If you fancy getting down and dirty with a load of naked Scandinavians (quite frankly who wouldn’t?!) then it’s Roskilde Festival for you. If I were a festival I would want Roskilde to be my husband. It’s got everything I ever dreamed of, and probably a little bit more. It’s bursting at the seams with musical delights, is environmentally aware, raises money for charity, promotes a vegetarian and organic diet, uses green energy sources and rides a bicycle. Swoon! Read more about my future husband here. It’s only a mere 30 days away and tickets are on sale now.

For those who fancy some good old fashioned chaos why not take yourself to Eastern Europe. Belgrade once again brings us sun burn and dance parties in an abandoned fortress at Exit Fest. There are some excellent options for reaching Novi Sad by train, and we’ve featured a number of journeys with stopovers in Venice or Budapest.

If you’re feeling a bit more piratical, (yaaaarrgggh!) then let me recommend the Garden Festival in Zadar.  Funnily enough it’s got little to do with gardens, but will have you sailing the seven seas (*actually just one sea), while you dance in the glorious sunshine on the HMS Goodtimes. Tickety Boo. And here’s a cheeky journey plan.

Croatia is also host to Soundwave Festival in July; another treat on the Adriatic offering beaches, beats and bikinis! They’re going Loco too and offering the Sunshine Bus for a mere £125 return, from Manchester or London. Check out this mighty clever journey plan for further details and how to book.

Closer to home we’re spoiled for choice, with Spain offering its usual cache of fun and frolicks; July sees the 16th annual Benicassim Fesitival. So in the words of Dizzee Rascal (who’ll be appearing at this years gig), “get your passport, and your bikini, you need a holiday…come see me!” Ah, wise words Mister Rascal, and see you I will if I can get my hands on a ticket. For this one Loco2’s teamed up with some clever folks who are offering an all inclusive bus tour to and from the festival to make your festival experience as hassle free as possible.

Come August and it’ll be time to don your over-sized baggy hat and Jamaican themed string vest and take yourself to Rototom Sunsplash. Not only is saying “rototom” in a thick Welsh accent highly amusing, but it’s a tip top reggae festival too, with sunshine and bass and booming beats in the Spanish sunshine…

Right, that’s all for now, but certainly something to get you thinking.

I went out with her and some of her friends on Friday night. One’s learning English so could hold proper conversation and she’s cool. The club we went to was surprisingly good and reminded me quite a lot of Urban Gorilla (good breaks but a bit of garage unfortunately, wicked cosy venue though, female DJ, which is apparently far from uncommon).

Then last night I went out on my own to a drum and bass night I’d seen advertised. Some of it was good, big fat Polish man MC-ing which was quite amusing (MCing in Polish sounds quite good). The club was really cool. It’s in the middle of a park by the 3.5km sandy beach, apparently it used to be a public toilet! Grimy. Met a bloke there called ‘Kuba’ who is an actor and plays the drums so I’m going to go and discover the Polish underground with him (he was pissed off that the club we were at was going increasingly commercial).

It seems that there is a special group in Polish society (or at least in this part of the country) that calls themselves ‘artists’, encompassing people who paint, act, play music etc. The girls I went out with on Friday have disdain for them and think they’re posers, whist ‘Kuba’ loves it, and says things like “it is impossible for me to do anything with my life except act”. He wears a big tweed jacket and a stripy beanie… He’s got something to say for himself anyway so I’m going to get to know him a bit, and play his drums.

Tonight I’m hopping on the train to Gdansk to meet Agatha (what a name), the girl who is learning English and is really sound. We’re going to a party her friends are putting on with fire (assuming poi and staff etc) and music. Should be good. Have had some bloody great discussions about politics and history for those who are interested.

Agatha’s granddad helped Jews hide during the Second World War and eventually he got shot by the SS. When I was in Berlin I was reminded that 3 million Polish Jews were killed, it’s so unbelievable. And the fact that there were some non-Jews will to stand up against the tidal wave really touched me, and it obviously meant a lot to Agatha. The first shots of the Second World War were fired in Gdansk as the Nazis invaded Poland by sea, and the city was the one area in an active war zone for the longest time out of anywhere, basically the full six years.

