Comment by schindlabua
19 hours ago
Austria is a small country but festival-wise it does host a couple superlatives -- Donauinselfest as the largest festival in the world, Novarock being the largest rock festival depending on how you count. And then theres so many great other festivals in austria and the surrounding countries, big and small.
People keep raving about burning man so I kind of want to go but I wonder whether I'd just be slightly disappointed. Or whether it's an american media influencing europeans thing where expectations become overinflated compared to what we have here.
Burning Man isn’t really a festival, and you’ll likely have a bad time if you approach it that way.
Many people seem to think it’s some hippy Woodstock or Coachella-esque event, but It’s more like an anarcho-punk temporary city, where your survival is in your own hands.
American media loves to bash it, and Instagram influencers love to flaunt that they went, but it’s most certainly not for everybody.
I don’t recommend going unless you do your research and really want to go.
I’d also encourage any first-timers to go solo their first year.
Like most (counter-) cultural phenomena, you should have seen it ten or twenty years ago when it was an authentic experience, before they sold out and became commercial. Joking of course, but it's true. It's a gentrified shadow of its former glory.
It's not a music festival like the ones you listed for starters, and while those are like an all-inclusive resort in that you just show up with money, Burning Man is more like camping in that you take everything there (and back).
Nova Rock is mostly camping on and inhaling dry dirt, camping in and being covered in mud, not going to the toilet for 2-3 days, and eating canned food. But I hear you.
As an Austrian living in the Bay Area and on my fourth burn and having been to Novarock and the Donauinselfest: it is very much not the same. BM is less a music festival than an immersive experience. For self-reliant folks, it is a delight. For others, hell. Try it out, see what it is for yourself.