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Spain!

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Going to Spain for the last 2 months of work was a sweet way to finish off the season. Warm, cheap and awesome.

5 of us headed down to Spain, driving to Portsmouth then a painful 35 hour ferry to Bilbao and another long drive down to our first job.

We did two festivals, one in a town called Vic as hour north of Barcelona. Only a small tent but hard work in ridiculous heat. The festival itself was a city wide music thing with our tent being one of the main stages. Full of crazy world music, nothing I had heard of before but really interesting stuff. It was a cute little town with cobblestones and little cafe’s. While we were waiting to take the tent down 3 of us headed to Barcelona for a couple of days, only 5 euros on the train. I love Barcelona, its such a cool city. Wandered around the gothic areas, went to the beach and then went on this crazy pub crawl with a backpacking bar. Loads of Americans and trashy bars. A bit painful but fun.

(Our local bar across from the tent, which is in the background)

(Town square during festival)

After Vic we had a weekend free before our next job so passed through Mount Serrat, an amazing mountain of strange shaped rocks and a whole town built on top, based around this incredible monastery. We caught a train to the town and then walked 2 hours up to a view point. The whole place was incredible and we were camping in the nearby town which had a swimming pool. Perfect.

Our last job was in Zaragoza, for their huge 9 day Pilar festival. A bigger town, and bigger tents. We had another crew come an join us. After putting up the tent it was 9 intense days of music that went till 6am every day. We did have some very good nights out with some girls the guys had met before in previous years. Some great bars and clubs and all very cheap, our favourite place did beer for 80 cents!

(Lacing up the tent)

(Main cathedral in Zaragoza)

(Team Kiwi in Madrid)

(Typical Sunday afternoon)

I had my 24th birthday during the festival, another excuse for a very late night. One of the kiwi guys, Sam, I worked with was now living in Madrid with his girlfriend so me and Blair went along with him for a few days to check it out. Stayed at the awesome flat right in the middle of town with great coffee across the road. More cheap bars, which gave free food with every drink, loads of cool old buildings. Spain is pretty much amazing. Loved the food, people, culture, language. Sweet. back in Zaragoza we finally packed up, one last very last night and then with those of us who hadn’t gone off chasing girls (3 of them) or flying to London for another job, we began the long journey back to cold England. We had a night in Bilbao before the ferry and got a change to see the Guggenheim museum, possibly the coolest building ever.Full of amazing modern art and well worth the 12 euros. But the building itself is incredible. However about the only thing Bilbao has going for it. So it was back on the long painful ferry which involved a lot of movie watching.

Roskilde: Best. Festival. Ever

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Roskilde is one of Europe’s biggest festivals, a whole week of fun. We spent around 2 weeks putting up two of the main stages. it was was hot, and hard work, but got through it. After we were done we had a week to enjoy the festival, with ultimate access all areas passes, no queues for bathrooms, special parties, a lot of beer, saw loads of cool bands, lay in the sun, partied all nigh, drunk cocktails by lake, basically it was awesome. Far too much to write about.

As staff we camped behind the Arena stage, one of our tents in a nice secluded shady area, which was perfect to escape the heat dust and people. The whole stage crew were great and had loads of parties and an annual football match against the other stage teams. Really amazing festival, well organised, run by thousands of cool volunteers. Awesome

After we took the tent down we had a weekend in Copenhagen. Somehow Denmark is able to just be uber cool without trying. All Danish people are friendly, attractive, speak several languages. Copenhagen of course is super cool and very expensive, a bad time to travel on the pound as its losing value consistently, but managed to survive.We hung out a bit in Christiania, the hippy commune that has managed to survive from the 70’s. Truly amazing, as you would imagine a hippy commune to be. Managing to hold on despite influx of dodgy drug stuff and a getting a bit over commercialised, but mostly pretty cool and quirky. We were lucky enough to hang out with some cool Danish people who live in Copenhagen and showed us round. A very cool city. So a great Danish experience, the people are cool, festival was amazing and generally a good time. It was sad to leave and drive back to England to the rain and for tent washing after the tents got filthy at the festival