Guess we’re going to a festival this year after all. Ha!

And then later that evening I checked my twitter timeline and I learnt about the mini tornado at Pukkelpop, that tents had collapsed, hailstones as large as tennisballs, trees had fallen over… and that people had died. It is horrible. What a nightmare. ‘From heaven to hell in ten minutes’ one festivalgoer said. It was supposed to just rain a lot – and which festival goer has not lived through that before? You take your rain poncho with you, maybe you take shelter in one of the large tents when the rain hits… and that’s that. Who expects a flat-out disaster like this?

Some pictures and videos of the actual storm can be found here. It’s very intense and frightening.

The rescue teams and social media actions like #hasselthelpt are being awesome, though. I think Pukkelpop got its shit together very quickly, and was able to help very soon. And of course there’s confusion in the beginning. Of course they try to keep people calm by saying that it’s not over yet, that tomorrow will bring a new day. And of course they canceled the rest of the Festival this morning. Many tents and stage equipment got thrashed, and holy shit dude, LIVES were lost. Five lives, and many people heavily wounded. Not to mention that many festival goers are either shell-shocked or got their clothes and tents soaked or obliterated. Some people on the website are saying nasty things about wanting their money back. I just want to smack them in the face. Self-entitled twats. People were killed and you are angry that the party is over? Get your fucking priorities straight.

THURSDAY
We were supposed to leave at around 3pm-ish, since Kat still had to work in the morning and Derek needed to go to the hospital with his father. However due to a nasty traffic incident on the A4 the others didn’t arrive until 4pm. And with saying hi, rearranging our bagpacks over three cars and admiring the pretty car that Kat and Tijs now own, it wasn’t until 4.20pm until we could finally leave. We were with three cars: Kat, Tijs and Derek in a car, Marco and Brenda in her car, and Olli and I driving Tangy. We all drove after eachother in Italian Job fashion. Traffic was sluggish until we started taking the N-roads. All in all it took us two and a half hours before we arrived in Dessel through pretty intense rainstorms. To our chagrin we were relocated to the furthest parking lot possible, which made the walk to the camping rather grueling. Combined with an insane line before the entrance, it was not a happy thing (especially for poor Kat who had to pee like a mofo). Thankfully it didn’t rain! By 9.30pm our tent camp was standing. Tijs, Olli and I offered to get the beer from the car, so we went back to the parking lot. That was a journey that took us about 45 minutes… holy crap. All in all it took us about 2 hours to get back to the camp (this included a bite to eat on the way btw). Afterwards, we went to the 24 hour area and partied/drank beer till about 4am.

FRIDAY
The day started off with light rain, so thankfully we could sleep in. With the late bedtime the night before, we definitely needed it! I sampled quite a bit of bands that day – more than I thought I would. Less than Olli did – he was the true Metal Sampler this weekend with the amount of bands he saw! Bands I saw on Friday: Protest the Hero, Foreigner, Journey, Volbeat (was even better than on Provinssirock – they were lots of fun), Parkway Drive (who played everything I hoped for and more, even “Horizons”, for an adoring crowd that sang/cheered the tent down) <3) and finally, as Reddit would put it: Scumbag Scorpions – are on their farewell tour – refuses to play ‘Winds of Change’).
It was a good day though, full of good weather that cleared up around the end of the afternoon, good companionship, and good music.

SATURDAY
Saturday shall be known as The Day It Rained And We Got Smashed On Leffe. Not much to say here.  It drizzled with rain all day, so I never took off my Soilwork hooded sweater… and I kept my emergency poncho on for most of the day as well. But it wasn’t very cold, and near the Leffe tent we could sit out of the rain. We watched Blaas of Glory (which was hilarious) and from 1pm on, the Leffe started flowing for us… and we kind of didn’t stop anymore till late at night. We had good talks and good laughs though. Very muchly needed <3
So what bands did I see? Diablo Blvd – who were extremely sympathetic and fun, Kvelertak, Adept (both not very special), Kylesa… and then beer happened and I mostly sat at the Leffe tent. I did check out Arch Enemy while pretty smashed, where I rocked out on my own  to “We Will Rise” (I got distracted while on my way to get a chicken burger), and eventually I saw Pain as well, whose song “The Great Pretender” is definitely worth checking out.
Anyway, the day ended with lots of beer and “I loooove you man!”s, so all was right with the world. My last hit of grass was a blow in the face, so I got dizzy around 2-ish and went to bed earlier than the rest. Thankfully I didn’t get a hangover the next morning, unlike poor Marco. Derek wasn’t feeling all that hot, either.

