Hey there Charlie!
We are only a few weeks away from coming back to school, but I wanted to
share with you my best experience of the summer: The Rockmaraton 2017! As you
can guess from the title, it's a rock/metal festival. It was an amazing
experience, I'm going to tell you everything about it, but first I have to
thank one of the best (former) OIBs in the world: Judith, my gf, for organizing
everything. *A wild girlfriend appears* THANK YOU for thanking me, you have no idea how hard it was (and how much bac revision time it took me).
Thanks a lot honey ;)
It was indeed a very OIB trip,
since we were with another (former) OIB that you might know: Agathe (and her
bf)! We were later joined by Judith's friends from Paris, Italy and Hungary...
Very international indeed!
To begin this adventure, we
departed on July the 9th from Marseille in the morning, to take two planes:
Marseille - Dusseldorf (Germany), and Dusseldorf - Budapest. And as an eternal
scaredy cat, taking two planes in the same day was... well...
(It was fine to be honest).
We arrived at Budapest airport
(which the Hungarians pronounce Budapècht, and now I can't pronounce it
otherwise why would you pronounce it otherwise ??) in the evening, everyone was exhausted, but we had a good night
of sleep at Judith's cousins' house and my first try of Hungarian food (as if you had never eaten any kiflis at OIB picnics...) :
the Gyümölcsleves (don't ask me how to pronounce it) and the Kakaòs Csiga.
It's basically a cold fruit soup with milk and cinnamon but it's a blast!! (the image doesn't do it justice)
Basically a cinnamon roll with chocolate, so simple yet so delicious! (and it's also the best breakfast ever, but beware, don't you dare cut it in half if you don't want someone like me to cut you in half too!)
Fun fact I learnt that night: Attila is a legit and common name in Hungary. Though, it was pretty awesome to say "I stayed at Attila's place for the night" to my mom when I came back (I could have said that I was staying at Judith's uncle's place... but that's way more epic).
Anyway, next morning was finally the time: it was 10 or something in the morning, we had met Nadett (Judith's Hungarian friend) on the train from Budapest to Dunaùjvàros (I'll let you look at how google translate says it, it's hilarious), a taxi and finally here we are: The Rockmaraton!
From left to right: Hugo, Agathe, Nadett, Judith and I... An awesome team!
The heat was very hard to take, but
I was completely overexcited: first festival!! (It's always an important moment
for a metalhead ^^). I won't tell you about the time we spent putting the tents
in place, our first trip to the local Tesco (because they have Tesco and Auchan
there, I was very surprised OH COME ON, we're civilised people!) to get a little bit of cold air and 12 liters of
water that we finished in 1.5 days. Later this day, we met with the rest of the
group who had taken another plane. We got back to the camp at around 7 or 8, and we
were finally all here: the 8 of us, ready for the week to come!
The festival in itself was an
awesome experience. It was non-stop music from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. (that's in theory, I'd say it was more like until 4 a.m.). The
food there was cheap and of pretty good quality, the beer and the cider were
everywhere (I don't drink but the bars in the festival were always crowded; and
from what I heard, the beer was very good and the cider awesome). The merch
store had weird opening hours but they sold awesome t-shirts! And let's not
forget the beach we had right next to the camp... though it was beach of the
Danube... aaaaand you really don't want to go inside the Danube, particularly
when you are located after Budapest. But still, the place was awesome:
There was even an off-rock camp with
lots of board games and even role play games where you could come and relax...
sadly in Hungarian. (We also have a wonderful photo of bearded and muscly metalheads playing with legos... but we are not allowed to put it online, sorry).
By the way here is a warning if you
ever want to go to Hungary: take someone who knows the language with you, no
one speaks English there!! (Hey, English standards have improved!) I'm very glad we had Nadett (who is
bilingual) and Judith, else we would all have had serious problems. Plus
the fact that Hungarians don't really like French people (only the nationalist ones *prays that you don't know about the political situation in Hungary*). But it was pretty ok; the
staff of the festival spoke a little bit of English. I'd say this it was the
"worst thing", but it wasn't much honestly.
