First shift at Roskilde Festival

Took this before 8am, which explains why it's so quiet.

Our camp, Camping K, is at the very mouth of Entrance East; our agora hosts the Speakers Corner (festival map here). It's not a big area, so it's quite manageable for a team of 14. Our shift leader was Ricko, who makes me think of a bemoustasched Alex Band crossed with David Spade. There were about four or five Chinese girls on the shift, a few other internationals and then, of course, Danes, who are the only ones who can communicate by radio for obvious reasons.

For the most part, I walked around with my shift partner Mikkel, checking for fire. It was uneventful, so we just counted the number of rounds we were making and guessed how many we would make until we switch assignments with the other pairs. An hour into the shift, it started to rain. I had wet jeans the rest of the night.

A note on attire: it is perfectly acceptable to wear a garbage bag. Nearly everybody was in rubber boots. I bought the cheapest rain gear I could find: plastic poncho from Tiger (20kr) and rubber boots from Føtex (50kr). The boots were three sizes too large for me, which was ok because I have thick socks. The problem is that the boots are not high enough (those in the photo are Morgane's), so I can't put my jeans inside them and the top of the boots scratched my legs. Now I have wounds on my calves.

Also picked up litter with a couple of Chinese girls for an hour or so, then on the last hour of the shift, was fire guard again. When it was nearly 2300 hours, we went set to turnover our orange vests at the tower when we were told that somebody was lighting a fire in our area. We went over to the tent to tell the occupants to put out the flame. After a few paces, they were at it again, so we went back and Mikkel told them again to stop it.

During those eight hours, I must have seen more than a hundred guys peeing by the fence (one even took a leak in front of his tent, eww). Encounters with drunk people: someone turning us away when we were cleaning the path beside their camp, a girl who hugged us because we are helping in the festival, and a couple of guys who twirled me around while they danced to the music on their radio.

Maybe tomorrow will be the same, just muddier and dirtier.