Ever heard of the Untold festival? It may not have nearly as much name recogition as Tomorrowland or EDC, but it's definitely on the same level when it comes to all the artists they bring here. Ten stages covering I don't know how many subgenres, and a lineup including David Guetta, Armin van Buurin, Martin Garrix, Paul Kalkbrenner, Kungs, Nora en Pure, Nero, and a ton of others, but being in Romania it's way cheaper. I think my weekend pass cost me less than 200€. Of course, you still gotta pay for transportation to Cluj, and for a ho(s)tel (there's no camping)...but even so, if you go to Untold you're still going to be paying much less for the experience than for a festival with the same lineup in a richer country. And unlike Tomorrowland, in which each "weekend" is three days which always end at midnight, Untold lasts four days and the "nights" don't end until six the next morning.
So first: getting there. These days I tend to prioritize road, rail, and sea travel over air, which I try to use as a last resort. I had wanted to take trains to Cluj, but from Stuttgart that just wasn't feasible. It seems rail infrastructure is just another area in which eastern Europe lags a couple decades behind the west. All of the potential rail journeys I could've booked would've lasted between 18 and 24 hours, even though it was possible to reach destinations the same distance away in the other direction in less than half that time. So with no other choice I had to fly there.
The trip started on Thursday morning, August 1. I had booked flights there on a "low-cost" Romanian airline, Blue Air. The longest flight was Stuttgart-Bucharest, and then a short connecting hop to Cluj. Before boarding the first plane, however, I had to go through passport control, because even though Romania is an EU country, it is not a Schengen country, meaning I had to stand in line to get an entry stamp in my passport. Thankfully that was done in Stuttgart before departure, sparing me from the hassle after landing, but it's still a hassle.
Then in Bucharest, I had to spend something like three or four hours waiting around in a small terminal with one little bar/light dinner stand and a couple stores I had zero interest in. I spent most of the time slowly walking around while reading the only reading material I had packed, a ham radio magazine called QST, and stopping for a dinner and a beer at one point. Also, I had to hit an ATM and withdraw some Romanian lei, because not only is this country outside the Schengen Area, it's not in the Eurozone either. It occurred to me that I could've spared myself all this boredom by booking a train from Bucharest to Cluj (assuming one left soon after my landing) and beat this plane to Cluj by an hour or so. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20. Finally as the sun was going down I finally got to board the jet that I would spend less than an hour riding to Cluj.
I think eastern Europeans are a bit more religious than western Europeans. There was a girl sitting next to me who crossed herself repeatedly as the plane took off. You just don't see that in Germany.
The sun was completely down when I finally arrived in Cluj. A taxi took me to Hostel Transylvania where I checked in, claimed an empty bunk bed, and stowed my luggage in a locker. Now to get into the fest...
Getting to the festival grounds was not that tough. It was taking place in Central Park, so all I had to do was walk down a few main streets, past the Hungarian State Opera, and there it was. But getting in for the first time was a bit of a hassle since I had to wait in a certain line to get my wristband. I don't remember how long that took, but this place wasn't exactly empty. When I got the wristband, one of the people there put it on my right wrist and tightened it for me, making removing it a week later a bit of a struggle. But then, finally, I was in! Now what?
As the fest was in a big forested park, most everything lined a walking-only "street" going down the middle of the park. It was probably because of the trees, but it reminded me of Electric Forest, just a little. With the sun down, the place was full of all kinds of colorful lights. I liked the atmosphere.
The first thing I did was a necessity: went to a "cashless payment" kiosk and loaded up my wristband with some spending money. This is a pretty common practice at music festivals; your wristband is linked to an account which functions as a virtual wallet, so to pay for anything you just touch your wristband to a scanner.
Right inside the entrance was a stage called Nostalgia, which was always pumping out favorites from the 90s and 2000s. And at this moment, funnily enough, they were playing Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas is You" even though Christmas was almost five months away.
There wasn't a whole lot I was interested in Thursday night. I had wanted to see Tove Lo, but she finished her set long before I even landed. I got some coffee--thankfully, unlike Tomorrowland, coffee stands were plentiful across the fest--and eventually some beer. And also...
Hodor! Kristian Nairn is most famous for playing Hodor on Game of Thrones, but he's also a DJ who can put on some great sets of progressive trance or something like that (I'm really terrible with subgenres). I had been at his set at Middle Lands over two years earlier and was really impressed. Tonight's, at the Time stage, was just as good.
Between drinking more and exploring this new, unfamiliar ground, the only other highlight was catching a drum 'n bass set at the Alchemy stage, served up by Pendulum back to back with Friction. After that I just couldn't keep going till sunup so I headed back to the hostel for some much-needed sleep.
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