A First German Music Experience

It was time to sample music in our new old country.

The people that brought you Beethoven and Kraftwerk, Wagner and the Scorpions, Lederhosen-clad Ooompa and 99 Red Ballons, would have something for our taste.

We started looking for an event small enough to be savored in depth, but also large enough to provide variety and keep these ADD prone American minds occupied.

It had to be outside of the big city, but not too far.

We just had to find it.

Soon, two festivals showed up on our radar. There was the Lott Festival, hailed as one of the first regular open air festivals in South-West Germany. And there was the NatureOne festival.

Both were on the same weekend in the hills some 80 or 90 miles west of Frankfurt, Germany.

NatureOne was to take place in an abandoned U.S. missile base from Cold War days, Lott was open air, on pastures just outside a remote village. NatureOne was projected to draw 50 000 people, Lott may one fifth of that.

NatureOne was techno and rave, Lott was billed as "Woodstock in the woods".

Lott sounded much more manageable at the time, so the decision was made. Part of the route to both festivals was identical, and there were NatureOne direction signs every few hundred yards. And not a single one for Lott, good.

It had been raining for a couple of days straight, but the rain had let up around noon and the weather was projected to be fine.

After navigating daintily around yet another abandoned U.S. base, this one an airfield, we found the event. It was not in the woods, but it did have a bowl, just like Woodstock.

The music was young and fast, with bands from all over Europe, food and other vendors wound in a semi-circle up and around the hill. People were dancing, drinking, eating, and had a hard time on the slick hillside.

There was a wide strip of tarp running all the way up the hill from the stage along the food vendors.  A certainly well-intentioned but tricky attempt to protect the farmer's pasture.

People slipped and slid, and watching your every step was strenuous after a while.

We were on our way out when it happened. A shriek, and "festival goer down".

That wrist was hurting badly, and control over the hand was gone. A paramedic showed up, we were holding our victim on both sides and made the few remaining yards to the road.

The Red Cross had a busy festival. Right next to us, a young man was on a stretcher, a leg broken. They were just getting ready to stick him in the ambulance and take him to the hospital.

The verdict for us: go to the hospital, the wrist appears fractured.

They let me drive after asking if I had had any drink. The answer "no" satisfied them, and they did not make us sign a bunch of paperwork, no waiver or the like.

In retrospect, it was not the bightest idea to drive late at night in a little known region. After getting lost, we made it to the hospital. The surgeon on duty was busy. Way busy. The nurse told us they had already had some 60 accidents for the two festivals combined.
NatureOne folks had their mishaps tripping on extasy and mud, Lott folks tripping on mud.

Waiting for the doctor took time, nothing compared to a US ER at night, but still.

This was the night of the "we have been to this hospital way too often realization":
the staff of the Internal Medicine ward greeted me like a friend and let me borrow a cold pack.

Our first German music experience ended with a wrist in a cast.

And no, the insurance company did not shut down the festival. Let us praise reason and unversal health care.