Acoustic Lakeside Festival ‘25 - experience

Hellou there, I had written a whole big text already, but for some reason Patreon didn't post it with the pictures. So here we go again - I hope you had a good last week of July and a soft start into August! Today I want to share a few photos from my first real festival, which I went to a few weeks ago. It's called Acoustic Lakeside Festival and takes place in the very idyllic countryside of Carinthia, next to the Sonnenegger See. The acts are mostly folk-acoustic-pop related, but there were also some louder rock bands and intense DJs sets late at night. In general the atmosphere there was very sweet, the people around us were super wholesome and the nature really, really beautiful. I went together with my partner and a close friend (+her cousin), who are all safe space people for me. I was and am very thankful for being surrounded by such understanding and supportive friends, cause unfortunately I had a pretty bad flare-up of my Crohn's disease that week... I probably should have stayed home - but I didn't want to miss the festival, which I was looking forward to for such a long time already (also one of my absolute favorite musicians performed there - Leif Vollebekk, I've mentioned him already a couple of times).

I would like to share some more words about the disease itself, as it's affecting my life for a very long time and it's still quite a tabu topic in society, it's not very pretty... I'm struggling with an IBD (=inflammatory bowel disease) for more than ten years - Morbus Crohn. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, in general it's super individual but when you're experiencing a bad phase it influences every part of your life drastically. Toilets and boiled potatoes are my best friends then, haha - so camping on a festival area together with a couple thousand people is one of the worst places to be honestly. Still the toilet situation was much better than I expected, and I was able to enjoy some parts of our days anyway, so I'm still happy that I went. I'll try to go again next year though and hopefully I can fully enjoy the festival then!
In general I'm not trying to get your condolences or any like that here, I just want to talk about the reality side of life, which gets forgotten so easily in the shiny social media world we live in.

These are some photos I took during the weekend (I honestly didn't take pictures during the concerts, I was just listening & enjoying them):

1. selfie during a walk I took
2. landscape when I got out of the bus
3. still-life of a day at the lake
4. evening sky on our first day
5. my sweet friends
6. gorgeous VW bus from some other festival people
7. an e-casting I recorded
8. some abandoned beehives & my small guitar
9. portrait picture for the e-casting
10. landscape is landscaping (mountains!)
11. where I spent most of my free-time ^^
12. another beautiful sky
13. me being tired but happy to be back home
14. preparing for the harp gigs in Italy afterwards

Wishing you a wonderful August, hope you're all healthy!
Take care,
xx