The festival, which takes place near the small Danish town of Roskilde, is one of the biggest festivals in Europe with at least 130,000 visitors plus 25,000 helpers. Good friends and regular visitors said it was a must-see. So after two years of hibernation, I travelled directly from the InMusic Festival in Zagreb, a good 1,400 km away, which is quite small with 20,000 visitors.
I’m really over-celebrated and really tired. I also don’t like big crowds. And the line-up of the 50th Roskilde Festival is the worst for many years. After a week of partying, three things are clear to me. Firstly, with 180 bands and eight stages, everyone will find their gold. Secondly, not all that glitters is gold. Thirdly, digging for gold is usually a very dirty business.
After travelling a good 11 hours from midnight, we arrive in Roskilde shortly after midday. Although we are among the first visitors, there is already a crowd of at least 500 people piled up between beer bongs and hectolitres of alcohol in front of the entrance. We blend in. After three beers, the entrance opens. The six of us pack up the 120 kg of equipment we need from the two cars and set off on foot in glaring sunshine to the campsite a good two kilometres away. No other car park is closer than our expensive one.
After the first few hundred metres, the first corpses adorn the path on both sides of the route through a fenced-off residential area. Some died due to technical defects such as broken wheels under sound systems weighing up to 500kg. Others simply overestimated their resistance to alcohol. I simply overloaded myself with 23kg. Stake out camp, set up and get a second load of material. Now I collapse too. Only after a few meals, a drink of water and a good ten hours’ sleep am I fit for use again.
The camp wakes up at ten o’clock sharp to the sound of hundreds of boomboxes weighing at least 20kg and at least 200W. Our campsite is actually “silent and clean” – compared to the other free campsites. On the third material march, we are already walking through a cacophony of boomboxes, beer pong, seas of cans and broken carts on day two. If you cross Oktoberfest and Ballermann, you get Roskilde. Vikings don’t drink. They drink. Even before the battle begins in three days, the field is strikingly reminiscent of scenes from “The day after”.
The next three days run smoothly. Get up. Integrate. Drinking. Sea bathing or hot showers for just under five euros. The first small concerts take place in the afternoon. The air mattress goes flat. There are several camping shops on the 1.25 km² festival site. PVC-free double mattresses could be bought for the price of a good double room. If they weren’t sold out. Off to town to buy new ones with PVC and, thanks to the 200 m road still being closed for no reason, a 10 km diversions back to the car park.
On the third day, on an excursion to Copenhagen and long after my last visit to Denmark, I have to admit that not only Roskilde, but the whole of Denmark, has become a bit more expensive. Roskilde is even more expensive. My misjudgement. Kayaks are available for hire at the new harbour. Please collect rubbish on the tours in return for a discount. Nobody comes back with rubbish. There is none. The Danish architecture plays pleasantly quiet and interesting rhythms.
At the Roskilde Festival campsite, beer is sold by the pallet almost at Danish supermarket prices. A half pint costs the equivalent of €1.80. The result is the most gigantic drunken orgy I have ever experienced. By the second day, the “normal” campsites in particular resemble a rubbish dump full of broken bottles and crushed (and therefore no longer depositable) beer cans – finely organised by mountains of bulky waste. Tuborg brews “økologisk grøn” beer especially for the Roskilde Festival. The sustainability of the festival is praised by all religious followers and bloggers with shining eyes. Pure bollocks meets pure white-washing.
The edge of each campsite is defined by highly active olfactory territory markers. This is where I am. This is where I piss. The emancipation of Danish ladies is positively striking. Why should only men – albeit without a bare arse – enjoy the privilege of relieving themselves just three metres from busy bus stations, chatting amiably with strangers? I need to work on my attitude.
A small thunderstorm on the third day garnished the scenery almost charmingly with numerous tattered pavilions. Naked Vikings dancing in the rain to “It’s raining men”. No “business as usual” for the first time. I feel at home. The bulky waste trucks that pass by several times a day reliably dispose of all the tent shreds. An armada of deposit slaves dispose of uncrushed cans free of charge, because Roskilde is “non-profit”.
