Hanging out at Blues Peer

 

It was perfect festival weather at the long Pentacost weekend and we headed to the Blues festival in Peer again. It's the second year they made a restart and changed the date to early June when there's less competition with all the other festivals.   

We arrived on Friday evening but I stayed at Center Parcs with the children while Jan already hang out with his friends at the festival. 
The next day not everybody could join us as freshly & energetic, but we were ready and eager together with the boys.  We love the chill atmosphere at blues where everyone sits and hangs around and - I quote Jan - we can still visit for a decade and still feel young there :D.  

The boys missed last year's bouncing castle but Beertje and a friend had loads of fun to in the straw corner for them. All day I saw those 2 racing around with heaps of straw, while Kabouter was a little lost at first and started filling in crossworks. 

On Saturday Jan took the boys back to our rooms at Center Parcs and I could stay behind for the night shift this time.  With those left behind we paid a bit more attention to the concerts and moved into the tents. First some more excellent blues with passionate solo musicians but the evening got closed by a Belgium's loudest band , Triggerfinger.  A good portion of rock in a tight set...nice.    And it's good to see the old traditions continue (half of this post could be copy pasted from 2011, even the Triggerfinger concert). 

Sunday rise and shine...I guess it was my first time to join multiple days at the festival but I was looking forward to a second day.  It's more fun than hanging out at Center Parcs to be honest.  As a blues ignorant, I can really appreciate the clear genius of the musicians playing with so much passion.  It's pure about the music here, not about the show and that's so cool. 

At one point Kabouter spots a man crossing the field and people stop him for a selfie or an autograph. Kabouter asked me who he was and I answered that clearly he was an artist but I had to look it up, but Kabouter was already gone to say hi and ask who he was...
But the puzzled face of the man says it all: he had no clue what Kabouter was trying to ask him. Before we knew it, Kabouter raced back to us, followed by the man who came to apologize that he had not understood. 
"euh he wants to know who you are". (damn akward, clearly he's just been on stage)
"Can we take a picture too, please??"

And so here he is with Brian Templeton, one of the headliners of Blues Peer.  What a sweet gentle man!  It was cool to meet him. And he had a cool effect on Kabouter who from then on checked out each concert in the tent and then wanted to have pictures of the artists and learn more about the instruments on stage etc. 

We really enjoyed the easy going concert by Luka Bloom.  After the concert, the boys stalked the stage manager in the merchandising stand to ask if he'd not come for a selfie. He didn't come but they received an autographed picture which they treated as a big treasure. So cute.  

Later in the afternoon, some friends left home but others arrived. It was so chill to just hang around together. 

And then it was bedtime for us all...time to walk back, through our supershortcut trail leading us back to our cottage in Center Parcs. It had been good.