Festival feels - Dour

Time for another throwback post. In July I went to Dour festival which has become quite the tradition. I've only missed one edition in 5 years. This year we met up with friends from high school that I haven't seen in years. I've also met a lot of new people.  I've spend a lot more time socializing on the campingsite instead of going to the festivalsite so I saw a lot less bands than I planned to but the ones I saw really killed it. I especially loved The Compact Disk Dummies, Whiz Khalifa, Tiga, Boys Noise, Hayden James, Doctor P, Borgore, The Vaccines and Netsky live. Rudimental on the other hand was kind of disappointing, I'd expected a lot more from them but hey not everything can be as great as expected maybe they had a bad day, who knows? 

Specific things I'll want to remember from Dour 2016 are ;

- trying to replace a nearly full tent in the middle of the night to move near our friends

- a friend who broke his ankle after trying to wrestle with a professional rugby player

- being called the 'festivalmama' as I'm usually the only sober one

but obviously the whole festival experience is always amazing. I get nostalgic just thinking about it. Festivalsseason is just the best time of the year. 

Goodbyeeee
- Nikki

Dour 2014 - Sunday

Hi lovelies,

If you read this post you know about my Dour Experience. You know they things that happened especially Saturday night. After all of that I and Anais decided that we had enough of the festival for this year. We talked for more than an hours deliberating the pro's en con's of staying for the last day. We decided to go home even though I really wanted to see Buraka Som Systema but still it seemed and was the best idea. Until we came at the station and tried to take the train home. Taking the train on Sunday is the worst time to ever take the train. It took 4 trains with 3 stops in between to get home which took about 5 hours! We made the best of it with mini-speed-dates at each stop. A lunch at Wokaway in Brussels, a Starbucks-stop in Leuven and a quick run in Landen but we did got home in the end and I was glad that I could finally sleep in my own bed.

Goodbyeeee

- Nikki

Dour 2014 - Saturday

Hi lovelies,

Onto Day 4 at dour which was Saturday. Who did we see for as far as I remember (at this point I really regret not writing down who I saw) Levela, Madball, Sick Of It All, Doctor P, The Hives, MLCD,... I really really loved The Hives concert. I think it's by far the best performance I ever saw. I enjoyed every minute of it. Afterwards I was in complete aww. 

Concertwise I loved my experience at Dour festival. It has been my favorite festival for years but this year just wasn't the same for me. You may know this about me but I don't do drugs, never have, never will. Dour festival happens to be one of the festivals were there is the most druguse. Because I never use, I never come into contact with drugs because also nobody in my friendgroup uses drugs. When you know that I'm sure you can understand it's quite the cultureshock to go to a festival were you see soo many people use drugs. I don't mind when people do drugs, it's their own choice and as long you don't peer pressure me it's fine by me but this year felt different. From the first 3 years I was used to seeing a lot of joints around but there were still a lot of people like me who didn't use. This year you almost saw everybody use and it didn't stay with just a joint. I saw people do coke in less than half a metre away from me. I stared in full shock because it's illegal and they didn't even try to hide it. Because of all the drugs people seemed more on edge, less friendly and chill than previous years. It made me feel less safe. At night dudes fell on top of the tent I slept in, I found my tent moved for 1.5 meters when I came back to campingsite on Saturdaynight, all our shoes were laying in the pouring rain and my allstars were stolen. You can't even defend yourself against people who use drugs because when you find your tent moved you can't even say you're not amused by that, who knows how they will react? We're just 2 girls so we can't defend ourselves as well as a group can. Taking this all in consideration this was my least good experience at Dour festival and it makes me reconsider if I want to go again next year. 

It makes me a bit sad because the organisation really does try their best and the line up is always amazing. The whole festival is so versatile and I used to love it but now I have my doubts. 

Limburg represented at Dour? 

Have you done festivals this year? Did you enjoy them?

Goodbyeeee

- Nikki

Dour 2014 - Thursday and Friday

Hi lovelies,

Dour report #4, Let's talk about a bit more about day 2 and 3 which were the first 2 days of the festival. As you can see below the weather was fantastic. The sun shone all day every day (except on Saturday but shht) not only did the sun shine but it was soooo hot that most of day you couldn't do anything but search for shadow. Shadow unfortunately is not something you find much at a festival so every inch of shadow is jampacked with people. Thank God the organisation behind Dour made big waterbottles readily available without being too expensive. To deal with the heat the firedepartement also came by to function as a giant shower.

Another lovely feature at Dour, especially in the heat is the bar du petit bois, which is the cutest little bar in the woods with sand, hammocks, chairs and cuter drinkcups. They only allow a specific number of guests in the bar so it's never too crowded and you can escape from everything for awhile, whilst still hearing the music.

Now which artists did we actually see? Not too many as most time was spend chilling in the shadow but we did see bits and pieces from Intergalactic Lovers, Raving George, Klaxons, Channel Zero, Kolsch, Bakermat, Within temptation(who really wasn't as good live as I hoped and most of it wasn't even live), Klingande, Blood Red Shoes, I don't even remember who I saw on Thursday... We never made the lasts shows, those were too early in the morning. The granny I am couldn't stay awake that long. Sad, I know, because the best people often come around the hour I needs sleepies.

At the Intergalactic Lovers show

Klaxons

Bar du petit bois

Within Temptation

Goodbyeeee

- Nikki