Music festivals: a hippie camping or a comfy hotel, you decide

This Summer 2014, your beloved Trip and Travel team went on a very special mission: get infiltrated into a music festival to tell our even more beloved readers how to enjoy it more: camping or hostel! Festival chosen: BBK Live in Spain! Date: always Summer!

Awolnation in BBK!
Awolnation in BBK!

First, we tried to sleep in a hostel. We’re young, of course, but also worthy! We wanted a bed with legs and a breakfast in a plate, and since the first concerts started at 5PM, to take a walk in Bilbao, the host city, and then a hot water shower. That was life, what else could we have asked for? Oh, yeah… to have half the queue we had! You can’t imagine how wrong we were when the first day we wanted to go to the concert at 6PM so we decided that leaving at 5 would be okay… Well, first of all let us put you into situation: the hostel is down in the city, and the concerts are up in a hill, so a bus was necessary. The BBK crew had set a huge fleet of buses to control the situation, to take people up and down the hill for free, but… how do you control a raging horde of hipster fans who are missing the concert of their favourite indie artist for being stuck in the line? Exactly.

Rise Against came to Bilbao too!
Rise Against came to Bilbao too!

The thing is that we arrived to the football stadium, the meeting point to take the buses. It was easily recognizable not for the height of the stadium itself, but for a crowded line that was turning around the stadium twice or more! Of course, even thought the buses were taking people every 5 minutes, we missed the concert we wanted to see, and still had to wait! Another band we liked was playing while we were in the bus, so we had to get conformed by singing their songs in the bus.

Bilbao seen from the concerts hill
Bilbao seen from the concerts hill

Second chance, next BBK edition. This time nothing could fail, we had learned our lesson so we came prepared to the camping. Or again that’s what we thought. What member of our Trip and Travel team knows how to build a tent up under the rain and the pressure of finding a good spot before others do? Panic! After some embarrassing attempts, we did it, so we went inside as fast as our legs allowed us… and our luggage? Was it waterproof? It didn’t seem like it, so we put our bags inside with us… what left not much room left, we’d have to sleep in a Tetris mode. This time we didn’t have the Bilbao restaurants to have lunch, so we prepared our sandwiches innocently to go and eat in the hill… until we met the security guy. He inspected our bags and found our precious sandwiches and kindly gave us two options: you enter without your bread friends, or you stay here outside and eat them.

See the clouds? If you know what I mean
See the clouds? If you know what I mean

Hungry and tired after the concerts day, we just wanted a shower. There was many showers in the camping area, all of them followed by a small queue. We chose one and waited there, until the rain came to join us too. When we finally got inside, the water was polar freezing cold! And our towels wet from the rain! Horreur!

And that, our friends, are some of our experiences in the school of life. If we had to choose again… we’ll tell you in the next post!

Photos: Paul Patras, Musifota, Alberto Cabello and Dena Flows

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