Sorry it's been so long since my last post - I was in Germany with a really bad internet connection and a really great guy! But now I'll finally tell you about Roskilde...
Roskilde Festival was the craziest week ever and pure awesome. I got there on the sunny afternoon of Monday July 2 wearing my kilt and with no idea what to expect of the week, and walked to Camp Braveheart (my camp), our flag standing tall above the endless sea of tents. When my friends had waited in the queue overnight Saturday to run in and get a good campsite when the gates opened to Roskilde the first day, they had done an awesome job. We had a perfect location very close to a kiosk and burger place (good when I couldn't stand to eat canned tuna and crackers for another damn meal), the toilets and sinks (but not so close that it smelled.. they were behind the burger place), the dome where parties happened every night until sunrise, and the entrance to the music scene closest to the Arena stage. When I told people my camp was located in L, they said "so you're in the party zone". Hell yeah I am.
When I arrived at Camp Braveheart, my friends were there playing drinking games and wearing kilts and blue face paint. My tent had been set up 3 tents back from our pavilion, which was a great spot in the middle of a bunch of other tents so it was less likely to be peed or puked on. I had my own tent which I was happy about since it was the only privacy I could get throughout the week. I'm not sure how many people were in our camp..maybe around 20 or 25 or something? I was the only American and everyone else was Danish.
The first 3 days (before the concerts started on Thursday) were pretty much spent hanging out with friends, playing drinking games, dancing, and some other stuff. Every morning we were woken up by the most random and annoying song in the world. When the first 2 people were awake in the camp, they would drag the speakers out and blast Ulilang Pasko which sounds normal at first and then a kid with a terrible voice starts ruining your ears. What better way to wake up in the morning? (a sentiment our neighboring camps did not share!) By the end of the song most people were up and then the more awesome techno bagpipes song kicked the day into gear. Then all day it was music and various drinking games including beer bowling and flunkyball, and everyone was drunk by noon (except me..I was the misfit who took it slower but I still had just as much fun and didn't puke!) We had 2000 stickers with the Camp Braveheart flag on them, so we stuck them on people walking by our camp. It was mostly the guys sticking them on boobs and butts of hot girls walking by, and our camp actually got some recognition and credit from random guys who saw so many hot girls labeled with our camp and thought we were awesome. A policeman walked by our camp once and I ran up behind him and put a sticker on his butt, and thankfully he was in a good mood. It was funny. We also had water balloons and a giant slingshot which we used to annoy other camps one afternoon. I got picked up once on Wednesday (I think) to have a shower and a real meal, which was very nice. At nights, I danced like crazy.
I wandered around to see some of the different themed zones in Roskilde: Poor City, Street City, Dream City, Game City, Green City, and Cinema City. Street City was cool because they had a skatepark set up and they held various workshops and events. I went to a street dance workshop on Monday which was a lot of fun and there was a dance battle afterwards. There was a free movie theater at Cinema City so I saw 2 movies there on Tuesday: Black's Game which was probably awesome but the language was Icelandic and the subtitles were Danish, so I didn't understand the dialogue but I watched the whole movie anyway and understood the general plot. At 1am I took a party break to see Tim & Erics Billion Dollar Movie, which was just.... what the fuck? Weirdest movie I've ever seen. Went back and danced in the dome afterwards. There were also 2 main areas for food and shopping (one in East camps and one in West camps) and when I discovered that carrying a purse at Roskilde was extremely impractical, I went there to buy a sweet fanny pack.
From Thursday to Sunday (July 5-8), there were tons of concerts at 7 different stages. I didn't actually recognize many bands that were playing, so every morning I read the descriptions of the bands that were playing that day and picked some that had interesting descriptions, or tagged along with friends who were going to concerts. On my schedule I wrote short little comments next to the concerts I saw, which I will include here. [Also I'm linking songs from the band names if you click them]
On Thursday the first concert I saw was The Shins, a band I knew and wanted to see. I met up with Nina there, who was in a different camp and I hadn't seen her during the warm-up days. Schedule comment: "Chill". Then I met my Camp Braveheart friends at the Analogik concert, which I had never heard of but I went because my friends were going. It turned out to be a really fun concert. Schedule comment: "fuckin dope". That night I saw Janelle Monáe, who came to University of Rochester last year and I heard she was great so I wanted to go to her concert this time. I was too far away to see very well but I thought she was a great performer with a lot of energy. Schedule comment: "very nice".
