Signs of Life

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7 Jul 2007

For the past two days I’ve been wearing camouflage shorts.
They’re not my shorts, even though I bought them. I can’t seem to get used to them.
They’re a distinct improvement over my previous wardrobe, which included a can of beer, mud-soaked shoes and a pair of green boxer shorts barely covering my tender assets.

Let me go back a bit.

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I arrived at the train station a bit early, which was appropriate seeing as the train was late.
I arrived at the airport a bit early, which was appropriate seeing as the plane was late.
I arrived at Zurich, still dazed by fatigue. It didn’t matter. That plane was late, too.

So was the train. And the other train. But it didn’t matter. We arrived at Röskilde.

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We eventually camped at area P. Area P is about a kilometer away from the main stages. Area P was mostly populated by drunk Danes and drunk Brits and, well, drunks. That was not the first impression we had of Röskilde.

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I have a picture on my digital camera of some mud. I took it when we first arrived at Röskilde. It seemed quite amusing. Mud. 

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On a wall near Area P, someone scrawled some graffiti. Between the standard boasts and hancocks was a yellow sentence reading “We are all living in a sea of pee”.

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We managed to make it to the Arcade Fire show on Thursday night, covered by a blue nylon bag. They weren’t bad. I’ll have to give their album another chance. It wasn’t enough, though.

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The tent wasn’t nearly as waterproof as it promised to be.

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100,000 people in Röskilde. Some of them probably stayed past the first night.

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They ran out of gumboots my size. I had to wait till the second day to find some. My shoes were dead by then. My jeans a muddy wreck, stowed away in a plastic bag. I’ll try to wash them tomorrow. It all seemed very amusing in the morning, beer in hand, walking around in my shorts to look for something halfway decent to wear.

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The tent wasn’t nearly as waterproof as it promised to be. At some point, dry clothes weren’t an option.

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When The Killers started playing, we knew we had a problem. 20,000 people standing in the mud, in the rain, with nothing to look for but 3 more days of standing in the mud, in the rain. We knew we had to get out.

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Walking around Copenhagen, you can see the bracelets on young people on the street. There’s an instant sympathy. Badge of Shame. We’re the ones that got away.

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A surprising number of booths inside the festival take credit cards. 

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Two and a half hours of standing in the rain in the middle of the night. At some point you stand there, zombified, waiting for something to come and save you. There’s no point rushing towards the bus. You know you will only get trampled on the way. Your bags are a muddy wreck. A girl almost got pushed under the wheels of the bus. It’s way past midnight. Rumor has it there’s a bus to Copenhagen on the way.

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It’s 22:00, still light outside. The damn tent won’t fold. We give our beer to the English folks in the tent next door. The whisky we keep.

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Röskilde is a river of mud. The rain won’t stop. The bands play in the open air, but we can’t see them for the rain and the cold. We are not as young as we once were. We are not as Nordic as we once were. It’s 20:30 and we decide to make a break. It’s 22:30 and we’re waiting for the bus. It’s 2:30 and we’re in Copenhagen-

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belvane

7 בJuly, 2007 בשעה 10:33

Sympthetic cringing here.

What you describe makes War For Ring sound like a sunny, pleasant walk in the park. Run while you can, say I – and hope you don’t get a fever to shame you in front or your fellow braceletiers; I suspect there will be no comforting picnic at the end of this one.

I can but, as stated, cringe in sympathy and wish you warmth and dryness, and never to endure that again. Maybe you should find less hazardous hobbies? Like, ah, lion hunting?

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