Rock Werchter 2008… Belgium and The Netherlands. part 2

First post

As mentioned in this previous post about Incubus, going to concerts, festivals and listening to my favourite musicians playing live was a dream for me… that came true :)

At the beginning of 2008, being in Italy (where I was studying at that moment), I started looking for a summer music festival that would have lots of good music, of course :) Rock Werchter was mentioned on a forum… I checked it and then shortly I bought a ticket. It had Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Mody etc. on the agenda…

Below is the original timetable that I kept as a memory (i just took this picture) :)

That time I really did my homework… namely listening on Youtube to 1-2-3 songs of the bands that I didn’t already know, such that I could decide whom to see and whom to skip, because there were 2 stages and some performances were overlapping. Anyway, the decision about seeing/skipping had to be also made concerning the bands that I knew (and maybe liked).

And since I was travelling to Belgium (where Rock Werchter is held), I thought to plan an entire trip… of 20-21 days :)

I think I will end up telling about the whole trip, not only about the festival…

I already knew several people (from Moldova and Romania) that live in Belgium and The Netherlands…  I discussed with them whether I could stay at their place… They were very kind to accept me as a guest :)

Then of course the plane tickets… buying all the necessary festival „gear” like tent, sleeping bag, shoes… yes, I was going alone to the festival, ready to sleep 4 nights in a tent on my own :) but, common, what should I do if my friends are not interested in these kind of entertainment or the ones that are interested do not have the possibility to join? Stay at home and wait for…what? :) no, I go out there and do my thing and meet people on the way :) (but I think I already mentioned this in the Copenhagen posts). I was also considering joining a group of people from the festival’s discussion board… but somehow at some point it seemed to me that they are going to the festival more for the fun-drinking-getting crazy reasons, but I was going for the music reasons…and for observing the whole thing :)) so, staying alone, in general terms, was a better strategy :) 

Several days before the trip, I had everything prepared… except the travelling documents :)) we, people of Moldova, need visa for pretty much all the countries. I was in Italy with a visa, but then applied for a permit of stay… and legally I was not allowed to leave the country (with the exception of flying directly to Moldova) until I get the permit of stay. It was taking more than 9 months for the Italian authorities to issue the damn permit :) Well, in the end I hoped for the fact that there are no customs for flights within European Union…and I risked, since everything was already paid and arranged. I was lucky, on the way to Belgium…and on the way back to Italy, and on the trains between Belgium and The Netherlands…no one checked :) although other times, other flights and boarders I was checked :)

Get back to this later…