Boerenrock!

Yes, it's the moto-cross and music festival that can't decide what it is. Half the posters said Boerenpop and the other half said Boerenrock. There was no Pop in the house. What the heck am I on about?

Boerenrock is an annual moto-cross/music festival, the Drenthe/Groningen version of which is held the last weekend of August, when Dutch summer promises a charming mix of rain and sunshine: warm mud. I went because van Dik Hout was going to be there, and I love them a lot. And because my friends laughed, which made me determined to go. :)

Held near the border between Drenthe and Groningen, Boerenrock was unique. The festival pass was just 65E including camping and all-access. All access meant we got to walk around in the drivers' area. Well, we had to, really, since we had to pass through the drivers' area to get from the camping to the festival area. Anyway....

Camping: My friends lent me their tent and sleeping bag and bedroll. Was perfectly dry and snugly warm,  so yayy on that score. The neighbors accidentally cracked the daylights out of one of my tent poles while putting up their awning, so boo to them, but it didn't affect tent operations. Most of the campers were late-teen/early-20's, hard-rock fans, with a couple of old farmers [boeren = farmers] thrown in. Leaving the tent to use the restroom in the early morning hours was a bit of a risk, as there were always groups of youngsters sitting around shouting, "Gooiemmmmmorgen, buurvrouw/buurman" [Good Mmmmmorning, neighbor(woman/man)] at anyone leaving a tent or camper at any time between 3am and 9am, when they all went to bed.

The old farmer next door was complaining the first afternoon that farmers plus music should equal a party but it wasn't a party when they wouldn't (according to the posted rules) let you bring in booze or food. This did not prevent any number of people from walking around with fifths of whatever, nor the ever-present smell of BBQ, so I'm not sure what he was on about, exactly.

Farmers: Popeye legs. That will be my lasting impression of farmers. (Along with some interesting highlights listed below of course.) On Saturday it was raining off and on but warm, so many of the guys put on shorts. It was only when the crowd gathered for music in the evening that I noticed that every single guy had Popeye legs: amazingly exaggerated calf muscles. Well-developed calf muscles are one of the key features that separate human anatomy from apes'. The anatomists at UC Berkeley will tell you that Cal Bear people are more human than Stanford Cardinal people because there are more hills in Berkeley and therefore better-developed calf muscles. Holland is not a hilly place, but Dutch farmers are extremely human. Must be all the walking in clogs, which brings me to....

Clogs: They wear them. Really really. I only saw guys in clogs. Apparently they were wearing their fancy dress clogs, though, because they were all wearing them with their fancy dress black socks. [Insert shudder.] Socks aside, clogs have been around forever because they work. By all reports, it is easier to walk in the mud in clogs than in any other type of shoe. So there you go. Those guys who did not wear clogs wore mid-calf pull-on boots. Even with shorts.

Highlights:

• Two 20-something guys in jeans with pink thong panties over their jeans, simulating sex with their guy friends, who all bent over for it with a laugh. 
• The "Ik ben homo" song, sung to the tune of "We are sailing." The verses were: Ik ben homo [I'm gay], Jij bent homo [You're gay], Wij zijn homo [We're gay]. Everyone sang along.
• Mosh pit for Stil in Mij. You'd have to hear the song, but Stil in Mij is a slow, romantic song about having no words for the emotions you're having about your love interest. One of the great songs from van Dik Hout. Crowds often sing along. This crowd moshed. Go figure.
• Beer. So. Much. Beer. The music was played inside a circus-sized tent conveniently served by eight bars inside the tent. (And two more outside.) 
• Clean toilets. In spite of the beer, the toilets remained amazing clean. It helped that there were many of them [32 women's and 32 men's in the main area serving a crowd of a couple thousand; 5 women's and 5 men's in the camping area (plus showers) serving 400 campers] and that they were serviced every 5 minutes or so. Thumbs up to the festival organizers on that score.
• Cups. How do you serve 50k or so beers and not have a single plastic cup on the ground? You pay 2E per 20 cups, and the little kids run around picking them up. The parents are happy because the kids are occupied; the kids are happy because they get money to buy sweets and soda and play games; the place is happy because the ground remains continuously cup-free. Brilliant.
• Trekker trek. [Tractor pull] Now this is hick as all get out, but it turns out to be fun to watch! There was every kind of tractor from high-tech, Star Trek-looking things to 25-year-old-plus tractors with car engines. And there was a ton of mud. Oh, and beer. Yep, fun to watch.
• Gronings. NL has a number of dialects. Because cities and villages are so old, they develop individual accents and even distinct languages for each town and region, and the Eastern part of the country is influenced by German, while the Western part of the country is influenced by English plus every other language the very-international West comes into contact with. I can read Gronings just fine, just as I can read Drents, but I hadn't actually heard anyone speak this dialect. It sounded like a cross between Dutch, German, and mush, to my untrained ear. Nary a consonant to be distinctly located, so near as I could tell. Just wow.
• Terrible kibbeling. Holland has some of the best fish-and-chips-type fish in the world, sometimes. And some of the worst. Viskramen (fish stands) are ubiquitous. The quality is a gamble. I got all excited at this one because the young man was cutting the fish and battering it himself. Sadly, it was not completely cooked and the breading wasn't all that crunchy. They do get a +1 for their spices, but as my friend said, "What do farmers know about fish?"
• Amazing sausages. Now what farmers do know about is sausage. And they shone. The sausage of the day was a light-tasting, white sausage, grilled over charcoal and wood, with a thin skin that crisped right up around the sausage. To die for.

Tons more. Fireworks. Hard rock. Local bands recording videos. Raining pijpstelen (pipe-stems, the Dutch version of cats'n'dogs). A guy in a dress with a hag-mask on a tiny bike winning his division in motocross. The 7-year old on a teeny little ATV owning the mud track like he built it. Girls love my big rooster t-shirt.

And with all that I've broken the highest rule: What happens at Boerenrock stays at Boerenrock.