Fan Review: Rock im Park By SuruDenise

Dear diary, uh excuse me, dear reader: I’ll tell you a story about the most amazing weekend EVER!
After a three hour train ride on friday morning with a good friend of mine, we finally made it to our first festival ever!
I’ve been to some concerts before but festivals are really something totally different.
We had Centerstage-Camping-Tickets which means that our campground was close to the main stage where the headline shows take place. We were pretty late and our campground was already full but the (VERY friendly) security helped us to find a nice spot for our tent. And it was perfect, really!

Relaxing while Refused played

We had some chitchat with our ‘neighbours’ (which we became friends with later) and went to the Centerstage for the rest of the day to see Gojira, Shinedown and Enter Shikari from the front row! We had some pizza and beer while Refused played their set and got back to the fourth row to see Tenacious D and Billy Talent

Watching Metallica from the toilet, haha!

Saturday went totally different than we had planned! We spent the whole day with our camping neighbours and ended up pretty drunk.. In the evening we went from stage to stage to catch a few songs from Die Toten Hosen, Deichkind and stuff like that and ended up drunk again. Pretty festival like.
On sunday morning we felt like zombies. It’s not easy to fall asleep on a festival.. I think I slept only 4 or 5 hours on that weekend, but who cares! This is where the interesting part of the review starts: We had some breakfast while Linkin Park had their soundcheck and we got to hear Numb, With You, Lies Greed Misery and some notes from other songs! I could even see them from our campground! (That’s one of the good things from the Centerstage-Camping).

Waiting for Linkin Park in the back

The only time I could risk it to take a picture

We went to the Centerstage at noon and I already saw some Linkin Park fans running to get into the front row. Well, I bought something to drink and to eat at first and then went to the stage slowly, you’ll soon know why 😛
We were in the first zone and could easily go into the front row but sat down in the back to relax because we were pretty tired from the day before. After a while two of my friends joined us to see Linkin Park later. we watched bands like The Subways, Cypress Hill and ate some ice cream.
A few minutes before Gossip took the stage, we made our way from the back to the front. It took us about an hour to slowly sneak our way through the people to the second row while Gossip and Soundgarden played their show. Some of the people hated us for that, but I didn’t really care. There is no border for us when it’s about Linkin Park.
That has already been exhausting but we had no idea back then what REALLY exhausting is.
We realized it when Linkin Park took the stage and the war in the front began.. I’ve never been into a crowd like this before, really! It was like a brawl and everyone wanted to be as close to Linkin Park as they could. But we didn’t let that happen.

Photo: BR.de

Photo: BR.de

Everyone screamed the lyrics, jumped like crazy and didn’t even realize it was raining. One after another got pulled out of the crowd, people were pushing and pulling. That’s when I noticed that it has been pretty usefull to do endurance sports and train my muscles a bit.
I’ve seen Linkin Park five times before but that setlist kicked some asses! I loved it that they played a lot from Hybrid Theory again but I also loved it to scream the lyrics to BURN IT DOWN and LIES GREED MISERY.
Now here’s another highlight: Someone from LPU proposed to his girlfriend ON fucking STAGE! I’ve never seen something like this before and the crowd went insane because it’s like Mike said: you gotta have some balls to do that. It seems like the guy had a Meet & Greet before and asked the band to propose on stage. And she said yes! (I think there’s a video of that moment).

Adam with Richars and Sinead. All the best! Photo: LPUnderground.com – For more pictures go there and join the LPU!

And then my personal highlight happened. During ‘In The End’ Mike came into the crowd RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! He pulled himself up on my hand and held my hand for a while. Everyone screamed the lyrics into his microphone and went insane with him. I didn’t even recognize how tightly it was because I was so damn happy. He grabbed my hand again to pull himself down and went back to the stage. That absolutely made my day and everything worth it! I think I even saw myself on the screen.

Photo: Roland Fengler

When they played their last song ‘One Step Closer’ they pulled out one after another from the crowd, it was really exhausting to not let any people fall down. The security was so busy that someone from the crowd jumped on the stage but got pulled down by the security immediately. I remember that Chester looked surprised but stayed cool like the others and went on.
And then the magic ended and I saw people hugging and laughing after LP left the stage. I’ve never been that close to the stage before to see Linkin Park but it was absolutely worth it. A wonderful weekend ended. Our first festival couldn’t even be better. I’ll definitely be there again next year.

Adie: Thanks Denise for this great and funny review! Sounds like you had a blast! Rock im Park definitely stole Rock am Ring’s thunder this year. The proposal was super cute and I wish the happy couple all the best!