Catching up (Pt. 1): Lowlands 2007

To follow up on my previous post, it's time to catch up with some of the things I did in the past few weeks, before I have to head off again for a week (four days of working in Potsdam, and one day of fun in Berlin).

A few weeks ago, I was very happy to go to my favourite festival in the Netherlands again - A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise (or, for us Dutchies, simply "Lowlands"). It's been 7 years since I last visited the festival, and although I visited some other festivals in the meantime, I knew that I quite missed this. Although Lowlands may not have the "big names" that other festivals are so proud of, it makes up with looooots of things to do, great facilities, and a fantastic atmosphere. This was already the case back when I last visited, but now it even felt more like a theme park for adults. With movies, stand-up comedy, (street) theatre, political debates, a whole range of nice restaurants, and many other things, there's almost too much to keep one busy. And then there is still, of course, the music.We arrived on Thursday afternoon (after I first enjoyed an amazing lunch at my sister's restaurant). The weather looked threatening, but turned out to be fine for almost the whole weekend. Thanks to some friends, we got in a bit earlier than the big masses, so we were able to secure a good camping spot underneath the trees, and close to the festival grounds. The rest of the day consisted of drinking, good talks, and safeguarding our spot (as we had some 10 tents still to come...). We pulled it off.
On to the music. Friday started off really good, with watching Editors, Kasabian and Damien Rice in a row. I actually managed to go to bed early that night, which turned out to be good - I was quite energetic on Saturday. Saturday was a bit of a slow day, but there were still some great shows - Jimmy eat world, Brand new and Saybia (see post below) being the highlights. After a full day of watching concerts, we had a great night dancing to horribly cheesy music (I guess copious amounts of alcohol helped quite a bit) :) I had high expectations for Sunday, with the Shins, Arcade fire and Tool playing, but except for Arcade fire, my expectations were not completely fulfilled (but they were too high in the first place).

Monday was - as usual after a festival - spent in a state of haziness and sleepiness. It took me till Tuesday to recover somewhat, which I had to, as that day I started cleaning my apartment. But more on that in a later post.