Exit Festival!

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On my bus ride to Novi Sad I met a lovely girl Jelana who told me all about living in Serbia, they dont make much money there, but the cost of living is low so actually they are generally quite well off. We met up with her boyfriend Nemanja for a beer and a chat, they really are a friendly people and very hospitible and enjoy having guests. We ended up going out for dinner then having more beers with two of his friends Deva and "Coma" before hitting up the Rakia shots (plum brandy - deadly!) Thanks guys!

By this stage I was only 4 hours late to meet Heloise at the campsite but they took me in a taxi to the camp ground where somehow I was able to pitch the tent in the dark and head to the bar for a night cap. The camp ground was pumping, and when we woke up our tent had been surrounded by other late night arrivals.

We went for an early morning wander through the town and Novi Sad itself is quite beautiful and would be very cheap if it wasnt for everyone trying to make a buck off the rich tourists. We headed up to the Fortress where the festival was being held early to get our tickets etc and got to watch the sunset over the city.

The Fortress in an *incredible* venue with stages nestled in amongst the ramparts all with awesome sound systems.
That night was scoping out all the stages, the Turbo-folk music being a definite highlight, then seeing Robert Plant (ex Led Zep), The Prodigy (which was mosh craziness when i got to front and centre) and Groove Armada who were excellent.

We started the next day like every other with an early morning 8am bake and wake in the tent from the sun. There is nothing worse than being dragged from deep sleep by the sweltering heat when all you want to do is roll over and go back to sleep. It takes a lot of effort just to drag yourself out to some shade where all you can really do is doze on the ground until its time to get some food and go for a swim in the not so clean Danube before reading your book and having another nap.

This afternoon and every afternoon henceforth we met up with Becs, Darren, Mark, John, Paul, Anna, Annie, Ben, Jazz and co to start the evening with a friendly game of Circle of Death. I think I did really well on the Friday night because Beastie Boys is all a bit of a blur and I'm not sure who else I saw 😊

Saturday had Basement Jaxx, surpise festival highlight Snoop Dogg and the amazing dawn drum and bass sounds of LTJ Bukem who was why I went to the festival in the first place! Snoop was a real showman and the whole crowd were really going off and Bukem dropped some excellent beats to keep me dancing right to the end of his set!

Sunday night we just missed Audio Bullys but saw Wu-Tang Clan, John Digweed and Pendulum also all good. By this point I was pretty shattered from the minimal sleep and I swear if there had been another night it wouldnt have mattered who was playing I'm not sure I could have survived. As it was I still missed a lot of the dance acts I wanted to see.

The non-stop partying had certainly caught up with quite a few people on Monday and the camping ground was a bombsite as people filtered out. Everyone at our hostel had basically just arrived from hostel and gone straight to bed regardless of the time. After a week sleeping on a bed roll and eating overpriced-junk there's nothing like a good meal and real bed!

I had my flight back on Tuesday morning ready to chill out for the afternoon and have an early night in preparation for work the next day 😊 Definitely a highly recommended event if you've got festival fever and stamina.

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