Exit Festival

The first person to tell us about Exit was one of the priest's helpers at a monestary in Bac, Serbia. "You aren't going to Exit?" he asked us incredulously. "To what?" we asked. "The rock festival in Novy Sad." We had come into the monestary for two reasons, the first was that we were hot, and we thought the monestary looked cold. The second was that we had time to kill before the heat resided (maybe around 5, but really around 7pm)and we could cycle again. The priest was happy to have visitors, and he was busy showing us the ancient alters, old paintings and historic architecture of his monestary: Medieval, Baroque, Ottoman and Renessaince styles, a real show of the history of Central Europe.
"Ahh," said the priest, in his clear Serbian, waving his hand, and if the outside world was slightly beyond him. "The festival is full of Narkomen and Alcoholics."
"Yes," said the helper, rather wistfully. "I don't need those big rock concerts, too many people." He paused. "They say 2,000 will be there."

While we were cycling late that night, with our head lamps on, we got a lot of stares. I said hello to a lady with her kids. "You going to Exit?" She asked immediately.

The next day, a farmer began gesticulating at us from across his field. If Michal hadn't been there, I would have swore he was saying something like: "You're sitting on my property, get away from here. Go go go!" But before I knew it, Michal was walking towards this man, and thanking him. What he actually had been saying is "Come here, I have some apples for you. Come over here!" Michal came back with his shirt full of summer apples, sweet and tart and good.
"Guess what he wanted to know," Michal said. "He asked if we were going to Exit."

It wasn't until we got to Sarajevo, and saw this poster advertising Jamiroquoi and Arcade Fire, that we saw how big the Exit festival actually was. We spent the weekend sweating and cycling and sleeping in corn fields instead. Maybe next year....