Paul wasn't there yet, he had gone to town. I met him at 4:30 in another place. I was already a bit drunk and felt a bit more in-phase with the festival atmosphere. The sun was blazing hot. Dust was thick in the air, I wore my scarf over my nose and mouth. A band was playing some unoriginal rock on the main stage. Paul was late.

But he made up for it by buying me two beers when he finally arrived. While he was in the queue, I talked with the guy he had come with. That unsurprisingly asked where I was from. That's when a brilliant idea sparked in my head: I answered to him really loud, with one fist in the air: “I'm from Germany, Yeah!”.

There is something particular about being German: it is something to be ashamed of. Unlike most nationalities, that are stupidly felt by their citizens as something to be proud of, and unlike pretty much all the other nationalities, that are felt like something that matters little. Germans usually don't like to have to say: “I'm german”. Much less very loud, much less punctuated by the word “yeah”, much less with a fist in the air. The reason being that they are educated in the consistent reminding of the atrocities of 2nd world war.
Few places in the world care about someone being german. Maybe in Israel, people still hold a prejudice against Germans and Germany. But a French person usually will not remember that 2 million french people were killed by german people between two world wars. They're more likely to be pissed off if the German football team recently beat theirs. And so it goes with most of the nations involved in those conflicts. But not in Poland. In Poland, the Germans are sincerely hated.
And, sure enough, one guy behind me screamed very loud: “Well, I'm Polish”.

I knew that Paul could mediate in case of aggressive behaviour. One thing about him is that he acts first and thinks later. I turned around to find a group of three young guys looking at me defiantly. I put on my best smile and walked straight up to them to shake hands, share hugs and exchange beer. That worked alright.

I won't dwell on the topic of nationalities, Germans and Polish, as it deserves it's own story.

We headed back to the camp where Paul introduced me to another of his roommates that was called Pedro I think and that was a really interesting guy. First he's cute as hell, then he's pretty assertive and witty. My kind of guys. I also met Paul's girlfriend that is just as cute-as-hell and assertive and witty...

Paul and me have the same taste in people.

They were there for 3 days already. Most of the people were there for 3 days already. The festival had started on Friday. Including the crowd of couchsurfing members. The group was composed of around 20 people. But it seemed like everyone only knew 3 or 4 people. Which is the usual human-relationship equation, and which always dispoints me somehow.

So, Paul introduced me to the 3 or 4 people he had met there. We drank the beer with them and moved from the camp, back to where they sold the beer.

Near the huge Beer-refueling-station was a little stage with a DJ and a small crowd of festival folks half-heartedly bouncing to the beat. We joined them, except Paul that had locked on a hot girl that didn't want to dance, so he sat on the side with her (probably reciting her all the clichés of his "hook up with girls for dummies" guide).

Just as with the social interactions, the music stired up some dispointment in me. It was painfully unimaginative and slow and... loud! I had to scream my disapointment in the ears of my new friends. Paul's girlfriend, that is called Aino (finnish), took advantage of that to kiss me. Suddenly the music sounded less bad.

We moved it to the Clawfinger concert.