Roskilde Festival Day 1: Review

You know that amazing feeling you get when doing something you’ve been looking forward to for a whole year? The excitement? The unrivalled energy that is released when you’re finally there? That’s what coming back to the Roskilde Festival is for me. It doesn’t matter that it’s the 32nd time I’m at the festival. In fact, it makes me even more excited to get to the festival area to start the party.

Arriving a day ahead of the festival start and spending an afternoon downtown Roskilde and a good night’s sleep at a hotel, we left early as we had an early entrance ticket – the first group to enter the festival when it opened – and grabbed a six-pack of the beer on the way to make sure standing in line didn’t get boring. However, it was a quick process and we barely had time open our second one before it was all done and dunn, and off we went to the Settle n Share area to claim our spot on the account of Camp Vienna (the camp with Austrians, but lots of Germans, a few Swedes, two confused Americans, and stray Danes that never made it back to their own tents). Spot claimed, tents raised, the last beers poured down our throat – and then we discovered that the beer stations wouldn’t open until 4 pm. Six hours without beers, what a shame! Lucky for us, our camp manager just landed at the Roskilde Airport and got the message, ‘Buy 20 beers and hurry!’. Thirty minutes later, he sneaked into the area and saved the day. However, we were unsure if that was a wise decision when we woke up this morning – it was a beer-intensive first festival day, and it had its consequences.

The first day it usually about orientation and learn where you find the important things – food, beer, and showers. However, we’ve been for a few decades now and most things look the same. Personally, the most important place to find is the Coffee Cow, but as it’s around the corner from the camp, the orientation process was done after one hour, which made us go back to the beer and wait for people to arrive. As people dropped in, hugs were exchanged, and more beer arrived, the evening turned to night, and the ‘beer effect’ started to set in. Let’s just say that the first day ended in a blur somewhere in Dream City with some fuzzy memories about red bull vodka drinks and sleeping outdoors until early morning before returning to the tent (nothing new, just an echo of many, many first days at the Roskilde Festival – age doesn’t matter).