Yes, the sound was very good, so were the lights and the smoke (slightly more of it when the photographers were allowed, as usually

). Ok so here's my impression of what I experienced in the past 2 days:
10 hours of driving (because of numerous traffic jams and works on the roads)

. Then about one hour of walking in the heat from the parking place to the entrance to the festival (because the festival area is so big). Then nearly two hours spent on trying to get in, because of the ticket cockup confusion: nobody knew anything, I was sent from one person to another to another to another and nobody knew anything about the ticket swap, at some point I was treated like a crazy person trying to show them possibly fake (!) e-mails from
office@novarock.at ("but who is this? we don't know this e-mail address") and from the Sisters guitarist ("who? sister of mercy? but we don't have such a band on the leaflets, are you sure that they play here today?")... luckily finally somebody was kind enough to help, he went somewhere to check something and got to know that they in fact had been given a clear instruction from the band about the entire situation, and it was just the poor quality of information flow that's to blame.

Fair enough, I got the wristband and I entered, wa-hooo! Two beers, one cider, time to find the stage. And now the truly hard part begun. 7 hours of standing in uninterrupted sunlight, in the crowd who like to jump - the ground is very dry, so imagine the amount of dust in the air!

And the bands. Ooooooh, the bands. I can't remember how many, five or six, I can't remember the names or anything apart from the terrible noise, some very silly clothes, the "we love you austria, you are the best audience in the world" attitude (yeah yeah, as if, I bet you say the same at every gig you liar), and other much more embarrassing examples of how easy it is to control a crowd of drunk teenagers... At some point when the sun was going down, I really thought I was going to either puke and leave, or leave and puke. I got those thoughts like: what am I doing?, I'm mad, I should leave this place and see a doctor, why am I doing this to myself? Honestly - I did have such stupid thoughts, so you can imagine how terrible it was.
But then it started.

First few seconds and everything suddenly makes sense, everything just clicks into place.

An emphasised word here and there, an accidentaly altered or repeated line or two, a gesture, a meaning so delicate but so much more true than the "meaning" of the previous 7 hours.

Thank you dearest Sisters for being what you are and here's to the next one!
