles of Stella for £15.
The mainland leg takes us through France, Belgium, The Netherlands and obviously Germany, punctuated by service station stops. On the way we pass dozens of cars and vans with WOA gaff-taped on their rear windows.
Traffic's heavy, and it takes us forever to reach Hamburg, where we drop off the people staying at the hotels there. There's a 6 hour queue getting into Wacken at that point, so our drivers decide to stop in Hamburg for an hour, to give the traffic jam the chance to shift. Time for a 6 litre beer tower and nachos with melted cheese between the 5 of us (we'd decided on the ferry to camp together. Except Rob, who was meeting other people there and was sharing their tent).
By the time we get through the gates at Wacken and get our wristbands....
...it's dark. We find a space on Iced Earth Road (a section of Site A, which is tents only) Thankfully i've had my tent a good few years so I was done in 10 minutes. Once all the tents are up (another half hour) I grab my maglite and we wander off to the festival area in search of food.
(Impromptu bedside table)
Knobi-brot mit Käse und Salami.
(or, garlic bread with cheese and salami. €2.50)
Food of the gods, seriously.
We browse around the metal market for awhile, I grab a longsleeve FF Archetype Tour shirt (the one with the bone pentagram) for €20 (£12) which is a bargain, as I remember that shirt costing about £18 or £20 (€27 or €30) at the gig.
August 2nd
On the way back from the market we get lost. We spend most of the morning with half a dozen Germans from the Black Forest. Thus begins the drinking, with Mat (one of the Germans) admitting that he was mainly at Wacken to see Chistina Scabbia's boobs. It starts to get cold so at 04:30-ish me and Josh go off in search of our tents.
*sleep*
Awake at 10:00 to discover that i'm cooking. The tent's a bloody oven.
A crappy fake panoramic, but it'll do. this is a TINY section of Site A, you can just about see my tent in the second picture, it's the green one just behind the grey one with light blue vents. Chris' tent is the one you can see 2 red "x" on.
We wander over to the metal market again for more Salami Knobi-brot and to have a look at the CD tent where I meet Lars.
....I awaken what feels like hours later, nauseous and disoriented.
Did Goat eat the Infinity booklet?? Or did anybody even manage to find him at all?
shut up and kiss me you walking infection
Leechmaster wrote:Did Goat eat the Infinity booklet?? Or did anybody even manage to find him at all?
Goat never showed. Back to the story:
Still August 2nd...
Atari wrote:....I awaken what feels like hours later, nauseous and disoriented.
I'm kidding. Lars was lovely, and managed to get a couple of shots of us without me going on a killing spree. The CD tent was extremely busy, I picked up ZH - Bound By Fire for €3 and Amorphis - Eclipse for €12.
In the hours that follow I remain in the festival area, watching the metal battles in the Headbangers Ballroom, before heading over to the Black Stage to see Sodom. Not really my thing, but enjoyable. I know very few of the bands playing, my intention was to go along, find some new bands and meet great people.
Went back to my tent to grab a beer or two to the others getting started on theirs and laughing at the drunken dancing of some big men in kilts (two gazebo tents to the left of Chris' tent, in the first shot of the shitty panoramic) They call us over to join them. 6 Swedes from Stockholm and their never-ending supply of booze. For some of them, this was their seventh Wacken, and they still had the wristbands on to prove it.
L-R Sven, Peter. Taken on the last night of the festival
Trashbag operates in 2 modes. Drunk or Asleep. Affectionatey named because whatever comes out of his mouth is rubbish.
L-R Layfen (isn't how you spell it i'm sure, but it's how you say it), Sven. Taken by Anna.
We were in the party tent until 6 the following morning. Poor Josh, he's only 19, still a minor by US standards and hadn't been properly drunk until that night. during that time, we're visited by various amiable revellers and a drunk Frenchman trying to proposition me and refusing to leave until Layfen turned surly.
Next part up soon
Last edited by Atari on Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
well, I had plans to molest you...but hey, you're twice as tall as I am so I chickened out 
I'll try to get my pics developed and scanned tomorrow and will hopefully be able to post them next week after surviving the Party.San festival!
I'll try to get my pics developed and scanned tomorrow and will hopefully be able to post them next week after surviving the Party.San festival!
ok, here's my Wacken pics now
first of all....here is where I spent most of the day...the Metal Market, where I helped selling CD's and merch
in this one there's a guy with a Burzum shirt....my Burzum smurf shirt is much better though
and here are some pics of the Gates of Hell crew and the stuff we sold
Then of course a few shots of me and Clare. As you can see, she is much taller than I am. And actually she was on her knees when the pics were taken. Nah, just kidding.
first of all....here is where I spent most of the day...the Metal Market, where I helped selling CD's and merch
in this one there's a guy with a Burzum shirt....my Burzum smurf shirt is much better though
and here are some pics of the Gates of Hell crew and the stuff we sold
Then of course a few shots of me and Clare. As you can see, she is much taller than I am. And actually she was on her knees when the pics were taken. Nah, just kidding.
oh yeah...also check this out. It's Quorthon's dad! He was selling Black Mark CD's and merch. He had quite a bit of beer! Mainly because there were so many Bathory fans that wanted to drink with him! heh
This next one is also a cute pic. The guy on the left is Ronny who owns the Gates of Hell store. He is also the vocalist of a local band called 'Cryptic Wintermoon'. The dude on the right is a guy from Dubai, yes Dubai, who was at Wacken too. He works for the company 'Virgin' in Dubai and wanted to check out what's new on the market. Turns out that dude from Dubai owns the very first Cryptic Wintermoon CD. I guess it does not happen to often that you come across a guy from Dubai who knows your band!
And of course I took some pics of the festival itself as well...
some random pic I took while I was waiting for Clare
then a pretty nice pic that shows both main stages...yes, there are TWO main stages right next to one another.
and of course I saw some cool gigs too...of course with a shitty basic photo camera you can't take fantastic pics, but anyways...
This one was taken while I saw Enslaved...the gig was awesome and now I appreciate that band even more!
Then Sahg...another highlight. Probably the surprise of the festival to me personally.
and last but not least....Samael. I was so happy to finally see them live. And they surely did put on a good show! Then again it was 2 am, I was frozen because it was damn cold and only half awake so they could have played Bavarian folk music and I would have enjoyed it.
So yeah....that's it for pics. They are not the greatest pics but nice memories!!
This next one is also a cute pic. The guy on the left is Ronny who owns the Gates of Hell store. He is also the vocalist of a local band called 'Cryptic Wintermoon'. The dude on the right is a guy from Dubai, yes Dubai, who was at Wacken too. He works for the company 'Virgin' in Dubai and wanted to check out what's new on the market. Turns out that dude from Dubai owns the very first Cryptic Wintermoon CD. I guess it does not happen to often that you come across a guy from Dubai who knows your band!
And of course I took some pics of the festival itself as well...
some random pic I took while I was waiting for Clare
then a pretty nice pic that shows both main stages...yes, there are TWO main stages right next to one another.
and of course I saw some cool gigs too...of course with a shitty basic photo camera you can't take fantastic pics, but anyways...
This one was taken while I saw Enslaved...the gig was awesome and now I appreciate that band even more!
Then Sahg...another highlight. Probably the surprise of the festival to me personally.
and last but not least....Samael. I was so happy to finally see them live. And they surely did put on a good show! Then again it was 2 am, I was frozen because it was damn cold and only half awake so they could have played Bavarian folk music and I would have enjoyed it.
So yeah....that's it for pics. They are not the greatest pics but nice memories!!
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