I'm a simple emigrant, and I recently attended my first music festival

Right away I’ll say it — I recommend it to everyone! Lallopalooza is a major music festival held in Chicago, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and it’s only in three cities outside the American continent: in Berlin, Paris and Stockholm. In general, it looks like this: a huge site, the Olympic Stadium, divided into different zones: stages, alternative performances, for example a big pool with an acrobatic theater, a food court (we had one separately), a wine garden, a kids’ zone, and a ton of partner venues scattered all over with activities, prize drawings, photo zones, etc. Food and drinks are sold everywhere, not only at the food court, but the drink selection is small, usually 6–10 varieties. At the festival entrance you receive a chip-enabled wristband, onto which you can top up money via your personal account. Across the entire site you can pay only with the wristband; no one accepts cash or regular cards. This is great because you don’t have to worry about losing cash or lugging around kilos of coins, but the downside for me is that you can check the balance only when you buy or in your account, and the purchase history isn’t saved, so it’s easy not to notice how the money melts away. The balance, naturally, after the festival can be requested back and within two weeks the money should be returned. A bit more about finances: the early bird ticket price (that’s when you buy far in advance, not even knowing the lineup) is 139 euros, drinks and food are inexpensive, about 5–8 euros each, but portions are small. On the other hand, merch is quite expensive, for example, a festival hoodie is 55 euros, a small plastic belt bag — 25. The tactic is also very simple: in the morning you gather photos from everywhere and various bits and bobs, you eat and drink to live music by unknown performers, but sometimes it can happen that no one knows that artist, yet you not only know him but also love him — that happened to us once. And in the second half of the day the concerts begin. Here there are two options: you stand all day in front of one stage so that when your favorite (likely super popular) artist comes out, you’re right in front of the stage, or you try to attend as many concerts as possible, then you’ll be roughly in the middle at all of them, or it’s just luck. We chose the second tactic. And finally about the emotions. Guys, it’s really cool! Two days of endless fun, tired feet, face and clothes dirty, like in childhood after a whole day outside, all joyful, an atmosphere of friendship and fun. The opportunity to discover different cool artists; for me Kraftklub was a revelation — their show was the most powerful, and I even touched the lead singer for two seconds :) In general, after moving to Europe, I decided not to go to concerts, but to spend that money on festivals and party there for the whole year. I won’t even pose a question at the end of the post, but give the answer: everyone should visit a music festival at least once! #German_trips #holidays