Weekly Update #5: Montelago special
Bit of a late and special one this time. We've been to Montelago Celtic Festival last week! It was Fun! And tiring. Very tiring. I am still aching. Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures.
For those who don't know, it's a big festival (this year 13k people minimum) that takes place in central Italy every summer, ranging from folk music, cosplay, pop culture, tabletop games, medieval re-enactions... you name it.
Basically you set up camp, and have fun.
To get the yapping out of my system, we only faced a couple of problem:
- Me and my S.O. are not used to camping, and this complicated things a bit. Like, the nights were COLD. And DAMP. And boy we didn't prepare properly for THAT.
- The public bathrooms. Goddamnit were they terrible, even if there was staff cleaning then pretty often. If we come back, it's with a private camping toilet.
Bathroom TMI I guess
I didn't poop for three days, and I think I have yet to recover from it. I also became quite apt at not using my hands to enter the bathrooms and exiting. GOD DO I NOT MISS THIS. - In some cases, there were too many people. TOO TOO MANY. Thank you but no, no thank you. NOOO SIR. This was a deal breaker at the Wardruna concert. Kinda sad about it.
Everything else: pretty good! The organization was great, people were surprisingly civil and (for what's possible) clean, the food was nice, there was lots to do.
I got to whack and get whacked with foam swords, which was pretty fun.
A loaded potato with pork, cheese and other stuff.
Spiced wine called Ippocrasso I sipped non-stop for three days. I kinda miss it.
We meet up with IRL friends and played some Magic: The Gathering with a starter set I bought there. Man, the power creep is real, these new starter decks demolish past ones. I also played with a kind (and very hungover) stranger. We went 1-1, and didn't have time for the third one. If we meet again, I owe you one game!
People were super nice, we also made friends with our tent neighbours, who gifted us food and some strange (and strong) homemade Bayleys.
Near our tent was a stage for jam sessions. Apparently The Pretender by Foo Fighters was a crowd favourite. Not that I'm complaining. I sang a lot. We also attended a bit of the Celtic Music Contest, which was nice.
One Highlight of the festival was seeing Kalandra live, they were AMAZING. The singer in particular is great live. Like, studio quality level great.
Honorable mention: the Nickelharp guy that played before them.
I even bought his album, it came in this cute USB keycard.
All in all I had a lot of fun, and I wish I took more photos. I guess I'll leave you with Sauron's tower built out of cans, photo stolen from a friend.
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