Saturday 20 August 2011

Gotta go

Getting off the buses at Lowlands
For the past two days I've been driving festival goers from the trainstation to the Lowlands festival. And the first day especially was very bad weather wise: a lot of rain. Yesterday it cleared up considerably and even though the wind picked up, it at least remained dry. Today is a day off for me and then tomorrow we will make a start in getting the festival goers home again.

Hanzeborg, Lelystad
Yesterday also saw me running on several occasions. And before you ask: no, that is not normal. But if you have to go, you have to go. And I had to go. A lot! I was worried for a moment it might be something more sinister, but in the afternoon I was a lot better (not running anymore for a start) and could go for longer without needing another bathroom break.

You might have to embiggen to really see the amount of cars
As I did my last tour of the day, I took some photographs of the parking lot: both for cars and for bikes. Most cars would contain about 3 to 4 people and we were carrying busload after busload of people, so you can imagine how many people were going to the festival (around 25,000). I was lucky though: I didn't have any doped-up people on board that needed medical attention, nor did I have a doped-up idiot who tried to break down the bus and needed police attention! I just had the normal run of the mill ordinary people. With tents. And sleeping bags. Food and drink. And even a guitar on occasion.  

Push bikes and scooters (and an occasional motor bike)
Locals come like this and go home every night
As I said, tomorrow will be the start of the going home. And on Monday it will be the big exodus. At one moment there will be about 5,000 people waiting to get on a bus and ten minutes later the place will be empty. Because I will be doing something else then, I won't be able to partake in all that fun(!).

6 comments:

  1. Maybe the "dopes" will get onboard for the ride back. I mean, you do want some adventure in life.

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  2. Glad you got better as the day went on. That is a very big festival! Did you get to enjoy any of it or did you have to drive all day?

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  3. Is this the festival where the stadium or something collapsed? We heard about that over here. They said it was due to the bad weather.

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  4. Another festival, but you seem to have more luck than the festival here in Belgium with 6 people killed and 73 injured. It was terrible ! Just a short thunderstorm. I thought it was night but we didn't have any damages besides a lot of water in the streets and a broken down traffic !

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  5. I imagine each busload you take down the road has its own character. These festival goers should have been cheery and fun. Too bad there was rain, but this is, after all,the Netherlands. Glad all went well. I must say, I don't like being in a crowd, so I'm sure I've missed out on a lot of good fun in my life ;)

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  6. what kind of a festival was it?

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Any weighty (and not so weighty) comments are welcome!