More festivals

What can I say... it's summer in Belgium so there are festivals all over. So we can't help it but having fun. It had been 2 weeks that we saw some concerts already and it had been 2 years that we had been to the folkfestival in Dranouter.

Thanx to a colleague we had free tickets and so did another friend Katrien for Saturday, so we could start to plan. Unfortunately another friend had already bought tickets for Pole Pole ( a tropical festival at the coast ) on the same day.

On Friday I was seriously getting a big cold with a running nose, tearing eyes, waves of sneezing and aching eyes that made me lose all concentration all day. I really feared that our little folk excursion would be no fun for me at all. But a long night of sleep had worked its wonders and I felt great. Pheww...

Going to the folkfestival in Dranouters always feels a bit like homecoming. I'm not sure anymore how often I've been there... 4 or 5 times?? So it felt very nice to drive through the village again, see the terrasses that were already filled, drive and line up on the grassland and start walking downtown between the farmer's fields temporarily transformed into campgrounds, passed the farm with the police horses, ... although it was not all familiar... the festival terrain had moved to the other side of the road (so I suppose it is not litteraly on the French border anymore) and all the tents were arranged differently. I don't think it's much of an improvement. In order to walk from one tent to the other, you have to pass 2 narrow areas where it gets hard to cross due to all the people. and the main tent is very centrally placed ...but very much in the way if you don't wanna go there. I makes that you have to walk around it all the time in a giant U direction.

The fun thing about Dranouter is also the familyfriendliness and all the side animation.

My musical discovery of the day was "la Follia", that I can add to my list of excellent Belgian folk groups. Very dansable folk music with modern touches and good musicians. They would be very good to lead a boomball.
I was also glad to see Gabriel Rios for the first time. Fun Puerto Rican music from Ghent, no folk at all. But very nice to watch as well. John Cale afterwards didn't inspire us much at all, so we called it a day.

On our walk back to the parkinglot I got a big chunch of mud in my eye all of a sudden. I didn't see in the dark whether someone threw some or wheter they just walked or jumped to hard in the side of the road. So the ended with a aching eye (the chunch was hard!) and me washing my eye out with a bottle of water next to our car.