I couldn’t quite believe it was actually starting again. After a two-year pandemic break, festivals are taking place all over Germany again. No restrictions, no masks – “actually crazy” I thought as I sat in the car. Thursday, 7.30 a.m., the first can of beer in hand.
Much has been said and written about music events in recent years. One often heard “pandemic drivers” or “superspreader event”. In the summer of 2022, all of this suddenly seems very far away, despite the incidences rising again. But maybe you just have to take a certain risk. So bag packed, tent on the back and on the highway. I was a regular at Rock am Ring in the Eifel for almost a decade. But when the biggest festival in Germany took place at the beginning of June, the Corona situation, mixed with a line-up of bands that didn’t quite convince my taste, wasn’t a real alternative for me. So this year the Deichbrand Festival: Cuxhaven, 60,000 people, weather forecast somewhere between November Rain and Vamos a la Playa – the typical festival conditions have not changed. If an outdoor stage is set up somewhere in Germany, sooner or later it has to rain – an unwritten law.
The weather keeps what it promised. As soon as we arrived the rain started. And some looked as if a few tears of joy would join the raindrops while lugging their luggage. It was three years ago that I was standing in a meadow in the middle of nowhere in the morning, already surrounded by a few tents and isolated attempts to get charcoal on despite the rain. At this point, I will spare everyone involved a comparison in the direction of “coming home”. There doesn’t have to be too much kitsch, after all we’re still talking about a festival. And that means little sleep, lots of dirt and even more hoppy drinks that blur the view of the dirty clothes so wonderfully.
On that first day, it doesn’t take long for me to realize what exactly I’ve missed over the past few years: Not just the trash music on the campsite or the concerts. Festival, that’s four days of anarchy. Four days farewell to social norms. Sitting in uncomfortable chairs for four days and not bothering about it. Four days full of encounters with people with whom you become best friends for two beer lengths and then never see them again. Four days full of stupid things that later turned out to be really good ideas – or vice versa.
1000 conversations that don’t have to be held because nobody really cares what you’re working on or what exactly you think about the gas crisis. As long as the neighbor across the street wears the same band shirt as you and has a middle finger for racism, fascism and homophobia, everything is clear. Wonderful superficiality.
And so the days go by faster than you can say canned beer. And again and again you catch yourself thinking that it doesn’t quite feel right yet to live and celebrate with tens of thousands of people in a confined space under questionable hygienic conditions. The corona pandemic seems like a fever dream. The only reminder of this is a trampled mask on the dusty floor. You trust your infection protection angel.
Actually absurd when you hear that there were a number of corona cases both after Rock am Ring and after the Hurricane Festival. And so it has a taste when my voice gives up the ghost at a tight tempo on Saturday. Admittedly, this isn’t the first time this has happened. But this year the hated “C” is hovering over what I’ve called “festival cold” for all these years and which I expected 100 percent after a weekend like this.
Since then I’ve been sitting at home and drinking about as much tea as I did beer in Cuxhaven and I keep staring curiously to see if there’s a second line on the small white piece of plastic. So far everything remains white. But the uncertainty alone is a powerful reminder that this time is not quite normal yet.