How to go to a music festival
How I did it: My first festival was Download Festival '04, I went with some classmates who had organised it. I saved up for the ticket and bought it online, packed all my shit the night before and then got a lift to Donnington with my friends. It's a pretty easy thing to do. After that I started going to festivals in Europe which is slightly more difficult but if you've got experience spending a day just travelling then you've got all the experience you'll need to find your way to the festival. Most times you can just follow somebody who looks like a festival-goer. When going to Wacken, for example, once you arrive in Hamburg you can simply follow the long-haired, beer-stenched mob of metalheads until you arrive at your destination.
Lessons & tips: A few tips.
1) Find somebody to go with, the task is fucking daunting on your own. If you don't have any friends who want to go then try to befriend somebody, either when your journey begins or when you arrive at the camp site.
2) Camp. Hotels are for chicken-shits and girly-girls. The pure festival experience is tents and mud and listening to drunken revellers dancing around a camp fire into the early hours of the morning. That's worth far more than a clean bed and a hot shower.
3) Hygiene is difficult, most festivals offer showers if you don't mind queueing for hours. Men, don't worry about toilet breaks; pissing against any flat surface is perfectly acceptable behaviour at a festival. Pissing into bottles and throwing them at bad bands is also acceptable.
4) Go crazy. You're away from home, you're surrounded by drunken bastards, you've lost your phone and the heat is getting to your brain; it's time to act irresponsibly. Try some legal highs, try some illegal highs, jump into mosh-pits (circle-pitting at a festival is my #1 legal high), find somebody who looks like they know how to set a bad example and then follow it because they probably know how to have serious fun. Just... it costs so much to go to these things, so don't waste it by being boring and just watching the bands like some poof. Go crazy.
5) Stay hydrated. Contrary to what I just said, you need to be responsible, at least regarding water consumption. Before you go, find out where the taps are at the festival site. When you arrive, fill a couple of bottles with water. Stop regularly between bands to hydrate at the taps or from the bottles. You MUST stay hydrated at least until the sun goes down.
Resources: MetalTravelGuide.com is pretty useful if you're metal and like to travel.
You'll need trousers with pockets. Fill those pockets to the fucking brim. Bring wet-wipes everywhere you go.
Tents are crucial; do you buy a good one that keeps you warm but takes an hour to set up, or do you buy a crap one that exposes your arse but takes 5 minutes to set up? It's your call, personally I say if you're camping with friends then try and share a 5-person tent (designed for 5, capable of 10, best for 2-3), if you're on your own then buy a crappy £5 deal from Tescos and just leave it there when the festival is over.
If you're going to Download Festival or some other mainstream event, BRING YOUR OWN ALCOHOL. They do NOT sell real beer once you get inside, they sell Fosters and alco-pops, there is NO REAL BEER. If you're going to Wacken, don't bring anything; the villagers will sell you amazing beer for cheap, just drag it back to your tent and enjoy.
