Rock am Ring 2016 - when you see more thunderstorms than bands (part 1)

Rock am Ring is a German rock festival which used to take place at the Nürburgring near Adenau, but since 2015 takes place in Mendig. The festival first took place in 1985 and is the biggest festival there is in Germany. There is also another festival called Rock im Park which takes place more southways with the exact same lineup. This year I finally got the chance to visit the festival from the 3rd - 5th of June, with my friends Toni and Carly, but it ended different than we expected it to, so we saw more thunderstorms than bands. 

A few weeks ago I found out you were able to work at the Rock am Ring festival and get the whole festival for free. It was a volunteer program which was new at the festival. You had to work 16 hours at the festival and got the festival for free, an official volunteer T-Shirt, free food on the days you worked, free water and a camp right next to the festival and the stages. I applied and got accepted just a few hours later so two of my best friends (Toni and Carly) also apllied and got accepted. We were more than excited to go to the festival and slowly started to organize everything. 


Thursday 2nd of June - one days before the festival 

After having spontaneous trouble with how to get to the festival we decided to leave with the train instead by car, like it was planned, so we left a day earlier. Our train left at 12:49am (thursday) so we left at 11:50pm from my house to get to central station with all our luggage. Nothing was able to ruin our mood, not even all the bags we had to carry around and the fact that we wouldn't reach the festival before 12pm and that Carly and I had to work at 2pm already. 

We got onto the train and left. We had to switch the train really often and mostly after an hour of driving, so we didn't really have time to sleep, but to get even more hyped! After the first hour we had a stop of 2 hours and 38 minutes in the middle of nowhere sometime during the night, so we turned up the speakers, listened to my Rock am Ring playlist and drank beer. By then we were already kinda dipsy. 

After the almost 3 hours had passed we got onto the next train and realized our ticket wasn't valid anymore, gladly the guy controlling us was nice so we only had to pay 4,50€ because he sold us a ticket to where we wanted to get instead of letting us pay 60€ for driving without a ticket. We got off the train and in the next few trains all the people controlling us were really nice and let us drive for free, since we also had to mostly only drive for 30 - 60 minutes. 

When we finally arrived Andernach at around 12pm we were really tired but still had to catch the shuttle bus to get to the festival in Mendig. There were a lot of people already and we still had to buy our shuttle tickets for 6€. We got our tickets and bought some more beer and then sat down until the first bus came. We didn't get on it so we waited for the next where Toni got on but Carly and I didnt. It was 12:15 by then and it took the bus 30 minutes to get to the festival, so Carly and I really had to hurry since we had to be in the office by 1:30pm. The next bus came at 12:45pm. Gladly the shuttle workers had already noticed our problem so we were the first ones to get on the bus. Finally. 

We arrived around 40 minutes later and by then had already called the company we were working for, telling them we wouldn't make it on time. 

The sun was burning and with all the luggage we had to carry it felt like walking through a way of fire, carrying a piano around, but we were motivated to finally get to the festival. We went into the first entrance we saw and asked how we'd get to the main entrance as the volunteers had to check in there. The guide told us that the main entrance was on the other side of the grounds, so we started walking, not knowing how far away it really was. 

Half an hour later we came to a big main street with a lot of guards and workers we asked how to get to the main entrance and how much time it would take to get there. They told us it would take us half an hour without luggage and around an hour with all the luggage we had. Suddenly our mood dropped and we were pissed that the bus didn't leave us at the main entrance. We continued walking and a lady came up to us and told us that there was another shuttle bus that would bring us to the main entrance. She gave us a free ticket and told us where it would leave, so we went there. 

When we arrived people told us they had already been waiting for more than an hour even though the bus was supposed to leave every 15 minutes, but we didn't bother waiting, because everything occured to be better than carrying around 30kg of luggage in the burning sun. We waited and about 20 minutes later the bus arrived. We got into the bus and were happy that we didn't have to walk that much anymore. 

About 15 minutes later the bus dropped us off at the Caravan Camp which was supposed to be 800m from the main entrance. So we got off and walked those 800m until we arrived the main entrance and a little information stand saying "volunteer check-in". We checked in and they told us where to go. It wasn't that far anymore so after 10 more minutes we finally arrived the camp and our office. It was 3:27pm when I checked in, so I checked in 2 hours late, but as soon as I told the company why I was late, it was okay. They gave me my vest and told me to wait until someone would call me out. Carly immediately got a new place to work at so Toni looked for a camp for us, we brought out things there and I waited for my new shift while Toni went to the supermarket and Carly worked. 

