Ostrava is hosting a highlight of the summer with 300 performances and headliners Rudimental, Kasabian and Björk. As a warm up for Sziget, we decided to go this year for Colours of Ostrava too.
Day 1
We had a lot of troubles getting all the 6 tickets we needed for 2 people to enjoy this festival. Makes me thinking if there could not be an easier way to run the whole ticketing. Count with me: 2 people entrance tickets, 2 people entrance to the campsite, 1 tent ticket and 1 car to be parked. After we read on the website of the festival that the campsite is sold out as well as the parking, we were trying to get those from people who were not coming. It was a huge fight of clicking and often people were willing to pay 3x more than the original price. To our big surprise, when we arrived on the spot, we could still buy entrance to the campsite (as we were short of 1 person) and we could park the car in the surrounding streets (based on advice of the local policemen) – which saved us 35 EUR. But once we got hold of the essential tickets, it went very smoothly!
The tent city by the festival is not crowded and you can buy still tickets, so do not get fooled by the hysteria on the Facebook event of the festival.
Nice surprise was that already at the tent city, we managed to get the bracelet for the festival. This saved one more queue! Good move, festival!
First impressions from the Colours of Ostrava festival:
– the industrial setting of the festival area is breath taking especially at night
– use of light is very good, although could be a bit variable. This by itself could be an entire post, which I am thinking I will write soon 🙂 Go to Sziget for inspiration. My all time Sziget favourite are little aluminum stars and huge reflector – unforgettable and very efficient solution. Unfortunatelly, there were only big bulbs in the campsite of the Colours of Ostrava that never went off!
– big choice of beer and affordable prices. If you live in Hungary, going to the Czech Republic to a festival is like a heaven: well draught beer with low price and huge selection of good ones too! Somewhere I have read that there are 21 different types of beers sold at the Colours of Ostrava festival. We for sure did not manage to taste all of them. Maybe a map with numbers and brands available would be a good idea. I for sure missed drinking my all time favourite Holba Šerák
– there is a lot of places within the festival where you just walk and there is nothing to entertain you and on the contrary you get to places where there is too much to do
– it looks like the festival has been designed for disabled people and there is a lot of them! I like this kind of approach! People with disabilities have their own entrance, special ramps to watch concerts, camping section and can even get an assistant to tour the festival
– concert that we saw and enjoyed: Bokka – it seemed it was just us and a lot of Polish people, but it was enjoyable and well selected continuation of Björk concert!
– I read an article that the Czech Republic is the number one of Paypass contactless payments, it is a pity that you cannot use your bank card or prepaid festival card for drinks and food (like at all major European festivals)
– you can get fresh drinking water at the Colours of Ostrava and there is a fire brigade cruising the festival to cool off the party people! Very good move as the weather forecast is indicating temperatures above 30C.
– there is a lot of safety rules at the Colours of Ostrava for entering the festival ground, funnily enough you get to your first stage and you happen to have a lot of big slag stones that call for being picked up and thrown. So far, nobody got the courage to execute the idea. Is it really that much effort to remove them? When it is at the same time possible to make a sandy beach?
– the best are the people of Colours of Ostrava – I have seen a lot of courtesy and kind behaviour. I think this festival matches well a group of people that are not recent teenagers anymore and yet want to have fun! Well done, organizers!
Stay tuned for more observations about Day 2 of Colours of Ostrava! So far we can call it the hot day!