By the time we got ready and out to the station at Nord it was already getting close to midday. We caught our train though and it was fairly clear where it was going. The platform (and then the train itself) was full of young folks, many dressed quite indie, and many sporting large amounts of camping goods.
It was a bit of a cram to get onto that train because of the many many people all trying to go up North to have an awesome music festival time. We grabbed a spot on the lower section of the carriage (it was a double-decker train) and somehow found room for our bags. There was a group of kids blasting out electro and house tunes from some ipod speakers. Luckily, they were behind a door, because I didn´t really feel like listening to that for the whole trip.
The trip itself took about two hours, much longer than we expected. We were under the impression that the ride would only take 45 minutes. I suppose they had to make extra stops or something.
We arrived at the site and got off the train. The masses leaving the station were many in number, and very very young, it seemed. We went with all our gear and waited at the huge queues for the ticket desks. Well, I call them queues but really they were just a big mash of people, in a very unorderly fashion.
When we finally reached the front the girls got their wristbands. I, on the oher hand, seemed to have a problem with my e-ticket printout; it apparently wouldn't scan properly. I suppose that´s to be expected from self-printed tickets. I was ushered to the desk of the folks that did the website and ticketing system, got my docket and then got my very own wristband. Joy. My very first festival wristband.
We then waited in line for the camp site, in separate lines for the two sexes. I got through first, after they checked through my bag for the various things they weren´t allowing in. As I got through it started to rain. Oh no!! I hastily went through my backpack and got my hoodie and rain jacket on.
Very luckily, the rain didn't last. While we were setting up our tents it was dry, and only as we were putting the finishing touches on Dani´s cow tent it started pouring down. We all jumped into the tents and out of the rain. It was actually lots of fun. The camp site was vast and filled with people of all varieties, mostly teens though.
We got ourselves sorted and went out to the town to find supplies. We walked all the way out and got two euro burgers and coffee, and then went to a store way down the road, to get red bull, a bottle of jager and some snacks. On our way back we also picked up some Flugel, a shot-worth bottle of energy drink mixed with a spirit of some sort.
When we got back to where we pitched our tents we were a bit disoriented. Didn´t we put them there, facing there, we thought. Well, turns out that someone had wanted that spot and had moved our tents around. Funny enough, they had the courtesy to properly unpeg and then re-peg the tents. The good thing about this was that it gave us a bit of room for our friend Michael to put up his tent. Michael was meeting us a bit later in the day and we had wanted to save him a spot.
A bit later we met up with some Australian guys that we met at the hostel in Brussels. We all went out and had some beers in the town, and some dinner. We were planning to go to the big opening party thing at the one stage, so we went back for some pre-drinks of jager at our tents.
The bottle was passed around and around, and somehow it made its way to being finished! Then we headed off to get into the festival site. But alas, as we got to the entrance Dani was a bit under the weather and couldn´t entirely hold herself up without a shoulder. Bah. We helped her back to the camp site, trying to get her to bed. It was a fairly interesting task trying to manoeuvre through the sea (or jungle) of tents, ropes sticking out everywhere, and eventually to the tent.
We called it a night.
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