This entry is written on 28 August, but fuck that… I’m totally going to backdate this entry to the 25th or something, haha. Then at least I can find the entry when I’m looking for it. So yeah! Lowlands! Whooo! Beware, dear blog readers! This entry will contain gushing over the awesomeness of The Prodigy, swooning over Lily Allen’s cuteness, tales of rubbish weather alarms, watered-down festival beer, lots of people, and friendship and laughter, pretty much. So, where do I start?
Olli and I came to pick up Aurélie around 11.30 am on Thursdaymorning at her house. We quickly loaded up her stuff, and onwards we went to reach the Lowlands camping terrain – a trip that would be pretty disastrous all in all. The heat outside was sweltering, seriously not funny anymore. It was over 30 degrees Celcius and rising, and the news on the radio was riddled with warnings for the weather alarm that was supposed to hit us around 4pm. We hoped that we would be on the festival terrain by that time, and that we could’ve set up our tent by that time. However, that was not the case. About five kilometres away from the campsite we hit a huge trafficjam, and it became glaringly obvious we wouldn’t go anywhere for a while. So what should have been a 1.30pm arrival turned into a 5pm arrival. But then it turned out that the window in the passenger seat wouldn’t go up anymore. It looked like the electronics for it were fried, the garage said when Olli rang them. And this was rather worrisome, with a rainstorm coming up and… well, you know, leaving the car in a parking lot with thousands of other cars for the weekend.
So Olli had to get out of the parking lot again, drive up to the kiss & ride where the ANWB was with an emergency stand… and then had to stand in line allll over again. Lie and I resolved to take the tent and already get in line for the entrance, so we could at least set up the tent on the festival terrain (there was still that weather alarm looming over our heads, and clouds were drifting in). The others, who had gone by train, were already entering the terrain and they would keep our spot free on the camping site. So that was a bit of a relief. So Lie and I stood in line for the better part of 45 mins, between loads of people. By that time Olli had already called and told us that the damn car had fixed itself by the time he reached the ANWB (epic fail, Tangy!!!) and he had found another parking spot. All he had to do is get his bag and his chair, and then he would come and join us… although he’d be in the back of the line between thousands of people. We resolved to meet up on the camping site, I said through the phone.
But then I came to the front of the line and guess what. Guess fucking what. “Huh,” the guy said, peering over my printed e-ticket. “Never saw this one before.” Also, his scanner wouldn’t accept the ticket. I began to sweat and nervously tittered that he should have seen thousands of those by now, I had printed this one in February. So he got his supervisor, who took one look at it and snorted: “No wonder the scanner doesn’t know that ticket. It’s from 2008.”
I think I died a little at that point.
Imagine, the looming weather alarm, sweating profusely, car problems, traffic jam, and Olli still in line with his own faulty ticket miles behind me… and our tickets were not valid. I had printed out LAST YEAR’s tickets, instead of the 2009 tickets. I could have cried. Thank GOD I still had my tickets online, but they were in my inbox. Near to crying, I begged for a computer to log into my mailbox, so I could give print the tickets. That wasn’t possible, but what I could do was take the back route all the way back to the parking lot, where the ticketservice might be able to do something for me. I literally RAN back to that point, where I let them log into my mailbox (I couldn’t get into the stand with them, was forbidden, bah) where they got my order number. And from the order number, they printed tickets.
Meanwhile, Olli was still back in line, Lie was in the entrance to the camping terrain, where the others would come get our tents and bags and already take them to the camping. I wormed myself through thousands of people and managed to get to the entrance before Olli got there. Lie and the others went to the camping with our stuff, while I waited nearly half an hour for Olli, so I could give him his ticket. Estimated time of FINAL arrival at Lowlands camping: 7pm. And the storm was said to hit (after rescheduling from the weatherpeople) at 8pm.
We still had to walk over all of the terrain (of course we were AGAIN at the camping way in the back, which didn’t promise good things time- and stormwise), and then set up our tent. We were pretty frazzled by that point, as you can probably imagine. But when we finally got to camping 1, our sweet, sweet friends had the campsite already standing, and they had started to set up our tent. Olli and I quickly joined in (the lack of outer tent/inner tent had them somewhat puzzled) and within ten minutes our tent was standing – the whole campsite was done, fifteen minutes before the storm hit.
We all waited out the tent in our tent, with the whole group: René (Karianne would join up with us on Friday morning), Derek and Sanne, Marco, Other Tijs, Lie, and Ol and me – while we drank and ate whatever supplies we had with us at that point. The storm was… well, lots of rain and some spectacular thunder/lightning, but that was it. It lasted about an hour, then it was dry for a while, and then another half an hour. By that time everyone was thirsting for beer and they wanted to go to the car to pick up our beer supplies. I had been texting with Jos in the meantime, who had asked me to go and come say hi, so I opted to do that instead. While the others went a-journeying, I hung out with Jos. And eventually we all came back to the campingplace, but by that time it was very late. We did a few beers, and then all went to bed, exhaustedly. What time was it anyway? 3am or something? Anyway, that concluded the Thursday.