Friday it rained and I didn't bring rainboots so I tied trashbags over my sneakers. All the concerts I saw today were bands that I had never heard of, but went to see based on the descriptions in the little Roskilde booklet. I started the day with Les Freres Smith, who had an interesting description as an Afrobeat-funk band from Paris. It was one of my favorite concerts and I was standing in the front row shakin' my groove thang. Schedule comment: "funky fresh ♥". My trashbag rainboots had ripped so I went back to the camp and made improved rain shoes with trashbags and duct tape. Very effective! Then I saw Boubacar Traoré, who was more calm but very nice. Schedule comment: "nice". Probably the most random concert I saw was Danyel Waro, which was native ritualistic music from a tiny island near Madagascar. He was this crazy-looking older man with fluffy white hair and big glasses with awesome energy, and I really enjoyed it. Schedule comment: "awesome tribal dancey". Later at 1am I tagged along with some of my friends to see a Danish rap band called Malk de Koijn, but I didn't like it so I left early. It's fine to not understand the lyrics at other concerts when there was music to dance to as well, but not understanding anything at a rap concert is kind of pointless. Schedule comment: "not my thang ☹". Later around 3-something am I caught the last few songs at the Spleen United concert and it was a lot of fun. Schedule comment: "bananas awesome".
Saturday afternoon we went to see Niklas, pretty much just to hear those 2 songs that everyone knows (even I know them haha. here's the other song). We were standing pretty far away though because there wasn't enough space to actually stand in the tent at the Cosmopol stage, so there wasn't as much energy or dancing in the crowd that far away. Schedule comment: "wish I was closer". Later I saw The Roots, who put on an awesome concert at the main Orange Stage. Schedule comment: "great". Later I heard the end of the M83 concert, which I wanted to go to earlier but I was having fun at the camp (I got challenged to lay down and put a beer can on my stomach and make it hop and land again, soooo I got distracted). But what I heard was good. Schedule comment: "heard a bit, sounded awesome, should have gone earlier". Then Camp Braveheart went to see Bruce Springsteen, which was the main act for the whole festival. We brought our flag along so we wouldn't get lost. I enjoyed it but some of my Danish friends got kinda bored haha. We didn't stay for the whole thing because it was really long. Schedule comment: "fun". Then at 11pm I went to see Bon Iver but I didn't stay long. Schedule comment: "too chill, wasn't really interested". So we went looking for a concert we could dance at and found some dj playing at the Cosmopol stage so we stuck around until this young rapper came on, Dominique Young Unique, and she really sucked so we left. I listened to a bit of the Paul Kalkbrenner concert but didn't stay long because Mew was also playing at the same time. Schedule comment: "good techno trance". Some of Camp Braveheart went to see the Danish band Mew so I went along, and it was way better than I expected. They sang in English and put on a great performance and I had a lot of fun. Schedule comment: "really fantastic". I tried to see the Pretty Lights concert after that but the Apollo stage was really far away and by the time I got there, people were chanting "one more song" but Pretty Lights did not do one more song. Noooo.
Sunday was the last day of concerts and all my friends were leaving pretty early. They didn't want to stay Sunday night because apparently there is chaos and people burning tents and destroying things and it's not a good place to be. Already our camp's pavilion had been destroyed on Saturday night by some random dude throwing a chair on top of it. Some of the camp left Sunday morning and didn't see any concerts that day. I went to see Magtens Korridorer, a Danish rock band, with some of the people who stayed, but then after that I was pretty much the only one left. The concert sounded good but I was so tired I dozed off for a bit there since we were sitting down on the lawn. There were other concerts that I wanted to see on Sunday evening... Amadou & Mariam and Santigold, but I no longer had anywhere to put my bag since the camp was abandoned so to my disappointment I couldn't stay for those concerts. Oh well, back to civilization for a shower and real food!
Roskilde Festival was an awesome experience of just having carefree fun for a whole week. It was a week of FREEEDOOOMMMM!!! at Camp Braveheart. I got closer to my friends and met awesome new friends. I lived in a filthy world full of trash, mud and piss everywhere and that was normal. Everyone was an unhygienic mess and had terrible diets mainly consisting of beer and was happy about it. I saw some really great concerts and found new bands that I like. Everything was awesome and I definitely want to go again next year :)
Here's the link to my photo album of Roskilde Festival!
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