Masha woke up early to go catch her plane. It took me a while but I got up as well to help her get her stuff together. Hangover was on the low scale, it was a sunny morning, fresh breeze and all...
 
I went for breakfast with my bag of food to the broke-ass area. There were only two people so I sat with them. It's already annoying enough to be eating the same stuff for the 7th meal in a row. Add the slight hangover and the last you want is to put up with a bitch-conversation.
The two kids I made the mistake to sit with were probably the worst possible case. One boy and one girl, the boy all over the girl, the girl trying to ignore him as much as possible. They obviously had spent the night together, obviously not fucking, obviously because the girl is "not this kind of girl". I was careful to spend a lot of time chewing my bread, as an excuse not to respond to her bickering about "this hookup-camp", quoting her terms.
But she had a point. The level of sexual interaction in this place was even higher than in a university (that population have the same average age). It seemed that, the above-mentioned bitch excepted, everyone had let to of his/her social locks on human relationships upon entering the camp-area.
That is why everyone was smiling back. That is why I could just walk into a group of friends, say: "hi, I'm Julien" and instantly become one of them. That is why when I took the hand of a girl I liked, and that liked me, she did not fracture my fingers, screaming nonsense about not being a slut. Except for the above-mentioned bitch, that felt as comfortable as the grand inquisitor would have felt in Woodstock. By the time I was too disgusted by my own food to eat anymore, Bilbo showed up and sat down with me. That was a relief...
 
I intended to join an excursion in the woods at 12pm, but I waited pointlessly as nobody showed up. As I found myself without plan for the afternoon, I went up to... well... the volleyball field. In the end of the afternoon, another storm alert was given. We could see great black clouds massed on the other side of the lake. The thunder was simmering.
I went to secure my stuff and back on the field, with the intention to run for cover when the first drops would start falling. They never came; but at one moment, somebody caught the ball in mid-air and dropped it. And we all raised our heads, feeling something really strange was happening, not quite knowing what. As we were growing more confused, one of us said: "what's that light?". And I noticed. The ambient light had changed color. It was redder than it should have been. That truely gave an impression of being on a different planet.
Then the light faded back to normal and we resumed the game. Until it was too dark to play.
 
A friend of mine had arrived in the meantime. If you're familiar with the concept of "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", you might want to refer to her as my "ex-girlfriend-but-we're-still-talking". If you don't, you can call her "Lea".
 
A bit later, I found myself talking about sex with Thomas and Rose, a friend from Amsterdam. I was trying to make the point to them that something in the women's nature or education makes them good customers of dominant behaviour. Thomas is a hard-edge feminist and was accusing me of considering women like walking vaginas. Rose on another hand was more receptive to the concept. Which is not surprising, since Thomas has nothing but second hand material to react upon whereas Rose could directly reflect on the concept. She was a bit uneasy with it and dragged me to a group of her friends that she said would be interested in the debate.
By the time I was half-way through my point, I noticed that one in the group was looking at me like she was going to commit murder at anytime. I went off to do something else. When I joined the group two hours later, they were still at it. The murder-girl was steaming with rage. When she saw me, she burst into tears and said she hated me. I suggested a fight.
 
Fights are good to drain bad energy. We met on the beach and I waited for her to strike first. But our fight ended very quickly as she was more interested in speaking. We went for a walk on the beach and she told me that she had been and was still victim of an abusive boyfriend. I couldn't have dreamed of a better illustration to my assertion.
Because even though he was abusive and violent, she wouldn't let go of him. I tried to give her a piece of rationality and we came back more or less friends.
 
There were no concert planned. And there were much much less people. A lot had left in the afternoon to go back to the life of social codes and monotony that they might have choosen for a destiny. The others had gathered around the campfire or under the storm-roof, that are both at the end of the beach. I was out of calimotxo so it was going to be my sober-night. Lea on another hand, was drunk enough that I avoided hanging around.
 
One blessed moment came when I was sitting on a chair, eyeing at a half-full beer forgotten on a table, and someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around and saw nobody. Then noticed that someone was crouching behind my chair. It was Annika, a girl I had met a year before, looking at me expectantly: "You want to go on a mission?". I said "yeah, let's go" and jumped off my seat. She was a bit surprised: "You don't want to know what it is about?" - "Nope, I'm bored. So what are we doing?"
The plan was, along with her boyfriend and to go to the dark little road that was linking the camp-site to the civilized world. There we would hide in the bushes and wait for a group of people on their way back to the camp. And at an agreed-on signal jump upon them making as much noise as possible in order to give them a good scare. Pretty stupid idea. We had a lot of fun.
Well actually, the most interesting parts were when we had to wait between two groups. We would sit on the tarmac and talk, drinking ice tea. As they are rather interesting people, it was a very nice time. On the other hand, we did not manage to make anyone crap their pants.
 
I spent most of the evening with them. Annika in particular is a very peculiar person. She positively hates people. Anyone. She spent the whole evening tending to the fire. Zealously moving the embers around as the wood was collapsing. I saw a guy trying to have a conversational exchange with her. In the least original fashion, he asked her where she was from. She responded shortly, while scrambling the fire: "Germany". The guy answered that he thought Germans were really cool. She paused her activity, as if deciding of the best way to assassinate him and then replied, still not looking at him, still with her permanent distant smile. She replied that she hated germans, that she thought that germans were the worst race that ever walked the Earth, that she was really appalled to find out that someone would say such thing, because obviously, it was simply impossible to like germans. The guy retreated. She focussed back on the fire.
 
I wanted to stay up until sunrise. But as the crowd disintegrated, there wasn't much to do left. I hopped from group to group, trying to find someone interesting and not too drunk to talk to. Annika and Damien seemed to need some time alone. I settled for a campfire circle centred around a very talkative and annoyingly bitchy french girl. I just listened to the unending stream of gibberish that kept pouring out her mouth, sometime placing a remark that launched her into a new salvo. In the background of that somehow pathetic scene, one lonesome juggler was... well juggling.
My life story includes a lot of university and travel, so I have seen my lot of jugglers. And this one was the best, by far, that I ever saw. He really made my morning. Up to the point when someone brought a huge ghetto blaster and put on some really cool computer-music. The sun was not far, I decided I should dance until it reared its head. And I did so. When the upper tip of the sun broke above the horizon, I gave a big shout: "It's there!" and kept dancing ; until it was out all the way. Then I found Lea, that had spend most of the night debating with Ulf-the-debater, and told her I was going off. She joined me and thus, won the debate, I suppose.