Summer Well Festival 2016 - kick off for the next journey with my favorite band

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Most of you probably know who The NBHD are by now from my posts about following them on tour in March. For everyone who doesn't know yet; The Neighbourhood (mostly rendered The NBHD) is an alternative Band from Newbury Park in California consisting of Jesse Rutherford, Zach Abels, Jeremy Freedman, Mikey Margott and Brandon Fried. They are mostly referred with the Song "Sweater Weather" from their first debut album "I love you.". They have been my favorite band for about three years now and in March I followed them on Tour and got to know their amazing Crew and Tour Manager who would put me on the guestlist so this week and next week I will get to to experience Europes biggest Festivals and follow my favorite Band on Tour again. 
It has been about five months since I last saw my favorite Band in Paris together with my friend Charlotte from Belgium and Dina and Aileen, two girls from Cologne we met at the concert in Frankfurt, about a week before Paris. Ever since that last concert the four of us became like best friends and couldn't wait to finally get on the road again. We wanted to go to as many Festivals, The NBHD would be playing at, as possible so we started planning early on and then figured out that we couldn't afford to go to all the festivals. Charlotte and I then decided to go to every festival besides Krakow Live Festival in Poland and AMA music Festival in Italy meanwhile Dina and Aileen would be joining at MS Dockville in my hometown and then do the rest of the festivals besides Poland, Switzerland and Italy. 

 Our Tour started off with Summer Well Festival in Bucharest, Romania on the 13th of August 2016. Charlotte and I had both bought an interrail ticket for the first few concerts, so we could take the trains to countries like Romania and Hungary which are on the other side of Europe. 
August 11th to 13th 2016 - the beginning of the most exhausting train ride ever

 Two days before the first Festival Charlotte and I both had to leave our countries to start a two-day train ride to Bucharest in Romania. Everything packed up and printed out I left my house around 9:30pm, when Charlotte had already been on her way for a few hours. I went to the supermarket to get some food and cheap wine and then head off to the central station where my first train left at 10:46pm to Bremen, my first stop. In Bremen I had to take the next train that took me to Hannover, where I met Charlotte in the third train to Berlin. When I met Charlotte on the train, the train was filled with people and there were barley any places left so we sat on two seats at the side of the gear until a couple left their compartent and we could get in and finally get some sleep. 

 After taking 7 hours from Hamburg to Berlin instead of the usual amount of 3 hours, I had gotten really tired and was happy when we got on the train to Prague where we were able to move the seats in our compartent and make it one huge bed. So we slept for the whole train ride and felt kinda relaxed afterwards. Our next train went to Budapest and we really became tired of sitting. It took us about 6 hours to get to Budapest and when we arrived with a huge delay, we went on to our last train to Bucharest, which took us another 15 hours. 

 We arrived in Bucharest around 12pm and I felt more than happy to finally get out of the train after several ID controls when crossing borders and sitting for 37 hours straight with barley any breaks since all our trains were late. So we went straight to the toilet to get changed, wash our faces and brush our teeth properly since we weren't able to do that for two days straight. After getting ready we went outside and almost died because of the heat in Bucharest. We weren't used to such temperatures since the summer here wasn't as hot this year, but we still were motivated to go and find the shuttle bus to the festival. I bought some water and we started walking. 

 About 15 Minutes later we had reached the point where the busses leave and found out that you had to pay for it. Both of us didn't really have a lot of money with us and I only exchanged 5€ at the train station since we only stayed for a day. So we went back to the train station to get a cab that we thought would only cost us about 10€, but the driver told us it would be about 25€ as soon as we were on the cab, so we told him to let us out because we didn't want to pay that. He drove us back to the train station and wanted us to pay for the ride we had just taken, which was only about 300 meters long. I insisted not to pay since he didn't let us out when we told him to and because he wanted 10€ from us for nothing. After having a little discussion with him about how he can't charge us for that he gave in and let us leave, so we walked back to the bus shuttles and Charlotte, who had just gotten money at the train station, paid for us. 
Summer Well Festival, August 13th 2016

 The bus dropped us off right in front of the entrance to the festival, where we went to the Guestlist container and got our wristbands, after having some trouble because they didn't find us on it so I had to tell them the name of who exactly invited us. 

