Sunday, May 15, 2005
technoval in France
hi guys,
A couple of weeks ago me and ben went on a bit of a mission. Technival; which is the biggest techno festival in europe, was happening in france and we felt that it would be remiss of us not to go. The reason it was a bit of an adventure was that we had only the vaguest idea of where is was going to be or how to get there, or even whether it would be closed down by the french police at the last moment.
Considering all that, we got there pretty easily, though not without:
- encountering old men with excess chocolate,
- wandering around Paris with our rucksacks looking for a hostel in the middle of the night (in the nightclub district judging by everyone else we met),
- contradictary french train timetables,
- bomb scares,
- busloads of trustafarians,
- and the oldest suncream known to man.
The festival itself was amazing; an old military airbase with two runways about a mile long each. The entire lengths of both runways were lined with sound systems on both sides. I'm (not particularly reliably) informed that there were about 180,000 people there on the Saturday night; this seems believeable considering the continuous flow of cars into the site for hours.
Suffice to say that ben and myself did our duty as mentalists, and had a good time chilling out in the daytimes as well. I say chilling out - in fact we nearly roasted ourselves as there was some freakishly hot weather over the weekend.
It was very relaxing, despite the following:
- the random junkies (some of whom decided to borrow our cutlery to cook up heroin on)
- the numerous gendarmes dressed in riot gear, who seemed to enjoy playing with their new toy; a big shiny police helicopter which was usually flying at about head height over our tent
- the relentless attentions of a horde of (supposedly rare) poisonous caterpillars who apparently inhabited the site (it being a nature reserve when not hosting massive raves), but whose favoured habitat seemed to be our arms and legs
And of course, we had a good time dancing away like maniacs, often fully costumed-up (in my case with the fast-becoming-ubiquitous Lion costume). In the process we met a lot of interesting individuals, many of them french and all of them somewhat hot and sweaty like us. Here are some of them:
Shouting girl! - this girl liked to wander up next to a speaker and shout at it continuously for several minutes, before running away. Takes all sorts I suppose...
The most French-looking bloke in the World
Umm - what?
Ben's got the mother-fuckin old skool flavour. He's a raver, watch your behaviour (this quote was written by him. It's not my fault)
'I saw a Lion hugging Santa Claus...'
A Harlequin being savaged by a Lion, of course
More from the Technival trip to follow soon...
A couple of weeks ago me and ben went on a bit of a mission. Technival; which is the biggest techno festival in europe, was happening in france and we felt that it would be remiss of us not to go. The reason it was a bit of an adventure was that we had only the vaguest idea of where is was going to be or how to get there, or even whether it would be closed down by the french police at the last moment.
Considering all that, we got there pretty easily, though not without:
- encountering old men with excess chocolate,
- wandering around Paris with our rucksacks looking for a hostel in the middle of the night (in the nightclub district judging by everyone else we met),
- contradictary french train timetables,
- bomb scares,
- busloads of trustafarians,
- and the oldest suncream known to man.
The festival itself was amazing; an old military airbase with two runways about a mile long each. The entire lengths of both runways were lined with sound systems on both sides. I'm (not particularly reliably) informed that there were about 180,000 people there on the Saturday night; this seems believeable considering the continuous flow of cars into the site for hours.
Suffice to say that ben and myself did our duty as mentalists, and had a good time chilling out in the daytimes as well. I say chilling out - in fact we nearly roasted ourselves as there was some freakishly hot weather over the weekend.
It was very relaxing, despite the following:
- the random junkies (some of whom decided to borrow our cutlery to cook up heroin on)
- the numerous gendarmes dressed in riot gear, who seemed to enjoy playing with their new toy; a big shiny police helicopter which was usually flying at about head height over our tent
- the relentless attentions of a horde of (supposedly rare) poisonous caterpillars who apparently inhabited the site (it being a nature reserve when not hosting massive raves), but whose favoured habitat seemed to be our arms and legs
And of course, we had a good time dancing away like maniacs, often fully costumed-up (in my case with the fast-becoming-ubiquitous Lion costume). In the process we met a lot of interesting individuals, many of them french and all of them somewhat hot and sweaty like us. Here are some of them:
Shouting girl! - this girl liked to wander up next to a speaker and shout at it continuously for several minutes, before running away. Takes all sorts I suppose...
The most French-looking bloke in the World
Umm - what?
Ben's got the mother-fuckin old skool flavour. He's a raver, watch your behaviour (this quote was written by him. It's not my fault)
'I saw a Lion hugging Santa Claus...'
A Harlequin being savaged by a Lion, of course
More from the Technival trip to follow soon...
