Owing to work commitments and the randomness of available seats on stand-by airline tickets (hitch hiking with aeroplanes as Anja calls it), I departed Berlin for the Boom Festival early Wednesday morning. Perhaps this was a good thing that I left at this time as I later found out that on Monday, opening day, many people spent the entire day in the blazing Portuguese sun waiting to enter the festival.
My own journey was not without hickups. Arriving in Lisbon I discovered that my baggage had not. With no other option I continued on. Transport to the Boom is not easy. I was stuck in Castelo Branco overnight. Picking up the trail again in the morning the bus took me to Idanha-a-Nova. Here the locals gave me wrong directions. I ended up walking several kilometers down the mountain into the valley, where I arrived at the Anti-Boom. After looking around at the poor sanitry and general anti-social nature of the feral punks, I realized that this was definitely not the real Boom. So with Rene and Patrice who were kind enough to pick me up, we found the entrance to the real Boom.
At the gate to the Boom Rene and Patrice discovered, to their horror and great disappointment after driving all the way from France that there were no longer any tickets for sale on the door. It seems that the Boom website led to some confusion in regards to this issue. I later heard that there were many similar sad stories. As for myself, I already had a ticket as I was a speaker on the Visionary Art Culture Creators Panel.
The entrace to the Boom is a long way from the festival site, and thankfully there are many friendly people willing to take pity on foot sore travellers and share a ride with them to main festival site. This same distance was also problematic for many people wishing to return to the village of Idanha-a-Nova for the shops or the money machines.
Standing on the hot dry and dusty festival site, I looked out across the lake and tents. Now the real adventure begins, time to find Delvin and the Liminal Village.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.