Photos by Carita, Pauliina Hepola & Johanna Rautanen
Denmark’s Roskilde music fest draws quite a crowd.
My announcement that I was going to the Roskilde festival was met with ripples of laughter everywhere I turned. I couldn’t understand why. I mean, why would it be so hard to imagine me at a festival? Just because I’m afraid of the cold, don’t really enjoy mud that much and can’t recognise more than a third of the bands on the programme doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy one of the biggest annual events in all of Europe.
Does it?
I knew what I was getting into. I had vague memories from the time I was 15 and saw Bon Jovi at a Finnish festival. The sun was shining, and it felt like it was just me and the band. Well, in my vague memory from eight years ago it was just me and Jon Bon Jovi. (In lots of memories from eight years ago it was just me and a lot of gorgeous men… anyway, getting off track…)
The romanticised picture I had included the sunshine, the music, and me running around in shorts and a T-shirt. In my fantasy I had erased bad weather, odours and, oh, 70 000 people, give or take a few.
Now, me telling you all my memories from childhood does not mean the pointing and laughing people were right. On a few occasions they might have had the right to mock and ridicule me, but not on many.
In fact… I may even have enjoyed myself. [GHASP!]
The Roskilde girls: Johanna, Pauliina & Carita.
Anyway, here is how we (Carita, Pauliina and Johanna) did it, and if it makes sense to you, you can do the same. Then again, you can avoid making our mistakes. The force is yours.
Accommodation
We stayed in Copenhagen throughout the whole festival, which was a pseudo-good idea. The reason it WAS a good idea is because you can still find a hotel room and it is only half an hour away from Roskilde. We would wake up in a warm room, with a shower, a kitchen and breakfast that no one had yet managed to step on or steal. These are the pros.
Cons: Imagine how long it takes to leave that warm room, hot shower and food when it’s raining outside. It would eventually result in missing every single morning band.
Therefore we came up with a theory – If you’re already in the area of the festival, and too muddy to care, you’re bound to see and hear more than we did.
Transportation
Transportation is well-organised, and everything runs on time (it being Scandinavia and all…) but make sure you have enough money to travel.
If you think I sound like your mother – shut up, she’s probably right anyway.
Trains go to Roskilde from Copenhagen at least every half-hour. Buses go between the festival area and Roskilde train station every half-hour. This is useful information even for those camping out, because you can easily take the bus to town for 10 DKK and buy food much, much cheaper than at the festival area.
Carting in the ol’ beverages.
Food & Booze
I have two words for you all – Tetra-Wine. It is disgusting stuff found in three shapes or forms – white, red and a suspicious combination of wines from different parts of Europe (personally, I’d avoid that one). Why tetra-wine? It is the only alcohol that you’re allowed to take into the festival area because it is not served in a bottle. It tastes accordingly.
As you have to open all jugs at the gate, the only logical thing to do is to try to down all three litres as fast as possible. Hold your nose and drink (desperate times call for desperate measures) and even the 22 DKK wine will get you into that state where the sun always shines.
I am sure you’re thinking it is really sad to down disgusting tetra-wine in order to get drunk quickly and cheaply. Look, it’s wet, cold and muddy – at least when you’re tipsy you can choose to ignore this.
By the way, the tetra-wine costs 60 DKK at the festival area, and 22 DKK in Copenhagen’s supermarkets. You do the math. We tried, but I’m blonde and the rest had already downed their tetra-wine, so no luck there.
If you like stall-food, the grub at the festival area is as gorgeous as it is expensive. But if you’re only there once do spend some of the money on it. You can easily alternate these meals with supermarket food, and let’s face it, this festival makes everyone go bankrupt for the next year regardless of what they’re eating.
Orange Stage, one of the main venues.
The Festival Area
My little t-shirt-and-shorts fantasy quickly faded when within 20 minutes of arriving I was wearing every piece of clothing I’d brought with me for the night. The 70,000 people I’d erased from my mind were all there… queuing for the front part of the orange stage two hours before the first concert. And suddenly having no money to spend pissed me off, because it seemed like we had ended up in Camden Town, with stalls and stalls of jewellery, clothes and diggeridoos everywhere. There were food stalls, works of modern art, and beer stalls everywhere.
In the main area you have six tents for the music and one chill-out tent, surrounded by the enormous camping area and its thousands of tents where everything from private parties to jamming sessions are taking place simultaneously.
The area is huge, and has as many aspects to explore as a schizophrenic’s personality. Explaining where everything is would be useless, as it takes getting lost a few times before anything makes sense. And when it is time to leave the area it rarely is up to you to decide in what direction you are going. The crowd will lead the way – to the left, to the right, up some stairs, down a ditch…
The first night we ended up walking all the way around the entire festival area, led by the enormous crowd still hyper on Rammsteins performance, only to end up walking the five kilometres to the train station.
Safety
During a Pearl Jam concert in 2000 nine men were tragically trampled to death by the audience in front of the Orange Stage. It was time to do something.
Two years later the possibility of getting injured has been, if not eliminated, diminished to a bare minimum.
The main stage, The Orange Stage, has had the area in front of the stage divided into four sections. The only way to get into these sections is by queuing at least an hour before the concert. It is estimated that two people per square metre can fit into the area, but since everyone in the front sections cram towards the front and the middle these sections always look half empty – resulting in anger and disappointment.
We would stand in the queue and be told no one else would be let in, only to leave and notice 40 new people running into the front sections. Safety is a bit tricky, and no one is ever going to be completely satisfied, but this way, at least, no one gets hurt.
The next biggest stage, The Green Tent, has a similar system but it is much easier to get into the front sections of the green tent, resulting in a more memorable musical experience.
Badu live.
And finally… The Music
This year the main artists were The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rammstein, Garbage, Pet Shop Boys, Primal Scream, Nelly Furtado, Erikah Badu, Manu Chao… in fact the list is endless. There are bands from every corner of the world, including our very own Finnish love-metal band HIM.
Despite a huge list of incredible performers, the events aren’t quite-trouble free. For example, if you enjoy looking at musicians the size of stamps looking vaguely bored, the Chili Peppers would have been your thing. If you enjoy pyrotechnics, Rammstein would be up your alley because frankly, all you could see were the occasional bursts of fire on stage and a very very very long ejaculation sequence. It really doesn’t hurt to like their music, but watching them jerk off will make anyone’s jaw drop, regardless of musical performance.
Sunshine, bouncing, and singing along to “I’m like a bird” made an entire audience fall in love with Nelly Furtado, whereas Primal Scream increased sales of earplugs and umbrellas. And the price for longest band name goes to… (drumroll) And You Will Know Me By The Trail Of Dead.
The big bands are all fine and dandy, and you can freely admit that they are the reason you are there, but before I revert into my usual quiet self (ho hum…) I will tell you which part of the Roskilde festival really knocked my socks off.
The Ballroom Tent is a unique experience, where, as a colleague of mine expressed it, you see a band and exclaim:
“Where have you been all of my life?”
An example of this newfound love was the Mexican ska/reggae/latino rhythm band, Pantheon Rococo, that had us dancing until the last drops of sweat had trickled down our foreheads.
And every band in the Ballroom tent would have a similar effect on the entire crowd. People danced until they simply couldn’t stand anymore.
This is exactly what my romantic fantasies had entailed, which is why I’m going to stop right here, and go reminisce somewhere, while I let you check out our experience in photographs.
Questions?
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