A rather chaotic journey, through mud, rain, flooding and a Covid infection

This journey started with the Wacken open Air, where I went 2023 as every year since 2014 (but the bloody covid years). Wacken 2023 was rather rainy, not worse than other rainy Wacken years, but this time it started to rain two weeks before the festival, which would influence my journey quit a bit.

I traveled to Wacken with some friends who own an old RCV. We started our journey on Sunday before the Festival and drove to Itzehoe, where we spent the night in the RCV. The nex morning we first drove to a bakery for breakfast and then started the journey to Wacken, which is 20 km away from Itzehoe, thus we expected to be on the camp ground soon.

Due is having rained for two weeks the campground was soaked with water. Almost every vehicle had to be towed onto the camp ground by tractors. This lead to a huge traffic congestion. WoA always comes with a heavy traffic congestion, but this one was the worst one I had the pleasure to be in. After 10 hours we finally arrived on the camp ground.

The festival was great as always. I normally would have traveled back home with my friends after the festival. But this year was different. I had decided to travel from Wacken to Tolmin in Slovenia, in order to join my sister and brother in attending the Punk Rock Holiday festival.

Now Wacken wasn't the only place where it rained at that time. Slovenia was hit by even more rain, which lead to some rather severe flooding. After deciding that it is morally ok, to travel to a country, which just had been stricken by catastrophe, in order to have fun on a festival (I followed my bothers argument, that the festival comes with an influx of money, which to also lose, would be worse), I let my friends drop me off at the railway station of Itzehoe.

I hadn't booked any train tickets in advance, as I didn't now how long it would take us to get off the camp ground and to Itzehoe, and just started to improvise as soon as I arrived at the train station. The first leg of my journey was rather uneventful. I arrived in Vienna late at night at the Meidling station. From there I roamed through the area around the station, searching for a hostel, to spent the night.

This, however, proofed to be not so easy. My first hits on google maps were not existing in reality (or simply not hostels, or closed). I decided to take a train to the main station, after some time of unsuccessful searching, and to search for a hostel around there, as it looked more promising on google maps. And indeed I found a hostel close to the main station, which still hadn't closed its reception. But it was sold out for the night. The receptionist told me that the Hotel around the corner was my best bet, and indeed I got a room there, and finally could go to sleep for some hours.

The next morning the adventure began with the train from Vienna to Ljubljana. Due to the flooding this train journey was intermingled with three bus rides. The last of which was serviced by an old bus, driven by an even older driver, who was playing church music on the bus' radio, while we drove through flooded area.

This adventurous ride to Ljubljana came with the entertaining company of a french student which I met on the train. It was her first journey alone, after having traveled through many parts of the world with her parents. So we told each other traveling war-stories and navigated together through the rail replacement bus services.

Punk rock holiday also was a great experience, with one exemption: I lost my phone. Or it got stolen. Most likely the later. I had given it to my brother in order to have its battery charged it in his RCV. He then gave it back to me when we met at the main stage for the Dropkick Murphys gig. After a good time in the moshpit I reached into my pocket and found my phone to be missing. Of course it's not the best idea to enter the pit with a phone in the pocket. I thus thought to have lost it. The ground before the stage was covered with bark mulch, which I combed through with my foot for a while until I gave up.

The next day I went to the main stage again and meet another guy there who also was missing his phone. We combed through the bark mulch without finding any phone. At the lost-and-found we then met two further people with missing phones. So most likely we were victims of pocket thieves.

So I did what had to be done. Locked the SIM card and ordered a new one, ordered a new phone, and changed some passwords to be safe. The festival then went on, and I had a generally good time there. I definitely can recommend the Punk Rock Holiday festival.

I then decided to go home via train, as there were no seats left in any car of my group, and as I, after two weeks of festivals, was in the mood for some alone time. No problem for me, as I'm rather a fan of train journey. Loosing my phone, however, I suddenly had to realize how dependent I had become of my phone since the advent of smart phones. It's not only calling and messaging people. 2FA surely presents one with a huge pain in the neck, once one has lost ones phone. But how to answer the question "How much time is it?", if one does not own a wristwatch anymore? How to set the alarm for waking up at four o'clock in the morning?

I decided to buy a cheap watch in order to solve at least the later two problems. So I went to a store in Tolmin which sells electric stuff. But the store didn't offer any watches, and I ended buying an alarm clock with LED projector.

The alarm clock woke me up at four o'clock as planned, and my journey back home started which was rather uneventful. Well not completely. The EC from Ljubljana to Munich, which should have coupled to another train in Villach, was delayed. Due to the delay the other train didn't wait and the EC stayed in Villach. Another train to Munich arrived, but was too crowded, such that anyone without seat reservations was asked to leave the train. Two rail replacement buses also were rather full, and as they also weren't to arrive in Munich sooner than the next train, I took this train to Munich. Four hours after I arrived in Villach. And it got rather crowded too, such that I had to ride it staying for most of the time.

After some further trains, I took a cab for the last few kilometers. As I came closer to home, I looked forward to find a new SIM card and a new phone, until I realized that I wouldn't get my new SIM card now. This was because I was to move to the south of Germany the next week, and I already had booked a postal forward service. Doing so I somehow entered the wrong start date, and the german postal service somehow couldn't correct my error. Hence, the postal forward service was already active since some days. The letter box at my new flat hadn't been labeled yet. So my new SIM was not to arrive me for another week.

So another week of being unavailable via phone passed. A week in which I packed all my belongings into boxes. A week of immense heat, and furthermore wearisome, due to a Corona infection, which I had acquired at one of the festivals.

Would I do it again? Definitely!