Coming This Summer, only at 8900miles!

Alright so here's the deal.  I realize I've been slacking hard and haven't written a post since I was in Rwanda.  I've done much since then and for the few of you guys that actually care, I'll update my blog in the next few weeks to include:

-My return to Uganda and Kenya
-Out of Africa ==> Holland, Berlin, Prague, Munich (for the Champions League Final!), Brussels, and Amsterdam again
-England.  I'm now living in Cornwall (southwest) for the rest of the summer, making some money.
-Roskilde 2012 in Denmark which I just returned from and I'm still buzzing.

Now because I'm weirdly OCD about this, I feel the need to do everything in chronological order, but just so I don't piss myself from excitement before then, here's a quick blurb about the festival.

The estimated attendance is over 100,000 and it's one of Europe's oldest and most anticipated festivals of the summer.  This year, I was drawn there by local heroes Mew, recently reformed Swedish hardcore legends Refused, the (somehow) indie-superstar Bon Iver, and many others including M83, The Shins, Jack White, Bjork, Nasum, Baroness, The Roots, Janelle Monae, A$AP Rocky, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Shlohmo.  Needless to say, it was an amazing four days of musical experiences. But Roskilde is about so much more than that.  They have an incredible "more than music" campaign.  Before the proper festival kicked off on Thursday, there were five "warm-up" days; I was there for three of them. At "Street City" Roskilde has a massive vert ramp and excellent, professional quality skate park and bowl, and all week long they put on demos and contests, not to mention the occasional hip-hop battle or dance battle. There was also "Play City" which is several small pitches for football (soccer), volleyball courts, and loads of other stuff. Then there was "Radio City" from which Roskilde Radio was broadcast live.  There was "Swim City" where you go enjoy a dip in the lake (from the festival booklet) "...provided you are not intoxicated." Also, "Cinema City" (self-explainable), and "Poor City" (which is hard to explain...).  And then there was "Dream City" which was where I was camping.  This was an area where people were provided with the means to basically build whatever they wanted to, from sculptures to large, flamboyant, wooden stages.  The campground itself was legendary and is the main draw of the festival for the locals. Many of them say they even prefer the warm-up days, and I'll definitely go into more detail on that later. On top of all these crazy things to do in the warm-up days, there are actually two stages going as well!  Pavilion Junior (the smallest of Roskilde's six stationary venues) was showcasing local Danish bands in the hopes of exposing them to a large number of potential fans.  Also, there was Apollo Countdown, which was a stage that moved around to a different camping area each day during the warm-up.  When the "proper" festival started, it was stationed near Street City.  This venue was strictly electronic music and during the warm-up days it featured exclusively Scandinavian talent.


So there's the summary, stay tuned for the incredibly over-the-top full length versions in which I'll describe how awesome Refused, Mew, Bon Iver, Jack White....etc etc etc...were.

Mew at Orange Scene

Fear not my loving fanbase, I haven't died and there's plenty more shenanigans coming. My next post will talk about going back to Uganda and Kenya (this time with Hillary) before leaving Africa after eight, um, interesting (?) months.