Boy, oh boy, what a bitch of a week! For more than a year I've been preparing for Wacken 2023. I got our group together, we got our tickets, I booked a camper, I started my battle vest, I started listening to bands from the 2023-line-up I wasn't familiar with yet. I had to prepare my family and my children were settled with their grandparents for a week of fun at the North Sea coast. So much money, so much time, so much anticipation - and then I didn't go.
You all know the story, no need to talk about it, the media coverage was wide and extensive. Fact is - our group was among those 20.000 people, who did not make it to the campground. Stupid? Lucky? Lazy? Just not metal enough? I don't know and to tell you the truth, I've had severe ups and downs during the last few days. This was more than just a festival for me. This was something I've been looking forward to for so long, this was my light at the horizon. Seeing it fall through took its toll on me. I guess my biggest problem is, that I am still wondering, if we should have decided otherwise. This is my therapeutic blog article, maybe it helps, I sure hope so.
So, what happened?
We got our camper on Monday and when we did so, arrival was already on hold. We had actually planned to start on Tuesday morning. When I checked my mobile in the middle of the night, I found a message from the guy who had rented us the camper and he made sure to let us know, that if we drove his camper onto the campground, knowing about the conditions, knowing we would have to be towed by a tractor, despite the official arrival stop, all damages to his vehicle would have to be paid by us. Insurance would not have covered any damages, as us driving the camper onto the campground would have been considered grossly negligent. GEFÄHRDET DEN CAMPER NICHT! For the rest of the night, I did not sleep. On Tuesday, nothing changed. The weather was still bad, the arrival officially still on hold and yet people continued to arrive. We considered all our options again and again and again and the conversation really turned in circles. In the end we decided to wait for a miracle, postponed our planned arrival to Wednesday and settled on the couch with a batch of Wacken beer for a Supernatural Season 1 rerun marathon.
Plan was to drive to Itzehoe on Wednesday morning, to find a spot for the camper and to take the damn shuttle to the festival even if this was not how we wanted to spend our Wacken days. This would have been far from how I had imagined everything, but we were prepared to go that road. When I woke up at 5 AM on Wednesday morning the arrival stop had become an official admission stop. We had missed our chance. Apparently the majority of all ticket holders ignored this and drove to Wacken anyway and many of them got onto the ground despite the admission stop. We decided not to.
Could we have made it? Maybe. Would it have been worth it? I don't know. Am I one of those poser Wacken fans who are not worth going there? Probably. We decided that going at all costs was not worth it. I had looked forward to spending 5 days with friends, to sit together, to drink beer, to laugh, to meet new people. I had been looking forward to camp on the Metality campground, to help out at the Metality booth, to experience this community everybody is so smitten by. And if I am brutally honest to myself - I don't think I would have enjoyed anything by that point. By Wednesday, my mental health was badly battered already. Driving to Wacken or Itzehoe or some other backwater to find a spot for the camper, not knowing if we would find a shuttle, not knowing if we would be let in, not knowing if we would catch a shuttle back to the camper anytime, standing kneedeep in mud on the grounds with nothing than a rain jacket and some wellies in the still downpouring rain... it would have taken at least a selfie with Ville Valo to lighten my mood.
So, we decided to stay home like we were officially asked to and we tried to make the most out of it. We brought out all our supplies, we fired up the barbecue, we plugged in that horrid Magenta TV livestream, we put our Wellies on, sat in the rain under the tarp and brought Wacken to Otter. Thanks to my wonderful Horstforce for this evening!
Next day we parted our ways and Chris and I drove to the North Sea coast to stay with our kids and my parents for two more days. Instead of mud, beer and canned ravioli I enjoyed sea lavender fields, sand banks, beautiful sunsets on the dike and a three course vegan meal with a death by chocolate dessert. On our way home we listened to Iron Maiden in the car and hit kilometre 66666.
I've been watching some concerts on the live stream, but not many. It just made me too sad to see so many people were there and I was missing out. Reading any kind of comments on social media made it worse, so I decided to give myself a social media break as far as Wacken content is concerned. Wacken 2023 is over and pre-sale for Wacken 2024 will start shortly. The wheels keep turning, the timer is reset to 360 days till W:O:A. I am not sure if I will attempt to go again. Maybe it was not meant to be for me. I'll concentrate on listening to and blogging about more music I truely enjoy and will spent my money on smaller concerts for the time being. Next in my calendar: Alcest, Solstafír, Klash of The Ruhrpott. I'd love to attend the Prophecy Fest in the near future and the Beyond The Gates festival in Bergen would be another dream of mine. Well, we'll see how things will go from here, for the moment, I am trying to pick up the pieces and get my shit together again. Stay tuned!
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