I woke up at 11am, 8 hours of sleep. I was hungry. I went around looking for friends to go shopping with. I ran into Flore, one of my best friends from France.
 
She had hitchhiked overnight and arrived at 8 in the morning.
She's fucking hardcore with pretty much everything in life. She hitchhiked for the first time with me one year ago. Now I should call her "Master". I was really happy to see her, we took some empty bags and set off to the shop ; that was just on the other side of the forest.
 
There was almost a queue on the one kilometre across the forest to the shop. In the shop itself, a typical German supermarket, half the customers were from the camp, some of them trying hard to decipher German-written labels.
I filled my 60L backpack with food, plus 3 bottles of cola, plus 3 boxes of super-cheap wine. I was going to fuel myself on calimotxo exclusively. Shit! One liter of it cost me 50c and it's 6° of alcohol!
 
I had packed Flore's stuff too so it was very heavy. On the way back, we passed by a lot of people that were going there. I saw two of them as a car was coming from the camp. I told them: "Come on! Hitchhike, they'll take you!". One jabbed a thumb out as the car was passing, and it stopped 20m later. I met those two again without recognising them in funny circumstances.
 
I dropped my bag at the tent and went around smiling to people. That was one of my main activity on the whole 4 days. I just walked around, smiling to everyone, and everyone smiled back at me.
I didn't really know why I was doing that and why I was enjoying it so much until it was over, 4 days later. In the streets of Berlin, I still had some smile-momentum and smiled to a couple of random people and soon stopped; because they mostly looked away in an air of annoyance or submission. But at the camp, everyone smiled back.
 
I smiled frantically around the camp. Until, after having smiled to a group of cute people, I had passed them, and suddenly I heard a stampede behind me that was growing closer very fast. I turned around in time to see a human body thrown at full speed already in mid air, jumping at me. I dodged a bit too late and go hit on the leg. The guy flew past and landed two metres further, rolled in the sand and jumped back at me. I took him in my arms and gave him a big hug. My friend Thomas from Leipzig. I was so glad to see him!
 
We went around together, telling whatever news there was to be told. The people of the camp had already anarch-organised themselves according to the following pattern, that lasted until the end.
The "tent village" always had one or two groups of people sitting in circle between tents, socializing. From there, on the way to the beach, there was a lump of concrete that looked like what would be a smurf bunker if smurfs built bunkers. Sitting on that there would be another group a bit more dynamic, as some would be sitting on the smurf bunker, some standing, some leaning on it and the group would change configuration often. Those usually were eating something, the smurf-bunker providing for table space.
Keep going and you'd reach the beach. On the way from the camp to the food booth would be one of the core groups. First a loose group of people juggling, and near them a pack of people sitting in the sand in all shades of shapes, doing some basic socializing and very often singing the dumbest pop songs as loud as possible as soon as someone started touching a guitar.
I usually stayed away from this one, but I saw that Flore was lying there reading so I stopped for a while. If I had kept on walking, I would have reached the food booth. There were a couple of tables and benches with always some people sitting. A lot at meal hours.
From there you'd walk on, parallel to the lake, and you would pass between the volleyball field, that was permanently occupied from 10am to 10pm and the bath area.
 
Near the water, there usually was another core-group of lazy asses lazing around. And if you felt like walking some more, you would soon reach the concert hall and, a bit further, the end of the beach that had a huge concrete roof in the back. But I didn't go all the way there. Remember? I stopped at the first core group with Flore.
 
The poor thing was already drunk. In the middle of the afternoon. She was having a hard time and fell asleep huging the beach. So I put my head on her ass and rested a bit. But the wind was too cold and prevented me to fall asleep. So I decided to speak to the people around me.
 
There was a girl that was not so far from me that I knew from the previous beach camp. I'm very bad at remembering people and I was quite amazed that I could even recall her name: Verena. The only contact I had had with her was that we had waited for the subway together on the way from the camp back to Berlin when the party had ended.
 