Friday was said to be the shittiest day weather-wise. Well, I didn’t notice it! It was damn hot at times, enough to regret wearing my jeans. I woke up at around 8.30 and had a shower, we had breakfast at camp, and then went to check out the festival terrain. We had to wait in line for nearly an hour to get in (we were a bit early), but when we finally did enter the first thing we did was… get vietnamese food. Yum! 
We roamed the terrain for a bit, bought a cd, and marvelled on how pretty the Lima stage had become. And from there on it was already time to go to the Alpha tent, because the White Lies were performing there. And oh, damn they were good! They kicked off with ‘Fairwell to the Fairground’, which swept me off my feet immediately. They played damn solidly, although it was obvious that the crowd didn’t really get into it until the end. Still, it was a good start of the festival, and I’m glad I’ve seen them. After that, we lazed about in the grass for a bit at the Lima (half listening to the Tallest Man On Earth) and went to get something to eat and half-heartedly checked out La Roux, which was nothing special. We got back to the Alpha in time for Lily Allen though, who true to form made it a party again. It was really funny to see her after the White Lies, who so earnestly performed for us, they played their songs. Lily Allen just… partied with us. Great fun, to sing her hits along and chant “It’s not fair” with her. She’s just so adorable. My girlcrush seems to be undiminished since Werchter 2007, haha. What we did after that is kind of a blur. Food, probably… and oh, I remember.
We went back to the camping to pick up sweaters and the like, because afterwards would be The Prodigy, and night was falling. We also saw a bit of the tail end of Sedan Vault, which is pretty damn interesting experimental prog rock kind of stuff. I liked what I heard, but I didn’t linger long. Some of the boys were already in front at the Prodigy, and Karianne and I tried to join them. We didn’t succeed, of course – but we did manage to get to the first ring, where the party started.
Now please excuse me while I relive that gig again. *sighs delightedly* Incredible. Fucking sick. Blew my mind. Want to shag Keith senseless. The crowd screaming in utter rapture when the first tones of Out of Space boomed through the tent. The bruises. So much sweat, and far from all of it my own. The setlist – all their hits… I think they only skipped Spitfire, that was it. They played everything, and oh my god did the crowd go nuts. And you thought only metalheads knew how to build a mosh pit? Think again. This was as intense as any gig I’ve ever experienced. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a crowd scream so loud. And I’ve heard some screaming crowds, let me tell you that. Besides the pic on the side here, I didn’t dare to make any other pictures, the crowd was too crazy. I walked around the rest of the festival with ankles that felt decidedly bruised from all the feet landing on it, and Karianne had some bitch create bruises on Karianne’s shoulder somehow with her nails, but apart from that it was one big haze of adrenaline and awesomeness.
And damn, it was only Friday and I’d pretty much seen all that I wanted to see already! How’s that for a great first day!
Saturday didn’t have all that much for me, music- wise, apart from the surprise act, which was highly speculated to be Them Crooked Vultures. We basically hung out, drank festival beer, and watched with amusement when suddenly some clouds drifted in and rain fell! I opened up buienradar on my cellphone and we found to our hilarity that there was one blip on the map of Holland, and that was over our heads. It was the only rain in the whole country, and it passed after about ten minutes. During this time we were under a tarp at the Asian Food Court, so we were very amused by it. After that it continued to be as hot as before, and I was really glad I was walking around in shorts. We saw a bit of Crystal Antlers in the Charlie and went with the boys to check out Sonata Arctica, who performed well for a tent that should have been much more filled, but yeah, the rumour of Them Crooked Vultures had drawn all the people away to the Grolsch tent. Because of this, we were way too late to even enter the tent – or get anywhere close – so we mostly missed out on it, drinking beer in the sun. I’m told it was a really good show. DAMN it was busy! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Lowlands terrain as crowded as it was this weekend. And it’s been sold out before, hasn’t it?
Anyhow, the day was far from a loss to any of us. After going to the camping to pick up sweaters and chilling at the camping site, Karianne, René, Olli, Lie and I checked out Bassment Jaxx, who performed solidly – very good live – but didn’t entertain that much. They had a bad show, despite good music and talented singers (really weird) and the Kaiser Chiefs, who didn’t impress at all. They were really impressed by themselves, though, and liked to have the whole tent chant their name. It made for some fun while boozing, when we watched them from a distance. It was really funny how the Kaiser Chiefs just kept singing “Oh my god I can’t believe it, I’ve never been this far away from home” … on and on. I know they have repetitive lyrics, but this kind of took the cake. Especially when it had already gone on forever and Olli started to count and got to eighteen before they finally shut up. We had already started singing: “Oh my god I can’t believe it, I’m singing this chorus once again” instead, haha! Well then, we had a bit of a buzz, we were at the Alpha tent, time for the Alpha DJ’s to start, right?