On day four, after a few smaller warm-up concerts, the actual 50th Roskilde Festival begins. We walk for half an hour across the “Leave no trace” rubbish dump to the concert area. Beer prices now rise to at least €7.50 a pint. If you’re not as stupid as me.
At the first bar, a Viking with a non-paying Apple Watch chats to me: “Where you from, bro?”. Me: “Bavaria.” He: “The Russian part?”. Then he exchanges a few words in Danish with the barman and disappears. I pay a good €13 for my first 0.4 litre beer straight away. Huh? Bartender: “Deposit”. It’s not until late at night that I realise I’ve been taken in by a conman when I hand a beer to a friend.
On the first night of the festival, sleep is hard to come by. The sound system from two Ballermann campsites 500 metres away conjures up a stereo cacophony of unimaginable proportions. Completely exhausted from 12 days of partying, I completely switch off for a day, sleep a full 14 hours with several interruptions and file the losses under “Roskilde beginner”.
On the third day, full of confidence, I’m back in the permanent light rain. I’m like my friends over 40: if I don’t even know the main act of the first day, I’ll still go and see it with 60,000 others before the main stage. But as the best-paid musician in the world, Post Malone doesn’t even have enough money for musicians. Completely on his own, fidgeting across the 50 metre wide stage to the playback, he spices up every sentence with at least three “fucking”. The crowds cheer. Post Alone? Pathetic.
I get really angry late in the evening. To make up for the stolen beer/deposit, I collect three abandoned pitchers after Thom Yorke’s concert. I hand them in at the next bar for a beer. The first one is knocked out of my hand by a dancer. He’s having fun, but doesn’t want to buy me another one. The barman then forgets to deduct the deposit twice – and tries to steal the second pitcher.
The rest of the visitors were almost always friendly and considerate. The food was excellent across the board, expensive and guaranteed tobe CO2-optimised. Numerous shops invite you to spend even more money. At the end of the week, the bill for the 50th Roskilde Festival came to just under €900 thanks to favourable alcohol imports from Rostock.
Roskilde is “non-profit”. All profits are donated to charity. All 25,000 helpers work solely for free admission. In 2022, the tickets alone generated revenue of almost 40 million euros. Merch, concessions and, above all, beer sales on the festival site are likely to raise the total to at least 100 million euros. Exactly 2 million euros were donated in 2019. Bad bands and waste disposal are extremely expensive.
With 180 bands, everyone finds their gold. My gold? The Idles in an overcrowded tent that was too small. Compared to Zagreb the week before, their gig here was pure dynamite despite the much worse sound system. Numerous crowdsurfers ride the raging masses. The stewards couldn’t keep up with picking the blissful fruit.
Kelly Lee Owens at the Apollo with three synthesisers playing in parallel and really live. Grandson also rocked despite just three musicians and the rest just playback. The Apollo in general: a superbly sounded and lit 5,000-person container stage with electronic shooting stars such as Daniel Avery. Exactly my size. I can’t say the same about the big three stages.
Even bands that are too poppy for me like Haim and St Vincent can deliver an interesting show when viewed from the front row. But the majority of the 2022 line-up was simply subterranean. Wildly twerking pop dolls fidgeting “sexily” across the stage. I feel like I’m in a bad comedy. The Strokes, the headliners of the last evening, put on such an unmotivated show garnished with stupid banter that I troll back to the tent disappointed after only five songs. The next day, every newspaper complains about the unworthy ending.
50 beers at the 50th Roskilde Festvial. What remains? Two of the seven of us are now positive. I just have a bad case of flu. €900 less in my bank account and just under 3,000 kilometres more on the car. A few more kilos on the scales. The memory of some golden moments with good friends in the sunset. A much-needed period of fasting. And the firm conviction that “sustainable” and “ecological” are completely rubbish when it comes to festivals.
It’s hard to see everything differently all the time.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.