- the freezing cold, which gave off a temperature wise touch diametric to Hell's as soon as the sun set,
- our feeble, dragging asses
- and the various routes and paths we took until accidentally finding the exit of the festival, a process which almost mentally defeated us (of course we could have just looked at the facilities map we had been given, but our hands were too frozen to search into pockets and bags without breaking and besides by that point we had already lost it).
Day one featured shock rocker Alice Cooper, glam bad boys Mötley Crüe and heavy metal legend Iron Maiden as well as various smaller bands like the French A rank-supporting band Gojira (they have been the supporting act of bands such as Immortal, Children of Bodom, Cannibal Corpse etc.). Mötley Crüe were by far one of my favourite bands of W.O.A. even though I would have never thought so originally. Saints of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Iron Maiden will always be THE FREAKIN' MAIDEN, but it has to be said that Eddie looked like the only band "member" who hadn't escaped from an eldercare nursing home.
Upon returning to the hostel, the trembling and shivering (cause of the fever) and the stuttering and mumbling (cause of exhaustion and retardation) created a caveman level of communication which we maintained till the following morning.
Drugs(?), Nudity and Heavy Metal
When the sun shone again revealing our animated in a very metal way cadavers, we were feeling slightly better. After having an unidentified breakfast which looked pretty much like a fatty carcass
(and will definitely cause us a heart attack in three years maximum) we decided to take a look out of the window in case something epic (or edible in a less occluding-of-a-coronary-artery way) lied right outside.
Now, I will never pretend I fully understand this, but on the far corner of the roof top accessible from our window, there was a supermarket cart overflowed with plastic, transparent bags which were filled with ~something~. Perhaps it was something magical. Perhaps it was a corpse disposal method of some super dangerous gang whose young and good looking leader would fall for me. Perhaps it was many small mountains of cocaine, in which case we would either die rich or very happy soon. At that point, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me to suggest that someone should go check that shit. Naked.
<- someone going to check that shit. Naked.
Of course, in every ambitious mission, there are collateral damages... such as the people who witnessed this from their hostel room:
However, I still believe my idea was infallible and intelligent in all profound and spiritual ways. The content of the bags will always be a secret...
Once the traumatizing of the local population no longer was of any interest to us, we decided to go to Wacken to spread our microbes and outmetal everyone.
The bands (Slayer, Kamelot, Tarja Turunen, Arch Enemy, 1349, among over 30 other bands)
were all dandy and shit, but we had started tripping because of our possibly cannibalistic breakfast or the karma striking back after the soul-handicapping of the innocents in the nudity related rooftop events that followed.
When the sun started dying on us, firstly due to meteorological reasons and pretty soon due to geographical reasons, a war conference needed to take place. Our budget wasn't enough for us to return to the hostel and actually make it back to Wacken the following day. We might have seen Slayer, and other cool dinosaur bands, but Cannibal Corpse and Immortal where playing the next day. In what can be described as a spectacular burst of moronity and bravery in equal doses, we decided we would spend the night there and either freeze to death or get the full metal experience of nearly freezing to death in order to get to watch our favourite (death) metal bands perform.
As our asses were freezing more and more with each passing hour though, we hit an all time low in terms of body functions and generally speaking life under strictly biological terms. At this ice-cube farting state, we only had each other to blame for our entire fucking lives (if you are to blame someone, blame them for everything), yet in a very extraordinary and miraculous way, we managed to not despise each other from the bottom of our souls. In fact in a state described as "the most pathetic of my life" by me and "AAAW MAWW GAWWWDD...sniff" from the other 1/2 of our bunch, we not only survived that night, but actually laughed our hearts out.
The Ice-Cube Farting Extreme Situation Plan
Originally we hovered from shop to shop in the Wacken tent market area, but when they started closing we could only go to the 100-euros-per-bite canteens. Those were exposed to the weather atrocities though and their only advantage was that we found a place to sit. When it got to the point that my tear ducts were no longer under my control due to the fatality combo of illness and cold (meh... crying for emotional reasons can be relieving to a certain degree, but crying as a body reaction is plain pathetic) we started walking towards the unknown, out of the festival grounds. The experience of being sick, cold, hungry and broke, without a place to sleep in an area that is residential (but also surrounded by woods and fields) was an incredibly Sans Famille situation. We were feet away from people and all the commodities of civilisation, but exactly because of an overly civilised upbringing we wouldn't just go knock on someone's door and die on their front door mat. So, envious of HEALTHY people who ate FOOD, slept in BEDS and were WARM, we continued walking to stay warm, saying bullshit and laughing all the time.
