As I was showing you in the tiny live video from yesterday, I had the chance to visit the Awakenings summer festival in Hilvarenbeek, which was the first time that the festival was held here at this location. Previous editions were always in Spaarnwoude in the Amsterdam region, and ofcourse everyone knows Awakenings from their initial shows in the 'Gashouder fabriek' in Amsterdam.
And I must say, with 11 stages there is way too much to choose from. When there are 11 stages, that means there are 10 stages which you can not be visiting at the same time and that is almost a bummer. Because when the total area is so wide, and you loose your friends here and there, it means that you aren't visiting another stage as well.
But with 80.000 people visiting over 3 different days, that means almost 30K people per day, it means there has to be a great amount of areas to have a spot for everyone. And I must admit, it never felt crowded at all!
Where to go, where to go!
It almost challenging to actually see where you want to go, but we had some performances dotted out as potential visit options. But you know nothing goes to plan right?
We started the day with Deniro and that was a good starter until the end of the set kind of cooled down, which the following Francois X made up for. He had a super strong beginning of his set, and that was a nice welcome after the dying end of Deniro, but then it was time to head over to other stages.
Rebekah was the next one to walk into in a gigantic tent on the water, ut boyyyy this was a bit too much for me. Rebekah is a tiny girl who has sounds that blow everyone away, but I don't know if it was the combination of me being hungry, how packed the tent was, or that her sound was just too big for me, I wasn't feeling it, so I went for a walk.
The cool thing about Awakenings is that there is always a super good vibe, and literally no trouble at all. So walking around alone of a festival with 30K people isn't an issue at all. Ain't that something in the real world?
After a moment of walking around we decided it was time for an outside stage versus a tent, which meant we would miss Talisman (which is kind of a bummer) but on the other hand we found a couple of friends back at Chris Liebing who is always a good one to watch.
And as said, some outdoor air was really nice for a couple of hours because at that we went back into the tent for Speedy J. I had expected the tent to be more than packed again, but suprisingly there was more than enough space (or better said the tent was a bit empty) for everyone.
And wowwww, Speedy J did it again and this is exactly the techno which favours me the most. Darker than dark and so many sweet small elements in there, this was how you would hope all acts would be.
Any why it was so empty? Honestly, I think this was because the guy is so old already. Couldn't it be that the newer kids are not familiar enough with this legend maybe?
Leaving to the mainstage afterwards we kind of lost everyone in the dark which was annoying, because it really isn't easy finding everyone back when you have just moved to a new area and have no idea where everyone is.
After finding my peepz again I wasn't feeling the end of Joseph Capriati that much anymore because of this whole searching mission.
But with the strong start of Adam Beyer there was enough energy again to dance for a bit more until it was time to grab a bus and a train and go for the long ride home.
I really was kind of jealous for these guys on the camping site who just had the option to walk to their beds again, and honestly in the Sunday line up there was also enough to see. Which makes me think maybe for next year I need to kickstart some friends maybe for joining the whole weekend, because it sure was worth it.
Ofcourse, nothing beats a dark club here and there, but for the outdoor vibes Awakenings was the big winner.