 With our Summer Well wristbands around our wrists we sat down since we still had enough time to chill before The NBHD started with their set. We got out all our food, water and wine and just sat in the sun before we noticed that we probably wouldn't be able to take it all in, even though it's all we had for the first week. Not having any other choice we put the food and drinks away and went inside where I had to unpack my bags so they could look in it. When I finally put everything back in we went inside and made our way to the only stage at the festival. 



 The festival was built up like a huge holiday place. It was placed in a wood at a sea where you could sit at listening to what was going on on the mainstage. Warm lights were put up everywhere and wherever I went I found something new that had me impressed. It all made a really chilled impression. Charlotte and I went to the toilet and then walked underneath the trees and along the lights built up, passed people sitting on the grass talking and laughing and slowly reached the stage. When we arrived there weren't a lot og people yet and BØRNS was about to start. 

 The crowd slowly increased and as I was watching the stage I noticed a few crew members from The NBHD standing at the side stage and when they saw me and Charlotte they seemed really happy and waved and smiled at us, even though we weren't that close to the stage in that moment. We watched BORNS perform and the crowd go insane as the Band came up the stage and the singer greeted them. They put on a really good show and it was real fun watching them as they kept the crowd entertained during their show. I didn't really know songs of them but I still loved the show and in the future I will definitely listen to more of their music. 

The next act on the stage were the Crystal Fighters who I have been a fan of ever since I saw them at Lollapalooza last year, so I was really excited to see what they are gonna put on stage this time. Slowly the stage became filled with leaves and plants everywhere and the crew of the Crystal Fighters built up the typical nature stage of them and put more and more leaves on it. They had a huge banner in the back what made the stage look incredible. When they finally came out to perform they were all wearing a white kinda hippie look as they always do and put on an amazing show. They danced around the stage, laughed, had fun and interacted with the crowd a lot. Their songs made the crowd move and even people who didn't really like them started dancing. I was absolutely blown away by their show but perfectly ready for The NBHD after they had finished. After the set of Crystal Fighters was done the crew of The NBHD began to built up theirs and do the last soundcheck. 

When I watched the crew do their thing and slowly build up the stage I suddenly became really excited to see my favorite band again after five months of counting down the weeks and days until I would get to see them again. 

All of a sudden the lights went out and the new intro of The NBHD started playing as they were walking up the stage. Charlotte and I were so excited to see them again that we jumped up and down in the crowd and didn't sing the lyrics but screamed them during the whole show. The Band seemed to be in a really good mood and they put on one of the best shows I have ever seen of them. Not only that they were smiling all the time and really seemed to have way more fun on the stage than they did in March, they also interacted with the crowd a lot and showed reactions to posters and stuff. 

I was really impressed by seeing my favorite band like that becuase I'm more used to seeing them more distanced to their fans. It made me really happy and I felt like that show was the perfect way of starting the festival tour. I felt home seeing them again and I couldn't belive what was happening to me in that moment. 

After the set of The NBHD and finally seeing them again after waiting for 5 months, Charlotte and I left the stage and walked around the festival for a while and sat down at some spots while listening to HURTS play. 

 Around 2am we took a shuttle back to Bucharest and then walked to the train station where our train to Budapest would leave at 5:45am. We chilled for a few hours, got some food and tried to find a cheap Hostel where we could chill at the night before Sziget in Bucharest, as we had a day off in between. After looking really long I found a Hostel only for visitors of Sziget and asked for a discount as we both only had 15€ left each and a night there was 19€. 
Quelle: http://www.libertatea.ro/monden/1569266-1569266
Not knowing where we would sleep in Budapest we got on the train with our last food and last bottles of water and left to Sziget... 







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