Music Festival: Rain masses transform Wacken into mud field

Permanent rain until deep into the night is difficult for metal fans in the Schleswig-Holstein Wacken. Large parts of the area are mud or already mud, there are larger water surfaces in many places. But there is hope.

According to the German Weather Service (DWD), the constant rain on the Wacken Open Air is over. “The worst is over,” said a DWD expert. Nevertheless, the heavy metal festival could continue to show and thunderstorms in the coming days.

According to the expert, between five to ten liters of water per square meter can also fall on the soaked floors of the festival site in northern German Wacken. Otherwise it stays dry, and the sun can also show occasionally – then temperatures of over 20 degrees would even be reached. On Thursday, the temperature was around 17 degrees.

Much more rain shouldn’t have come either, says festival founder Thomas Jensen. “Of course that’s hard.” He speaks of 40 liters of rain per square meter. The teams worked at all corners and ends, everything actually run according to plan. “We would have preferred to get another plan for sunshine.”

Instead of 800 cubic meters of wood chips, more than 3,000 would now be used on the surfaces. The main thing is to make the playing areas playable. “We were actually lucky in misfortune,” said co -founder Holger Hübner. “It could have been worse.”

Good atmosphere and plenty of beer

And even the visitors to the Wacken Open Airs cannot be spoiled by the mood of the weather. “Everything, of course, mushy, but everything is good – tent is dry,” says Tom, who goes over the festival site with his buddy Dennis on Thursday afternoon. In view of the now apparent sun, Tom was “very optimistic”.

“It can only get better,” emphasizes Dennis. The two want to move on from stage to stage. “I would not like to do a mud bath,” added Tom before going back on the way.

Another festival visitor reports about the nightly rains: “The tent is sometimes wet, maybe slightly flooded, but otherwise everything fits.” It stayed dry under his pavilion. In addition, “the mood is good and the beer is plentiful.”

While the festival site is already mushy, the meadow around the tents remains green. “The condition is tiptop,” says another visitor about the campground. On the main paths of the camp, however, there is “something wet grass”, as it expresses it.

At the Heavy Metal Festival, Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD) and his Kiel counterpart Tobias Goldschmidt (Greens) campaigned for moor protection on Thursday.

Both inquired about a project with mats from bins and other moor grass on a 200 -meter test track in a forest of the festival. “We also try to achieve economic yield from moor and moor protection,” said Schneider. He was excited to see whether the mats exist the Hartet test Wacken.

The Wacken mats consist of rushes and other moor grass as well as Jutegarn and for stability on the underside made of coconut fibers. The project manager “Klimafarm” of the Nature Conservation Foundation, Elena Zydek said that the rain was a “real stress test” for the mats.

Few police operations at night

Despite the heavy rains, the work of the police was limited at night. According to the information, the mood remained good and mostly peaceful. The operations kept at a low level.

In this way, an employee of the security service suffered minor injuries in dealing with a festival visitor late Wednesday evening. The police initiated criminal proceedings against the attacker for assault. In addition, two unknown men immortalized the information. The emergency services filed a complaint for sexual harassment.

Festival goes until Saturday

Headliners of the festival in Wacken are Guns N ‘Roses that occur on Thursday evening. For the US rock musicians, Wacken is the end of their European and Middle East tour. The French band Gojira, the US rocker Papa Roach, Machine Head, Saltatio Mortis, Apocalyptica and Michael Schenker are also expected. The Wacken Open Air is one of the largest heavy metal festival worldwide. It takes until Saturday (August 2).