Euro Trip 2017: Day 4 - Back in Berlin

The seven-hour bus ride from Munich to Berlin wasn't so bad. We stopped at a gas station for a quick break at around 2:30 a.m. I had to take a moment to process the situation: I was standing in almost-freezing weather somewhere in Germany in the middle of the night. There was a police car and some of the cops were chatting with (interrogating?) some of the passengers stretching their legs outside the bus.

Somewhere along the German autobahn

Rest stop in the middle of the night somewhere between Munich and Berlin

Soon we were off again. I must've slept the rest of the way because the next thing I knew, we were pulling into Berlin ZOB (main bus station). If the Munich train system was complicated, Berlin's is even more so. Thankfully, I kept my wits about me and found my hotel without any major trouble.

The Schonweide train station

Truth on a wall 

I got there at around 8 a.m. so it was too early to check-in. Thank heavens for wi-fi. I spent a couple of hours on my phone. But I decided to walk around for a bit and discovered an Asian restaurant inside a shopping mall across from the hotel. I got another chicken-and-rice meal, although they messed up my order and handed me a beef dish when I explicitly said I wanted chicken. I didn't budge.

Back at the hotel, I had just enough time to shower, change and get my stuff together before I ran out again. I was headed to the reason why I was in Berlin in the first place. Lollapalooza was Pedi's idea and I didn't think I'd actually get to go. But things worked out and I soon found myself squeezing between hundreds of festival-goers inside the S-Bahn going to Hoppegarten.

The scene at the Hoppegarten train station...

...and inside Lollapalooza Berlin 2017

There were A LOT of people

I've been to a few music festivals in the Philippines and elsewhere, but the scale of Lolla Berlin was on a whole 'nother level. The venue was massive (it was, or maybe still is, a racehorse park). There were four big stages, a few smaller ones, a kids play and activity area, dozens of food and drinks stalls, and tens of thousands of eager, music-loving, flower crown-wearing, mostly cigarette-smoking, beer-guzzling warm bodies that filled up the field. I wrote about the experience for Esquire Philippines.

Bear's Den! Their folk-pop sound reminds me of lazy Sunday afternoons back when I was a kid in the 1980s

George Ezra was a definite highlight of the festival for me

I was fortunate enough to have been given media access and spent part of the time hanging out here at the press center

Love and music

This was the best I could do during Mumford and Sons' set. I just spent the time listening to Marcus Mumford

There weren't a whole lot of Asian faces at the festival itself, and I was pretty sure I was the only one from the Philippines covering the event. I caught Bear's Den, George Ezra and Mumford & Sons sets, skipped Two Door Cinema Club and joined the long procession of people who left the festival at around 10 p.m. There was another day to look forward to.



Next: Foo Fighters hit Lollapalooza