I waited for a little longer and in the meantime Aileen, one of the girls I met at The NBHD in Frankfurt and who went to Paris with me, came up to me and said hi, as she was also working there togehter with a friend and Dina, who I also met in March at The NBHD. We talked for a while and then she also went to the supermarket to get some stuff. 

Around 5pm a woman came up to me and gave me my new shift, with another volunteer who also didn't get his actual shift. We were supposed to work at the Rock 'n Roll camping and watch the toilets. The guy I worked with told me he was camping there so we were able to in between go to his camp and drink a beer (even though we weren't allowed to but we didn't get controlled anyways). When we got there we didn't really have anything to do as there were two women who we working at the toilets, doing everything. So we just stood in the rain and talked to drunk people until 10pm, when our shift ended. 

At 10pm I went back to the office, checked out and then went back into my Camp where I met the people who were camping next to us. We went out of our camp and looked at the festival grounds and how everything looked. I also got something to eat as I didn't get anything to eat while I was working. 

After a short time we reached the Rock 'n Roll camp and entered, as we were able to enter every part of the festival with our volunteer wristband. We visited a few of the people I had met while I was working and drank something with them. Eventually we got tired and went back to the camp where we would listen to some music with our neighbours before we went into our tent to sleep. 

I woke up at 8:34am the next day, after abour 5 hours of sleep.


Friday, 1st of June - first day of the festival 

When I woke up and crawled out of the tent I met two of our neighbours who were already sitting outside talking and drinking beer. I went out of the tent and sat down on the ground and talked to them. After a few minutes they offered me a beer with which I also brushed my teeth because we didn't have any water left anymore and I was simply too hungover to go to the bathroom. Toni hadn't slept in our tent and Carly already had to work so I just sat with the two women until they went on a walk through the General Camp. Shortly afterwards Toni arrived with whom I then sat down in the sun and chilled, while drinking some beer. 

After a few hours people invited us to play Flunky Ball with them. It was 1:15pm by then and I had to work at 2pm. I was kinda dipsy after my team had won, so I changed my clothes, put on my worker ID and went into the workers office to check in. I checked in and they told us it would take about 30 minutes until they would pick us up and drive us to where we had to work, so the people I had to work with and I went back into the camp, put 7 beers into my bag and chilled a little with my friends until we left. 

We were 13 people in the car that drove us to where we had to work. 4 of us had to work together. It had been raining really hard the days before so all the parking spaces where full of mug and people were unable to get on it what caused a long queue we had to watch as a team and answer people's questions about what was going to happen. After a few hours the parking spaces were renewed and the people were able to leave, so we didn't have anything to do anymore but still 4 hours to work. We went and asked what to do so we got a job at the Caravan Capm, close to where we had been working anyways. The job took us about an hour and then we went back, shortly before another thunderstorm started and we had to get ourselves into a safe place. We went into a snackbar and each of us ordered a round of beer for the 4 of us, to get time pass by faster. 

A little into the thunderstorm we got the information that all the bands would play an hour later what was good for me as I really wanted to see Panic! and The 1975 that day but they played during my shift. 

The thunderstorm ended and we only had about 1 hour left to work. After our shift was over we were told we had to walk back to the camp and that no one would pick us up. We walked through the mug and puddles and when our shoes were already full of water we came across a car of a driver of the company. We asked him to drive us to the office, because we didn't know how to get there and he drove us there. 

We checked out and I went back to the camp with my co-workers before we went to the festival grounds to watch the concerts. it was around 11pm by then and I had missed Panic! At The Disco already and The 1975 had already started, but since I had already seen them 2 times this year I didn't mind only seeing half of their set so I left my co-workers and ran across the festival to the stage whereThe 1975 played. After they were done Major Lazor came on stage and I spent the concert with a girl I had met during The 1975. After Major Lazor was done performing I met with Toni next to the stage and we went back to the camp and skipped the concert of Rudimental, as we were already more than tired.  

We reached the camp around 3am and Toni went straight to bed because she had to work at 6am. I spent the rest of the night with Carly meeting new people and getting even more drunk, because we had decided to let Toni sleep calmly since she had to work and we were already done with both our shifts and didn't have to work anymore. At 5:30am Toni got up and went to work and Carly and I went straight into the tent to sleep, after finishig our last beer. 

I woke up at 11am the next day and woke up Carly...