The past weekend Bettina came to visit me in Dublin in order to celebrate my birthday. 29 years! Holy flip!
Well, we started into the weekend with some great dinner at Dublin’s Japanese Yamamori restaurant at the Quays.
The big day and my actual birthday was Saturday. We had plans (and tickets) to go down to the Oxegen Festival – Ireland’s answer to the Glastonbury Festival. It’s a three-day festival and takes place at the Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare south west of Dublin and has an average attendance of around 90,000 a day.
Since it was constantly raining on Friday and early Saturday Bettina and I were having some trouble getting in the right mood. Our bus down to the festival was about to leave some time in the early afternoon. We picked up two pairs of wellies at Dunnes and joined an excited crowd on the bus.
I cannot remember whether I’ve ever seen something like that (even Rock im Park 1999 wasn’t that bad).
Most of the crowd we encountered was covered in dirt and you clearly could see them fighting the mud. The festival area looked more like a battlefield, too (nerdy pun intended, so don’t be sad if you don’t get it)!
This was crazy. The rain did a very good job converting the place in something very abstract. We were so glad we brought the right shoes… and that we were not camping…
The Oxegen 2010 lineup was quite alright. Being there only for one day, we still got a fair numbers of excellent acts to gaze at one of the six music stages.
Additionally, we spent serious efforts to not get into the way of various very drunk festival guests that took huge pleasure in mud sliding activities.
Apart from the stages and tents the grounds offered numerous stalls selling expensive beer and wine, ridiculously high priced food, and shots of flavoured oxygen at the oxygen bar – yay, believe me…
There was even a stall that allowed people to charge their mobile phones. 2 hours for 5 EUR! Madness!
Welcome to Ireland. You rant about it, resign and buy some stuff, rant about it again, resign, buy some more stuff, rant about it, and so on…
Good for us was that every now and then Bettina happened to find nearly unrecognizable mud covered Euro bills lost by other visitors on the ground.
Totally missing out on the small finals, we concentrated on being wet, dirty and watching some great bands.
We watched the following acts in the exact order: Cathy Davey, Rise Against, Florence + the Machine, La Roux, Hot Chip, Editors, Gossip, Black Eyed Peas (only one song from far, really!), then Muse and Calvin Harris briefly at last.
My personal top 3 performances:
- 3. La Roux
- 2. Florence + the Machine
- 1. Hot Chip
So, despite the mentioned adverse circumstances – being wet and covered in mud – we had a great time.
On Sunday we were concluding the weekend with fine Italian food at Dunne & Crescenzi and subsequent world cup final…
A shiny 29th birthday at a dirty Oxegen 2010
The past weekend Bettina came to visit me in Dublin in order to celebrate my birthday. 29 years! Holy flip!
Well, we started into the weekend with some great dinner at Dublin’s Japanese Yamamori restaurant at the Quays.
The big day and my actual birthday was Saturday. We had plans (and tickets) to go down to the Oxegen Festival – Ireland’s answer to the Glastonbury Festival. It’s a three-day festival and takes place at the Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare south west of Dublin and has an average attendance of around 90,000 a day.
Since it was constantly raining on Friday and early Saturday Bettina and I were having some trouble getting in the right mood. Our bus down to the festival was about to leave some time in the early afternoon. We picked up two pairs of wellies at Dunnes and joined an excited crowd on the bus.
I cannot remember whether I’ve ever seen something like that (even Rock im Park 1999 wasn’t that bad).
Most of the crowd we encountered was covered in dirt and you clearly could see them fighting the mud. The festival area looked more like a battlefield, too (nerdy pun intended, so don’t be sad if you don’t get it)!
This was crazy. The rain did a very good job converting the place in something very abstract. We were so glad we brought the right shoes… and that we were not camping…
The Oxegen 2010 lineup was quite alright. Being there only for one day, we still got a fair numbers of excellent acts to gaze at one of the six music stages.
Additionally, we spent serious efforts to not get into the way of various very drunk festival guests that took huge pleasure in mud sliding activities.
Apart from the stages and tents the grounds offered numerous stalls selling expensive beer and wine, ridiculously high priced food, and shots of flavoured oxygen at the oxygen bar – yay, believe me…
There was even a stall that allowed people to charge their mobile phones. 2 hours for 5 EUR! Madness!
Welcome to Ireland. You rant about it, resign and buy some stuff, rant about it again, resign, buy some more stuff, rant about it, and so on…
Good for us was that every now and then Bettina happened to find nearly unrecognizable mud covered Euro bills lost by other visitors on the ground.
Totally missing out on the small finals, we concentrated on being wet, dirty and watching some great bands.
We watched the following acts in the exact order: Cathy Davey, Rise Against, Florence + the Machine, La Roux, Hot Chip, Editors, Gossip, Black Eyed Peas (only one song from far, really!), then Muse and Calvin Harris briefly at last.
My personal top 3 performances:
So, despite the mentioned adverse circumstances – being wet and covered in mud – we had a great time.
On Sunday we were concluding the weekend with fine Italian food at Dunne & Crescenzi and subsequent world cup final…