Oerol Festival

Saturday
Woke up early in the morning to get the 3 connections right at the time. Forgot my nail polish, got a promise I’d get a better one there, all were crap!, forgot my monthly public transport subscription, needed to buy bus tickets, tant pis! My fingers just felt bad! Besides that, we got the bus, we managed to catch the train and get in time to this overwhelming bus where backpacks might have at any moment landed on your head. Got down in Haarlingen all safe and had some sort of a brunch while waiting for the speed ship. Speedy there takes 1 hour, big slow mamma take 2 hours to get there. That’s TerSchelling, the 3rd Dutch Island up north. On Speedy ship I needed to read instructions more times just to figure it out that water might be cold enough to kill me, enough reading!! Upon arriving on the island, we tried to look for bikes to rent. Though a big non-welcoming sign said: NO BIKES to rent, REALLY!! We just needed to ask – that was, just as the other 6 people we saw doing the same time. Needed to take the bus again. What joy!

The camping seemed quite attractive with the big tent set up. We could only start our relaxing time. What shall we do, sailorboy?! We hit it on to the ticket camp. All people were on the bikes. The other people walking seemed idiots and doomed to their idiotness of walking for hours and hours. I was happy with walking. But soon started to sombre up at the idea of people biking around me and showing disrespect, dismay and other dis-words. It must be a 13th!!To our discontent, there were more dis-downturns of the ticketing option. All the night’s shows were sold out, so we tried to make it happen at the Shipwreck museum/bar/club next to our camping. Got tickets for other 3 shows though – Yay!

Sunday
Another day, we should be in luck! We found some bikes with the supreme promise to be able to change them when time is right and all those annoying tourists would have gone home. We got some biking done on the coast, just along the dried up water. Such a unique phenomena! The tide makes the water swollen up or the beach stay dry.. the ships on sand just look ridiculous..

So I got some other phobia and we needed to get on land again.. saw some good wind apparel though. There were all kinds of recipients or just cords lined up so they’d make magical sounds.. seemed brilliant to me!! Needed to get back to the bike shop, my ass was killing me! Fortunately, I could get a better bike, so could sailorboy! All settled! Oh, no, besides my most strange allergy!! I never get allergies!! This one was just making me sneeze and drop liquid from my eyes and nose all the time.. must have been some delayed reaction to the season.. besides that, everything was perfect. The beach and the sun and sailorboy..

We moved on to another beach, the Green beach – they call it like this cause the sand’s greenish!! Fantastic! There we saw this French band of some Balkan gipsy weirdo’s playing all including 2 saxophones at the same time!! It was insane, it was mad, it was energy jumping all around and the crowd getting high on it, the best zoo I’ve ever seen. The singer had a karaoke belt which said – lalalalalalalalalala, which he actually made us sing along. It was most entertaining. Such good karma! To end the show they got down to the public and sang and danced some more. We then had an amazing night at another huge tent with totally dementia music from the ‘60s I suppose.

Monday
Woke up feeling bliss. God bless the weather, there were such nice sunny days, with good kind wind. We did some more biking around the island. We biked till a point where we could only walk. We then did a lot of walking about to the end of the island, where due to time constraints, we couldn’t reach. Maybe some other time.. the endless beach with no one but us was amazing!! Then got to Verhaalboer, or the story peasant. A Belgian play of short stories said in your own headsets. The actors were making all the sounds, while about 8 of us were gathered around an output to which headsets were connected to. All in the middle of nowhere. And the stories were so damn funny and strange and hilarious and unexpected!! Most respectable.

Got to do some more biking, then we came to another side of the island. Checked out the War – another play with teenager actors. Their enthusiasm was such an upper. Too bad the play was not in their favour. With sailorboy dreaming away bored to hell, we decided to leave the premises.

Tuesday
We actually try to do something, it felt right not to. Did a lot of sleeping though, missed few concerts.. it just felt so right!! Got on our bikes again towards night time. We were about to see Liquid space 6.1 – some modern dance with some fantastic robot in the nearby forest. It all seemed overrated when few girls is white creepy costumes were making pregnant-women sounds, twisting and tossing on no music.. felt the immediate need to walk away. Retired to the nearby Shipwreck, our endless crush place, as the name indicates. No actually it was a real museum among others.

Wednesday
We decided to actually see that museum after brunch. We then packed our bags. Showtime. We got ourselves on the Green Beach with our huge backpacks. Well, at least sailorboy’s backpack was huge! Did some sing-along to Blof, climbed on a wall to see it all, ‘cause I couldn’t fancy us trying to get through a friendly crowd to let us in front with the mammoth backpacks. Had some last beers on the island, lounged on the grass and got ready to go. Skipped back to our lovely home. Our first holiday together, no incidents, all magical!!