SUNDAY
In a puzzling turn of events, the temperature doubled overnight. On Sunday around noon it suddenly heated up immensely, until we hit temperatures of about 30C, and the sky scorched clean of clouds. Thankfully this didn’t happen early in the morning, so the boys had some time to get rid of their hangovers.
Derek and I watched Rise to Remain (whose leadsinger, it turns out, is actually the son of Bruce Dickinson) and enjoyed the show. Other things I saw were Anvil (who were quite boring… sorry. Good for them that they’re on the mainstage now, though), Amorphis (which was very enjoyable, very pretty), Mastodon, couldn’t see Gwar because the metaldome was just too busy… but I did get to see Avenged Sevenfold, who proceeded to rock my socks off, like Olli promised they would. Holy crap talented musicians. And what a set of lungs does that lead singer have! I was muchly entertained by their show. After that we caught a bit of Opeth (which had bad sound, unfortunately, and Brenda wasn’t much impressed, so we just went for drinks and some late dinner before it was time to get ready for Soilwork!
Soilwork didn’t set down their best show, unfortunately. They started off really strong, but in the middle they played some of their really old stuff, which didn’t quite do it for me. They ended very strong though, with “Stabbing the Drama” and “Nerve”, during which the crowd pretty much tore the Metal Dome down. That was GREAT!
Brenda and I emerged from the Metal Dome soaked to our undies, which is always a good sign Then it was time to hydrate and dry up aforementioned undies, and then it was time for Slipknot. Unfortunately they didn’t play their best show by a long shot. There were some technical problems in the beginning, and compared to their 2009 show they just weren’t as good. Glad I still got to see them though. And poor Corey still gets emotional when he speaks of Paul Gray who died last year

By that time we were all pretty much exhausted. We had a couple of beers to get rid of our coins, and then it was time to go to our tents and catch a bit of sleep (it was 2am or something) before we would get up early on Monday. It was said to be 34C on Monday, so we thought it’d be smart if we’d GTFO before it would become too hot, and indeed – by 9am we were at the parking lot and ready to go home.

I can’t believe how fast it all flew by. I wish it could have lasted longer… however, considered the state my body is in at the moment, maybe it’s better that it didn’t. *grins*

Graspop, I had a great time. Till we meet again! <3

More pictures to be find HERE, btw.

- Flying to Finland
- Seinajoki is as northern as I’ve ever been
- Seeing Helsinki, both from a tower on the thirteenth floor (including its toilet with the spectacular view) and from a beer tram
- Waking up because a puppy is chewing on my ear (Johanna’s puppy dog Tara is sooooo adorable!)
- Drinking pear- and peach cider
- Puking my guts out in a Finnish toilet because of aforementioned cider (never did it on a Finnish toilet before)
- Swimming in the lake at Johanna’s cottage
- Having a Provinssirock wristband around my wrist
- Listening to a Finnish crowd going nuts to a Finnish pop band (REALLY weird, everyone was singing along and Olli and I felt like we missed something )
- Getting bitten like a mofo by Finnish mosquitos
- Sitting in a sauna at 4am
- Not seeing the sun set AT ALL… just mild twilight at times (those times being between 1am and 2am)
- Sitting on the porch of Johanna’s friend Saatu’s house at 4.30am in only a towel, in bright daylight (soooo weird)
- Rocking out to Pendulum
- Ordering food and drinks by pointing, gestures and my limited knowledge of Finnish because the dude in the beertent didn’t understand English)
- Learning words like Olut (beer), Ulos (exit), Irtti (sp? – means ‘let go’ or ‘loose’), Mosh Pitti (I am not shitting you), Kanalanio (sp? oh wait, google translate says it’s känniääliö – means drunken idiot), Aukki (open)… there’s more, but I forgot already
- Seeing a Finnish crowd go completely NUTS during System of a Down (which was BRILLIANT)

…And add to this a shitload of beer, cider, wine, weather that held itself admirably well (only two short rainshowers), skinny dipping in aforementioned lake, silly drunken people, a great time with Johanna, Johanna’s gracious friend Saatu who hosted us during the weekend and bbq’ed with us in the bit of rain that we got, and Finnish bands that were cool to see but whose name I should REALLY check back because they were too long and too Suomi to remember. Good times.
Pictures will soon follow