Oh my GOD! We had a CREW, big CREW – there in Berlin! STAGEHANDS and FORKLIFT DRIVERS – CREW support for the load out for this big event. Not for the first time but it was good to be back in Berlin. Looking forward for the next year. Our CREW bus full of STAGEHANDS and FORKLIFT DRIVERS came to Berlin, did the load oat and went back to Prague…Sounds simple but trust me, it was a hard work!

Lollapalooza was started in 1990 by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for his band. It ran annually in the USA until 1997 and was revived in 2003 with a festival in Chicago. Since then it has progressed around the world and it’s in quite a random mix of Countries actually.It’s still being held in Chicago, USA, but it’s also in Buenos Aires in Argentina, Santiago in Chile and Sao Paulo in Brazil. It then went across the Atlantic in 2015 to be held in Berlin. Paris was recently added and held its first festival this year in 2017.

Ok let’s start with the music. The Foo Fighters headlined the 2nd day in Berlin and to be honest, do I even need to say any more than that? Probably not, but I will. Mumford & Son’s headlined the 1st day. Two Door Cinema Club were there, as were my faves Rudimental. George Ezra, The XX, Hardwell and sooo many more world class acts were also in Berlin!

Not only were there International acts but they also had a lot of German acts too which I found really nice. On the first day Marteria was performing who is an electronic/rap artist from Germany, I didn’t have a clue what he was saying but I loved him and it seems that a lot of the crowd did too!

Lollapalooza is a lot more than just a music festival! Although in Berlin there were 4 main stages with a range of music, there was also so much more! Let’s get our priorities right and start with the food! Yes, there were sooo many food stalls at Lollapalooza with food from all around the world. The queues were crazy at some points in the day but that surely meant it was really good food? There were art galleries, a fashion section, a sustainability section, an area for local companies to promote their services and goods. There was a ferris wheel which really stood out in the skyline of the festival. However there were no other commerical fair rides and instead a few tents were you could play old school fair games which was a really nice touch.

Outside there was a huge cot and giant table and chairs which grown adults were playing on. There were bubbles with smoke inside, a section of maze mirrors and a section sparkly ribbon that you could run through!

This made things so much easier! Although there is a process of having to top up your wrist band with money at the start and if you run out you need to top up again, but when ordering food and drink it was so much easier just to put your hand out on the bar and have your wristband band tagged contactless! Whats better is that any money left on the band can be redeemed online after the event, even to an international account!

They also had a cool system of giving out a token when you got your first drink, the idea is to then keep hold of the cup until you get another drink and so on and at the end of the night when you take the cup back money is scanned back onto your money tag! This meant that there were no cups on the floor and all of the cups were washable and not just plastic one use cups!

In fact it was a really clean festival in general, even the toilets weren’t that bad for a festival of this size!

Overall I thought it was just a very well planned festival! There were plenty of seats, plenty of entry points, (nearly) plenty of toilets. There was enough space and enough going on. There was a VIP area with a great view and good atmosphere away from the main area. There were plenty of staff and as I said, it was clean and responsible!