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DISCLAIMER: This is probably the longest post I’ve ever written in my blog. I don’t know if you are really interested in it’s full content but I could imagine that the happenings of my summer 2007 could be quite entertaining for some of you.

I am now back after what was probably the craziest summer of my whole life. It all started in June with the Nova Rock festival, where I was responsible for network- and general IT-admnistration together with Oliver and Hirschy. It was an insane week, with masses of people (the festival was sold out with ~150.000 visitors), awesome music, lots of walking (it was a biiiiig venue) and heaps of fun.
Two days after the festival I had my final examination at my university (still a bit hung over from the previous week) which I managed to pass astonishingly well.
Following that event came a bit of celebrating and partying as you can surely imagine. A short visit on the Donauinselfest the following weekend gave me the chance to finally see “Heaven Shall Burn” live, which was absolutely awesome!

Then there was about one week of silence …meaning parties, going out in the evenings, swimming and generally summer fun and relaxing.
On Monday the 2nd of July I drove to St. Pölten to start setting up the venue for the Lovely Days festival with Oliver and Manschi, but on the next day I already had to return to Vienna to take care of the wireless network on the venue for the Metallica gig, which took place on the 5th of July on the “Rothundenplatz” near the Prater in the center of the city. The gig was perfect with about 35.000 people attending and a band that seemed to be in a really good mood. I also have to say that the tour crew of Metallica was one of the nicest I have ever met and especially their tour manager is a really funny person!
After finishing up my work after the gig and waiting for the crew to abandon the venue at about 4am, I took a taxi to Oliver’s place to get a few hours of sleep before we drove back to St. Pölten the next day and enjoyed the Lovely Days festival. My personal highlight there was the set of Uriah Heep. They totally blew me away! I never thought that there’s so much power left in this band.

Well, there was hardly any time for relaxing. On the 8th I had to say goodbye to a very good friend who went to Sydney for half a year to study abroad (I envy you!). She had a really good farewell party at the beautiful 100 Tage Sommer, which I enjoyed very much.
On July 11th I was heading back to St. Pölten again, with my newly repaired car that broke down in the meantime, to oversee the next festival production (IT-wise), the Nuke festival. But I couldn’t stay on the venue for the whole time either because on the first festival day, July 13th, me & Oliver had to go to Eisenstadt where our university was located, to attend the official graduation celebration. It was a rather boring event (for me, my family apparently loved it), which I was glad to be able to leave and still get some of the bands at the Nuke festival in the afternoon. The evening of that and the next day I could see some amazing headliners with Die Fantastischen 4, Beastie Boys and The Prodigy. Exhausted but happy I came home the next day and slept for about 24 hours straight.

The following weekend had the very funny (and long) birthday party of Kathi & Christoph in Wr. Neudorf. After that weekend I began the final planning for my own graduation party which took place in the “Red Box” on July 27th, in my hometown Mödling. The event was planned by Hirschy, Herbert and myself. We invited two bands to play there: Decent Accident & Blackpaintedreality. They both conducted a perfect show and I was really glad that they agreed to play there. The rest of my party, after the two gigs, fades away in my memory probably due to a massiv amount of alkohol intake 😉

After cleaning up the Red Box on the next day and trying to get as much sleep as possible I boarded my car again on the 30th of July to head westwards to the most distant border of Austria in Vorarlberg to attend the next festival: Szeneopenair in Lustenau (~4.000 people). Well, the intention was there but my car didn’t participate that well and broke down after about 590km, still behind the border in Germany, only about an hour of driving away from my destination. The result of that second breakdown was that I threw away my car, it was too old and far beyond the point of still repairable. I tried not to think too much about this disaster and enjoy my work, the people and the bands on the Szeneopenair. The poeple there where all really nice and helpful with my situation. A big THANK YOU to all of you!
After a busy week and two great festival days with The Int. Nois Conspiracy, Mando Diao, Sportfreunde Stiller and heaps of others, my sister and her boyfriend who live in Switzerland, not far from Lustenau, came fetching me and brought me, being totally transport-less, to their home in Wil. There I could thankfully spend a few relaxing days, trying to sort my life again.

After flying back to Austria via Zürich, I finally recharged my cellphone, which lost all of it’s power during the Szeneopenair and to top it of my recharger was stolen as well. After checking my mailbox I got the information that my work would desperately be needed again on the coming weekend on the Picture On festival in Bildein, Burgenland. So the next morning I drove down there having done a trip from the most western border of Austria close to Switzerland and Germany, back to the most eastern border near Hungary. Picture On was a very nice small festival (~2.500 visitors) which I really enjoyed after the madness of the big events. The most amazing performances where the ones from: Guadalajara, Jerx, The Locos, Bauchklang, Jimi Cliff, Soulfly and most notably the Mad Caddies. On the second day of this festival Oliver came down and joined me, although only as a visitor. After the event was over on the 12th, we decided to go to Salzburg directly where the next festival was due on starting on the 15th.

So we arrived on the Salzburgring in the middel of the night to start preparing for the FM4 Frequency festival (sold out! 40.000 visitors) together with Christian who joined our team there. In reality there wasn’t much to do for us, because our usual slots of work where already occupied by others, but the organizers thought we are part of the team so we should just come by and help wherever help is needed. So this meant other than setting up a few hammocks for the chill out tent, we probably only had about half an hour of work per day. Still we had the privilege to run around with Access All Areas backstage passes, enjoy Jochen’s great crew catering and sleep in the crew compartments. Thank you all very much for that! 🙂
Some of my personal highlights, music wise (the rest will remain untold 😉 ), where the gigs of Silverchair, Groove Armada, Jerx again (with an insane stage-dive of the guitarist), Beatstakes, Die Ärzte, Nine Inch Nails, The Sounds, Sorgente, Kaiser Chiefs and Seeed.
I was more than happy that Oliver drove home the next day, because I didn’t get a lot of sleep due to an insane end-of-summer after show party in the artist tent after the last headliner.

Now I’m back at my home, trying not to get bored with so little people and no live music around me 😉

…and really trying hard to get a decent job! So if any of you readers has a good job opportunity for me (I promise, I’ll update the about page with a recent CV shortly) please don’t hesitate to write a comment, or reach me otherwise (eg. my first name dot my last name at gmail dot com). I am willing to travel and work anywhere in the world and I’d be glad to offer my expertise wherever needed.

Well, I think that’s about it for my summer recap. I know that probably half of the events that took place remain untold and a lot of people that where a big part of the whole experience remain unmentioned, but I think this serves as a good overview and will probably also serve as a good source of memory in a few years when I read this again myself.