But now, let's talk about the most
important thing: MUSIC!
Oh boy, I was expecting great
stuff, and I wasn't disappointed at all!! I mean, there were a lot of small
Hungarian bands, and lots of them were pretty fine, I didn't expect that at all
(if you have time and you like folk rock, you should check out Jolly Jackers
;)). Really, there was everything from punk, Celtic or black and thrash metal
(not "trash metal" btw, that's an insult). There were three scenes,
and at least 2 very big names per days. We could go to the very front for
pretty much every concert or be in some really good spots in the pit. I
think the best experience of a Metal crowd is doing pogos and walls of death.
I know the names sound scary, but it's a lot of fun and everyone respects each
other.
Here are some pictures of the concerts I went to (didn't have picture
for all the shows, so here are some of my favorites ^^):
Agnostic Front, the punks of NYC. The music was good but the crowd... let's say "very energetic". (The guy in front is wearing a Rockmaraton t-shirt!)
Xandria... Such an awesome band, symphonic metal at its best!
Moonspell, a Portuguese band with a stunning scenography (their use of lasers was crazy).
Talco, basically Italian punks singing communist songs but with a trumpet and guitars... What else can I say? I never danced so much in my life! Their show was absolutely terrific! (though I have no idea how they ended up in Hungary...).
Katatonia, actually one of the calmest concerts (they are a doom metal band, I shouldn't have expected anything else).
Sepultura. I think this photo says it all no? If you are a musician, you can only appreciate their works with drums. They got one of the most complex rythms I ever heard.
Tyr, a band that is 1) awesome 2) the only thing I know which comes from the Faroe Islands (my favourite concert from the festival!).
Paddy and the Rats, a Hungarian band who completely rocked it! I discovered them there, and I instantly fell in love!
But honestly, the one and only show that I will remember as THE SHOW of the festival...
ARCH ENEMY!!!
Everything was so perfect: the pyro effects, the background of the scene, the sound, the musicians... but I have to admit, the one thing that completely rocked it was their singer: Alissa White-Gluz.
Aside the fact that she is one of
the most gorgeous female singers I know, she is also one of the best. And god,
what a show-woman! I've rarely seen a singer that energetic on stage while
keeping such a perfectly balanced voice... She stole the heart of many
metalheads (boys and girls).
I don't really know what to add. I
met some awesome people there, everything was cheap, the people were super
nice, the showers and the toilets were clean (actually an important point in
festivals)... Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I spoke the local
language, but I had an awesome translator with me (I don't know who you are talking about), so that's alright.
Despite the fact that there have been small arguments among the group, I
spent 7 awesome days surrounded by fantastic people and surprisingly good
music... Though I have to admit that we usually didn't sleep a lot and well,
particularly when we got woken up at 6a.m by... HUM the noise coming from the tents next to us. But I think my biggest regret would be that I didn't get to catch any pick or drumstick (unlike the others...)
Good bye Charlie, enjoy the rest of
your holidays. Here are some more pictures of the trip if you have time to
spend :)
The whole gang: Agathe, Hugo, Swen, Raphael, Judith, I, Sara and Nadett!
Looking for a bus to come back to the festival.
After some days at the festival... (liar that was the first day)
Waiting for Arch Enemy!!!
Chilling at the off-rock camp (yes, I know about my feet, thanks thank you for not showing mine...seriously feet were hard to keep clean for more than two minutes).
Having some fun at Arch Enemy's concert ^^ (I love that you chose the only pit photo where we don't look completely weird, well at least you don't *winkwink Agathe*)
Photo credits:
https://dunaujvaros.com/
http://www.metalstorm.net/home/
http://duol.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/rockmaraton/photos/?ref=page_internal
I do not own any of the professional picture presented on this article.
All the subjects of these pictures agreed to appear in this article.