Even when the Russians liberated Gdansk from Nazi control in 1945 they continued the destruction of the city because it was at the time called Danzig and therefore they saw it as part of Germany. So obviously after 1945 Poland was under Communist control, and in 1970 the Solidarity movement started when some workers at the shipyard in Gdansk striked. They were shot dead but the movement continued to build until in 1989 it finally executed a peaceful revolution and threw off Communism (in the meantime the late Pope, who was Polish, visited the city and offered his support to the movement).

Now (this was written in late 2006 the country is run by two twins: one as President, one as PM (the former appointed the latter). The government is a coalition and one of the parties in it, the ‘Family Party’ is deeply homophobic (linked to the high levels of Catholicism in Poland). Strangely though, apparently it has the highest levels of membership by gay men out of all the parties (this seems very odd and I want to read up on it). The majority of the population is rural and a lot of them take as gospel what is said by a very powerful priest who has his own radio channel and TV show. The country is supposedly secular but he has a lot of sway and the educated girls I was talking to are very worried about his influence. Also, the aforementioned Family Party has underground militas (not publicly linked to the party) similar to the SA in Nazi Germany, or the RSS in India (Hindu fundamentalists linked to the BJP).

I am interested in trying to get to the heart of what young people see as their political orientation, or duty, since they are the first generation to grow up in the post-communist era. There were some quite heated debates over drinks on Friday night, and in true geeky fashion, I was absolutely loving it.

We went by train of course, and it was interesting to see the reaction of my colleauges, some of whom were more seasoned to the experience than others. Unfortunately we were delayed by an hour in Paris – my longest ever delay in France – but apart from that the journey down to Bourg St Maurice went swimmingly.

On the first day we were on the slopes by 9.30am thanks to the efficiency of the boot-fitters at the luxury chalet where we were staying, and on the last day we had the luxury of snow-shoeing to a house in a tiny hamlet in the mountains in time for a late lunch (or “linner” if you will grant me the liberty to merge the words “lunch” and “dinner” in the same way as brunch does for a mid-morning feast). Getting back on the night-train at 9pm was a very relaxed affair and overall the timings were very much to the benefit of squeezing lots into the five days without getting stressed.

On my return I discovered that someone has developed a wave-powered boat! This is utter genius, and I can’t wait to find out more about it and write more here. At 31 feet, it’s a pretty small vessel, 13 feet smaller than the yacht Kate is planning to take from Mexico to Australia (more on this soon) but the concept is inspiring.

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We can’t believe we’re here already but don’t feel like we rushed through Europe too much. We’ve been able to gauge the feeling of each city (Brussels, Cologne and Warsaw) in which we’ve stayed. We think this has been mainly to do with our couch-surfing experiences: from a chaotic Belgian barmaid who recommended beer that tasted of HP sauce, to the marketing director of Poland’s largest delivery company, ‘Telepizza’. She made us feel welcome in an initially hostile Warsaw. Tonight we are staying with a very learned, very old, French, German, English and Russian-speaking language enthusiast with an orange dog called ‘Orange’ (in Russian).

The trains so far have been brilliant. The most impressive was surprisingly last night’s from Warsaw to Moscow. The decor of our couchette included lacy curtains and Persian-style rugs and seat covers, and we were provided with our own sink and clean sheets. The female carriage attendant was dressed as we had been told to expect of Russian women – in a miniskirt and knee high boots – so we felt rather silly when we left the train in our layers of thermals. Ironically we found ourselves waking up sweating in a train we thought would be the coldest so far. Too hot to sleep, we admired the snow covered tracks outside.

We really feel like we are moving further into the unknown. It’s not just the language barriers – the people seem to be different too. We can’t imagine getting the treatment here that we got from the restaurant touts in Brussels (one of whom proposed to Emily with his “special cocktail” and refused to take no for an answer).

We hope to send you a podcast soon, perhaps including sounds of the Trans-Siberian railway.

PICS

• Top: Festive chocolate sculpture in AMMMMMAZING chocolate cafe. Belgium, of course.
• Middle: Lake Baikal
  
• Bottom: From Russia with love: The door in the bathroom of the nice old man whose house we stayed at in Moscow

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