Earlier this year I fell victim to the massive website, blog and magazine onslaught about “festival fashion”. I’m not really into the liberty dresses + wellies combo and actually, I don’t see the point in wearing fashionable & expensive items during 48 hours of mud, dust, beers and camping.
Anyway, all this grumpiness probably comes from the fact that over the past 3 years I have been living in the UK and yet, I haven’t been able to enjoy any of the amazing festivals this country has to offer. How silly am I!
My favourite excuse is a few horrendous situations I witnessed back in France, when frequented the French festivals. I could not understand why people got so wasted on the very first afternoon of the festival and aren’t even awake to appreciate the shows they paid for. I’m such a killjoy I know, but to me festival doesn’t rhyme with throwing up between two tents.
However, this year, I was forced (long story cut short: my friend emailed me 3 months prior to the festival that she had a spare ticket for and found a Eurostar ticket for a ridiculously small amount. My fingers typed “OK” without asking my brain) to go to a festival in Paris called Solidays – Supporting Solidarity against poverty, hunger, AIDS etc… in the world. And I must admit I had a brilliant time.
I left work last Friday, jumped on a cool & comfy Eurostar and crossed the channel back to my home country. I then met with my friend in central Paris (oh c’est beau Paris!) and took the tube to the outskirts of Paris, the Hippodrome Longchamp. Such a beautiful day was welcoming me and I almost didn’t complain about the queue to get in the festival.
Talking about queue: we had to wait in line for more than 2 hours (3 queues all together) to get into the camping section and then into the main spot. The organisation team had planned to search every bag as any alcohol, glass or cans were forbidden on the site. Nicely enough, any forbidden drinks & object (including hammers to set the tent) were safely kept in a baggage room (you could get your vodka on the way back home too…) . The second queue was to hand out recycling rubbish bags to everyone. The final queue was to double check that they were no dangerous items brought on the festival main area.
Once we had set up camp, we headed into the action and watched some pretty sweet gigs the gigs: N.E.R.D, Kasabian, Archive, Vanessa Paradis, Miss Kittin, Jamie Lindell, Oldelaf, Java, BB Brunes, and lots of other very French acts.
Before the gigs, people could participate in several alternative activities including bungee jumping, a mini-rollercoaster, a Guitar Hero contest, board games and lots of other brand sponsored stuff, on the top of Solidarity volunteering actions, promotions and animations all along the 3 days.
The thing is that, apart from the incredible heat, I really enjoyed myself.
I found people to be very nice and respectful. No loud and rude Neanderthals bothered me, unlike my past festival adventures. Obviously, everybody was having fun, partying and shouting about their drunkness at the end of the night, but the fact that alcohol didn’t run riot and the camping was secured by the organisation team made it all pretty comfortable. Every time I passed by people in the camping section, they would say hello and share a little joke, which I quite appreciated. The festival was all about Solidarity and I could feel the joie de vivre and good attitude from everybody.
The festival was very well organised, the facilities cleaned all the time and I barely saw any mess and rubbish around. The organisation team was very friendly, reactive and efficient.
All together, it was a great experience, and the truth is that today I brought my tickets for the Rock En Seine festival later this summer – got to make-up lost time now!