Sure enough she didn't remember me. She was busy trying to learn to juggle so she couldn't pay too much attention to me. Which suited me well, as I was more in a contemplative mood.
 
After having talked to her for five minutes, I realised why I hadn't forgotten her. She radiates a lot of good vibes. She did that while not even looking at me, minding her own business, sitting in the sand. Just imagine the blast if she tried. I enjoyed very much her company so I hang around. A group of 4 walked past, stopped, looked at us and said: "Do you mind if we sit with you?"
 
And that's how it went most of the time. You'd just walk into a group of stranger and instantly integrate it. If you were lucky enough, they wouldn't even ask your name and your country of origin. But I had work to do. Before departing Brussels, I had printed 200 flyers for a video-projection that I intended to give the following evening. So I set off to spam the whole camp with it. It took me a little while before I moved to the volleyball field.
 
I play volleyball once a year or so. But then, I play a lot. After the smile barrage, that was my main activity. This time I didn't play too long because I had tried to set up an Ultimate Frisbee match for 6pm.
 
So at 6pm, I dropped the ball and picked the disc. Ultimate frisbee is a bit like rugby, but without a ball, without the tackling and with a disc. We started playing with a minimal team but soon people joined and the field became overcrowded. And between the volleyball and the frisbee, I had already made a handful of friends.
 
I was in a rather euphoric mood, I remember I made Thomas laugh because I was commenting on a cute boy. He called me gay, and I retaliated by commenting on a girl next: "Look at that blond girl over there. Is she not the hottest thing on Earth?". As we passed them, the hottest thing on Earth looked at me, wide-opened her big blue eyes and yelled my name. What?
 
It turned out that she was a girl I had met last year's Beach Camp. It took me a split second to remember but I still looked silly. I had written a poem to her the night I saw her the first time. And drunk as I was, it must not have been a very good one. But she liked the principle I suppose. We walked on after having exchanged a couple of precious smiles. And then came the evening.
 
They had organised some concerts. I made myself some calimotxo and joined. One band was already playing when I got there. I elbowed my way to the front row (that's where you usually have the most space to dance) and put myself on an empty spot, near two girls that were flirting together. Ah well...
More people started arriving, it became more crowded.
The music was acceptable. I was little distracted by the two flirting girls that had started kissing. I figure that lesbians don't like to be annoyed by horny guys that have watched too much porn. But then, they were joined by the hottest-thing-in-the-world, that I will refer to under her real name from now on, since she has a significant part in this story: Lisa. One of the girls making out was a the friend that she came with. I started dancing with her, and so, with them.
 
It turned out that the lesbians were actually bisexual. We got into a kiss-fest. Me and three pretty girls, boy!
 
For a moment, I though I had died on that volleyball field and actually went to paradise. That is a big concert hall full of friendly people and bisexual girls, everyone knows that.
 
Anyway, outside the concert hall, there was a place where we could make camp fires. With the girls, we went there and just sat down, our front hot from the radiating heat and our back cold from the german spring. We just talked to people around, of things that I don't remember anymore, but given the alcohol rate in my blood at the time, no wonder.
 
I do remember though, that Lisa was a bit restless for swimming. We were on the side of the lake, and its undisturbed surface must have seemed as a provocation to her. At one point, she just announced: "Ok, let's go swimming", and I felt my legs carrying me up before I could decide if I should go. The other girls as well as a couple of camp-fire-kids came too. We took off all of our clothe on the shore, and I regretted my move as soon as my toes touched the water. It was way colder than my tolerance allows. But I guess my ego was stronger than my sense of conservation and I kept going. I didn't stay long and was out soon, dried myself with my t-shirt and went straight to sit and shake close to the fire.
 
After a while, one of the kiss-fest girls came to sit as well. I was still shivering from the cold water. I turned to her: "Let's go to bed".