And thus they did. With beer in our bellies, the others joining up with us, and lots of really good music, we went on to dance and goof around to our favourite songs. The boys had been hitting the rum at the campsite, though, so they were even more drunk than we were. Derek even breakdanced for us, to our collective amusement. All in all, it was a great day, and we danced ourselves silly.Lie even still wanted to go on AFTER the Alpha DJ’s, but the rest was completely knackered. Olli, Marco and I wanted to go to the Echo to catch the movie “Drag me to hell”, but unfortunately they were full already. So we chilled out a bit, I had a cup of the most delicious soup in the world, and then we all went back to the camping for some chats until we went to sleep. So yay!
And then came the Sunday. Might I by the way comment on the fact that I slept like a baby at Lowlands? I woke up on Saturday and Sunday around 7am to have a shower, and then in both cases went to bed again and slept until 9 – which was by the time it was starting to get warm in our tent. Olli and I had this huge air mattress we were lying on that was mighty comfy, and despite my neck and shoulders being painful and tense because of dancing, I was physically in a great state the whole weekend. No sunstrokes, no sunburn, just getting a healthy tan. I decided to be daring that morning and did my hair in pigtails. We went to the festival terrain and hung out with the whole group at the Lima, enjoying breakfast (fruit salad and panini with mozzarella, yum!). Olli and I walked over to the stand right next to the Lima where you could create your own buttons for one euro or something, so we both made one for Lie’s hat (she already had two of them on it) and after that we checked out the Airborne Toxic Event at the India, which was nice! Again rather progrock-y, but I loved how atmospheric they were. After that slowly went over to the Alpha tent, where Enter Shikari was going to perform! However, that turned out to be a disappointment. Where they played the house down in 2007 apparently, they couldn’t make it happen here. It was way too hot in the tent, the sound settings were lame, half of the music was lost, and the crowd was pretty much dead. Well, you can’t always play the house down I suppose. 
Next up would be Snoop Dogg but we decided to dodge that by properly boozing it up with beer from the camping store – not watered down festival beer. So we hung out at the campsite and finally got a real buzz going. Had lots of fun goofing around (Marco wanted pigtails in his hair too, he looked really cute) and just… well, cracking jokes and laughing. I had initially planned to check out Bloc Party or the Arctic Monkeys, but we decided to go for something more exotic and what we got was Peaches. Damn, that was one sexy show! It literally sizzled. The singer sang incredibly well, music was perfect, and near the end she got shitloads of people to take their top off just for her, haha 
It was a nice concert to end the festival with. Afterwards we kind of wanted to go to the Grolsch tent to dance some more to some other DJ’s, but we were all so beat that we danced to a few songs and then went back to the camping for a few more beers and then to bed at 1am or something.
And then came the Monday, a day I would rather frigging forget. Oh, until we got to the parking terrain all went smoothy enough. The sun shone down merrily on us, and by 10am our campsite was smoothly broken down and packed up. Because we were on a so called eco camping, we even cleaned up after us. We got breakfast from our last coins, and then we went to the camping terrain – where we arrived at a little bit before eleven – and we immediately noticed trouble.
There were only two exits, and thousands of cars. Massive traffic jam… we weren’t going anywhere for a while. I curled up on the backseat and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up an hour and a half later, we had moved all of 40 meters. I shit you not. The next hours the sun climbed and everything heated up incredibly, it was over 30 degrees celcius again, and we had no water. People were playing frisbee and drinking beer. Cars were just standing there. Nothing happened. NOTHING. There were no Lowlands organisation people, either. No one to beg for water, no one to direct traffic. NOTHING. By 3pm we were getting severely dehydrated. Olli decided fuckit, and went to scavenge water. He finally found some truckdriver who was breaking up the camping store and stowing pellets of waterbottles into his truck. Olli begged him for the water, which the guy wasn’t allowed to sell, but they kind of just illegally exchanged money and water, and Olli had thusly four litres of delicious hydration for us an hour later. Bless him <3
By 4pm the amount of cars had diminished to such a degree that we, strengthened by the fact that we now had water, decided to take a chance. We crossed all the way over the parkinglot and joined another line to the exit, one that went faster. On our way, we crossed some people who had made a stand next to their car; with plastic flower chains and hats, and a bottle of wine. ‘Will trade for water’ the sign said. We gave our 2ltr bottle of bar le duc to them that we were planning to just give away, to which they nearly started to cry and they gave me a hat and a bottle of wine and a flower chain in thanks. And then, by 5pm, thank fuck, we finally made it out of the parking lot.
EPIC FAIL, Lowlands organisation. I cannot express how epically (sp?) you failed there. This was seriously dangerous. We constantly heard ambulances driving by, picking up dehydrated and unconscious people. How can you let such a clusterfuck happen? Festival is over, you got your money, now all go and bake in the sun? Seriously, this pissed me off so much.
But eventually we were home by 6.30 pm, had a shower, some online time, a snuggle… and then I went to bed. Because Thursday my new job would start. And thus Lowlands had ended.
*** ADDITION ***
OK, because I was watching the Prodigy on 3 voor 12 and the vid won’t be available for all that much longer, I took the liberty to make some screenshots. Couldn’t help myself, I wanted to share the awesomeness. Here they are
