The Southside Report - Teil 1

On this last Friday, the 20th of June, I went with my friend Naime, her boyfriend Christoph and his cousin Vitor to the Southside Festival here in the south of Germany, near the Bodensee. In 2006 there were festivals like this in the summer, but my ignorance and the high price of the tickets made me not go to any of them. Filled with regret, I promised myself that I would visit at least one big festival this summer, since we never have the chance to watch so many good bands at once in Brazil. I chose the Southside because I heard good things about it, it is relatively close to where I am living and because Radiohead and the Foo Fighters were going to play.

Because of my situation regarding the job search and the hiring process, I didn't pay much attention to the planning of the festival until it was too late. We would like to rent a trailer to have some comfort there, but by the time we started looking for them, they were all already taken. This year, 50.000 people were in the Southside Festival. These festivals work like this: there is a big place where the shows happen, with stores and some infrastructure, that is open during the day and until the last show of the night ends. Afterwards, you have to leave this area and sleep somewhere around it. Most people bring tents and camp outside. Others bring trailers. There is no infrastructure there, such as sanitation or even a cell phone signal (that is permanently jammed because there are so many people there).

Given our lack of organization, we were very lucky to still find a good car to rent at a very good price. We negotiated a Ford Modeo Wagon for mere 75 Euros for the whole weekend. Therefore we had enough place to put all of our luggage and still be comfortable in the car. We met in SAP on Friday afternoon, picked up the car, went shopping for supplies and drinks and left for the festival. Thanks to the navigation system, it was fairly easy to get there. However, there was a traffic jam on the way in that held us back for almost two hours. We found a good place near the trailers to park the car and stayed fairly close to the concert area. Also, we were lucky to be close to a big company that made it easy for us to find our stuff and had some light during the night.

There were all sorts of people going there. The cars were all different and filled with students, bikers, rockers, hippies and even old people that you would never expect to see in such a place. At this point I had no idea what to expect from the event, just that it was going to be very full and messy. The idea that it was going to last for a whole weekend was quite scary at that point, especially because my new job started right on the next tuesday. But there was no more going back then.

The car: best deal ever.

Our supplies. Might look like a lot, but on the last day we already didn't have enough.

One of the camping places... a sea of tents that looked endless.

Continues...