By Marriette Rough
Festival season is upon us and Germany has some corkers. Getting involved in festivals generally takes a little co-ordination, getting travel sorted, bringing a tent etc. If you don’t feel like schlepping your tent from all corners of the earth, consider buying a cheap one whilst you are here and donating it to a charity shop on your departure. Travel to all of these festivals is incredibly easy, either by train or through festival-arranged coaches.
Nation of Gondwana
http://pyonen.de/
This is probably best described as a mestival, a mini festival. Lasting around 36 hours. It is located about an hour outside of the city. In the middle of the woods there is a clearing. And in the middle of that clearing there is a lake. And a bunch of people dancing. There are only a couple of thousand tickets available, meaning this is the most intimate of our selection.
Most of Berlin’s party scene abandon their fair city on the Saturday afternoon and return Sunday night. Most not even bothering with tents, preferring to have a doze once the sun has come up. The mossy undergrowth in the forest offers a Snow White flavoured sleeping arrangement.
The last few years the weather has been toasty to say the least. So toasty that the local fire brigade bring down their trucks and give everybody a good old cooling spray down. Quite the treat.
Fusion Festival
http://www.fusion-festival.de/en/x/home/
Fusion is an institution. Go once and you will find yourself magnetized back there every year. Set in a former military airport called Müritz Air-park in Lärz, which is northeastern Germany. By train, coach or car, the journey takes around 3 hours from Berlin.
Generally described as the European equivalent to Burning Man, it is essentially a music and arts festival with a communist feel. Good communist. The peace and love vibes attract people from all around the globe. The people that run it, own the land and spend the entire year building new stages and art. Their passion seeps through everything, from tree house to solar paneled robotic horses.
I go every year with a gaggle of Tour Guides and without fail it is the highlight of our year.
Melt Festival
http://www.meltfestival.de/en/
This is the most commercial festival we have listed with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Alt-J and Santigold in the line-up. Not to mention the cream of Germany’s electronic music scene, most notably Alle Farben.
The festival takes place in Ferropolis, meaning ‘city of iron’. It’s essentially an open museum of old huge industrial machines in Gräfenhainchen, a city near Dessau. A pretty cool location for concerts galore, albeit the furthest from Berlin. Melt tends to attract a lot more hipsters than Fusion or Nation, meaning it’s a little less about who you are and a little more about what you wear.
Why not get your festival on this summer? We will be!
