This summer, I went to Woodstock in Poland with nine friends
from my university. I spent most of the festival feeling overheated, itchy,
dirty, and like I was breathing in STDs, and yet, when I look back on it, it
was a lovely experience. This was probably because I was traveling with a bunch
of cheerful, zen-ful people. They were the kind of people who, if you.
hypothetically, got lost between the showers and the tent, would wait for two
hours in a hot tent for your return with nary a cross word or look.
The other attendees were a unique bunch, comfortable doing
and baring all in public. The more ordinary people like me could feel very
unself-conscience, secure in the fact that there were hundreds more interesting
people then oneself to watch within a five meter circumference (it was also
very crowded). Also you end up you end up acclimating to the company quite
fast. After two days at the festival, I was able to react to a naked man bungee-jumping with some thing close to ennui.
With the abundance of dreadlocks, conspicuous tattoos and piercings,
and the lack of clothing, the attendees were the opposite of the kind of people
one is adviced to approach if one is a child and lost. But they turned out to
be great people to approach if an adult and lost. One guy spent three hours
with us finding a lost member of our group. I was completely convinced he had
ulterior motives, and repeated declined his offer to carry my backpack. Mind-bogglingly,
he actually turned out to have just been being helpful. When I was trying to
find our tent in the dark, a stranger followed me for an hour with a flashlight
so I wouldn’t trip on the tent wires. All in all, a lot of unwarranted
suspicion and unwarranted helpfulness.
(Also, Polish music is also quite fun – though I don’t know
more about music or Polish to give more detailed description. Obviously, I went
mostly for the company.)
Check out these photos from the event, made by real photographers:
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