First Time at Fusion
I started to write this blogpost while riding home from those amazing four days of total departure from everyday hustle. It’s not easy to…
I started to write this blogpost while riding home from those amazing four days of total departure from everyday hustle. It’s not easy to describe what happened during that time in all its amazing facets but I wanted to write it down as fast as possible to avoid leaving out some key aspects. Now it turned out I couldn’t manage to meet my own goals…
At the end of June/the beginning of July my mate Nikolai, his girlfriend and me left Stuttgart for a journey that foremost took us to Hamburg to pick up a good friend of him who turns out to be a good friend to me the more time we spend together as I met him while I’ve been in Hamburg before. Hello, Lennart (guy on the picture below).
As soon as we picked him up — he spent the past night partying and you could tell — we headed for our goal: that grand festival/party of all cultures and musical genres called near the Mecklenburg Lakeland. It was my first time there and two years passed since I visited any festival.
There’s one important detail you should know: to get a ticket for this festival you have to apply at the end of the past year with a bunch of people in some kind of lottery and trust your luck to be selected as one of the groups that gets them. We were lucky but chaotic as I am, I let my chance to accompany the group slip by not paying the ticket right in time. Fortunately some weeks before our departure I could get a ticket from a member of the group who couldn’t take part in the end because he started working for Google in San Francisco. Lucky him, lucky me.
Happy to suddenly be able to join the others again I didn’t have any expectations at all. My memories of past festivals of different sizes were all pretty great besides the weather conditions but bad weather usually is part of the deal. FUSION was my first (mostly) electronic festival though.
Soon after we arrived and build up our tents I already realized that to take part with all those great guys was the right choice. I knew half of the bunch before and as I got along with them already the other half of similar attitude turned out to be an equally great company as well. Perfect preconditions so to speak.
Sure, when I go to festivals I want to see as much artists who I admire and enjoy as I can but not at all costs so the worst kind of people you could go with are those that prepare some kind of checklist for every day of the event, a schedule for when to be at what stage and for how long — gladly not a single one like that on this trip.
The days started slowly, waking up at some random time, organizing your thoughts and getting your shit together as the former day mostly ended early in the morning after some serious dancing, swaying in the overall happy mood of the whole crowd — I hardly experienced so many people at one place with no tension/aggression noticeable — drinking one or to drinks too much (probably exactly the right amount of Wodka-Mate to keep you going) and returning to the camp with a big grin on your face in the dawn.
But there wasn’t only fun to be had during night time: We spend the days either just talking, listening to the music and BBQ-ing in the sun while getting to know your direct neighbours or as we were so lucky with the weather the entire days (besides one massive stormy night which caused a temporary stop of the whole festival schedule and forced us to return to the tents earlier which impressively withstood the whole rain and thunder) chilling and refreshing ourselves at one of those numerous lakes only some steps away from the festival area. Another advantage of spending some hours near the lake were the not so crowded/dirty bathrooms there which are compulsory for a festival this size.
One of the best daytime moments though was when one of my camp buddies and me skipped joining the others for a day at the lake because free space in the car was sparse and instead decided to enter the festival area to see Monkey Safari in one of the hottest days of the trip. I remember this time vividly with all the beautiful people cooling down with water bottles, pouring it over their heads, sharing it with others and dancing under hot hot heat to wonderful music barely clothed.
Some other exceptional moments of this little time-out were batteries of shitty quality which turned our camp’s boombox into something akin to speakers from your mobile in a tin can until we figured it’s not because the batteries are empty but only too bad and low in quality. We swapped them for good ones which our neighbours enjoyed as much as we did, of course. I also planned to meet so many people there beforehand but turns out a one-day-load on your mobile’s battery is blessing & curse at the same time. Curse because I didn’t even meet a single one I wanted to outside of our camp, blessing because I could enjoy the festival as a whole without any distraction or worse: taking photos while you should immerse entirely while your favorite dj plays a set you love.
I definitely want to take part in such a experience next year again if only for all the wonderful und peaceful people on the festival ground that stroll around, sell you excellent vegetarian food in their stands for a small change or mesmerize you with their handmade sculptures and strange fire-spitting vehicles, part horse — part motorcycle. And shamefully I didn’t mention them before but the make one of the biggest parts of the whole experience. Thank you all for that.
Hopefully I could express even only the smallest glimpse of fun I had during those four days with my own words because I didn’t take many pictures (fortunately). But for all the people that have been there and want to remember that time as long as they can and to thank all the people that enabled me having so much fun I created this packed set by now of all the Fusion Sets I could find, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do:
Originally published at werkshow.squarespace.com on July 29, 2012.