In the end, we were thirsty as well... x.x
I Didn't Pee Myself On A Cold Summer Night In A Photo Booth In Wacken
When it became apparent that there was no way we could find protection from the wind unless we broke into someone's garage, we got into a photo booth and kinda collapsed on each other, laughing hard about our scenarios of how to find a place to fucking crash without our colds becoming terminal. My companion was in desperate need of a place to sleep while among everything else, I..had..to...PEE!!! Laughing hard while trying not to explode in a magnificent BANG of microbes, boogers and pee was probably one of the most difficult things I have ever accomplished. However, even though at that point I didn't look much like a human -let alone a female human- I had to pull this off by all means. So, no, I didn't pee myself on a cold summer night in a photo booth in Wacken.
I didn't want to go to the chemical toilets in fear of the microbes there actually outnumbering and beating the ones I already had and running around cows with my butt exposed in some german field didn't appeal to me either. The woods looked like some medieval monster would jump out of the dark to bite my ass, not to mention I would probably break my legs in the dark and do indeed end up peeing on myself. Drowsy and Spastic needed a shelter with a decent ladies room and that had to happen soon. We must have spent at least 20 minutes of contemplating how to get in the only building which was still open to the public (AKA the Wacken office place), in that photo booth. In the end, we just got in prepared to collapse on the floor if everything else failed, only to find out there were others who had already done that. Douchebag American immediately collapsed and that was the end of it.
I did some bondage tying up of our bags on his limbs in a way that if anyone tried to steal anything that corpse would be forced to reanimate itself and in frustration sneeze German plague on the unfortunate culprit. Now, my sole lifeforce was my urge to pee.
(My God, He Actually Did Die)
Leaving behind bags, corpse and warmth I hurriedly walked back to the Walken festival grounds. On my way there, a beautiful dawn enabled me to take some amazing pictures. Once priority #1 was satisfied, I got something hot to drink and walked back all the way to the Wacken office which looked like a scene out of a b-movie with all those irrelevant travellers lying around in one big room as if it was a zombie emergency situation. The corpse had moved places and was now lying on something like a bench with all the shit I had tied on it still in place, either underneath it or hanging from its sides. At this point science failed me again as every fly which was in the nearby area was either flying over or sitting on the corpse (wtf). "My God, he actually did die". Out of a sense of respect I tried keeping the flying bugs away (there must have been some sort of food spilled near him). In the meanwhile, the sun was rising and the place started becoming crowded with Cillis and Willis.
That shit soon became annoying, so we decided to bust a move and find another place to sleep.
As everyone starting unfreezing, more and more people were walking on the streets of Wacken village. Too many people, too much noise. However, it was warmer now, so we decided to camp and fall asleep in the only outdoor place where no one would bother us.
Even though we skipped the prerequired step of death, the place was perfect for a relaxing outdoor sleep.
Last Metal Notes In Wacken
After waking up, we immediately headed back to the metal pit, to see W.A.S.P. (whose performance I enjoyed a lot since I seem to have a preference to old school metal), Cannibal Corpse, Stratovarius and Immortal perform in front of thousands of frenzied metalheads.
Corpsegrinder dared us all to do faster windmill headbanging than him...
and proceeded to beating everyone.
Unfortunately, Stratovarius were on stage the same time as Cannibal Corpse, so I had to run from one stage to the other.
The Epilogue
W.O.A. is a life experience and everything Metal in its glory has to offer. Most things that happen in Wacken stay in Wacken and as a metalhead, you haven't seen shit if you haven't been there.
We succeeded in getting the full experience of what was to be offered and got to do what we wanted, despite all difficulties of our personal situation. We never had a moment of falling out, we never disagreed, we never were disappointed by anything -we just changed the modus operandi many times to be able to achieve our goals. And our main goal was to have a hell of a summer. Success.
We passed our last night in an actual hotel and celebrated in a Hollywood-movie fashion:
The next day, we separated without any fixed plans to see each other again...
In Sickness As In Health, In Poverty As In Wealth [Wacken 2010, Part II] -DoSu10' by The Schismarch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Greece License.
In Sickness As In Health, In Poverty As In Wealth [Wacken 2010, Part II] -DoSu10' by The Schismarch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Greece License. -All photos are mine.
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