Weekend in the rain: Part I

On Friday night, my friend Martin, another physical chemistry graduate student from my institute, invited me to a music festival in Wiesbaden.  Wiesbaden is about 30 minutes by bus, North of the Rhine (Mainz is on the South side) in the neighboring state called Hessen (Mainz is in Rheinland-Pfalz) and is somewhat of a sister city to Mainz.  The Rhine separates the two states in this region.  There is some rivalry; recently surveys gave Mainz the popular vote for better place to live, but some think the opposite side of the Rhine from Mainz is more beautiful.

Martin warned me of the impending thunder storm and I made a point to pick up my rain coat and umbrella before heading out.  We arrived at Weisbaden's Hauptbahnhof (main station for buses and trains) next to the Kulturpark and inserted ourselves into the really long queue of people mostly younger than us toward the entrance.  Most of the length of this line consisted of people emptying their BYO bottles.  We had none and skipped immediately to the most congested area near the gates as more umbrellas began to open to guide the falling rain onto shorter people and eventually gave our tickets (10 Euro per day for this festival, or 20 Euro for Fri, Sat, and Sun).  Marteria, had already begun playing.  Martin had introduced him to me earlier that day via youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv2QuxukIfM&feature=related

The rain intensified as we passed through the gates.  Dozens of youths already looking soaking gathered under awnings and tents of various food trucks and drink stands.  We made our way over to the stage where a few hundred people resolved early, that all attendees eventually did, to be soaking wet and dancing.  The rainfall ebbed and flow through Marteria and Grossstadtgeflüster ('the secret of the city').  The lead singer of Grossstadtgeflüster seems to hold disdain toward Marteria, calling him overdressed and underflipped.

We took a break from standing in the rain for some apple wine/beer, which was more like a bitter and sour beer.  We should have tasted the small portion before ordering a large glass for each of us.  By now, the temperature had dropped from close to 30 (Celsius) in the sunny afternoon down to ~12 C.  At the stage I could keep blood in my feet with the kind of dance where you bounce your knees slightly, as my feet became further suctioned into the mud.  In the this tent though, our feet became ice blocks, and we headed to the exit as the band DONOTS closed their set.

We passed a club on the site, decided to 'have a look', then danced for more than an hour until we realized we missed the last train and had better catch the bus while we still had those options.  My shoes took three days to dry.

RAIN!!

A cool blue tunnel under the main road from the bus stop to the  Kulturpark