On 9 July I went back to Novi Sad for the opening of the EXIT Festival. We gathered on the terrace of the Petrovaradin Fortress, enjoying the fantastic view across the Danube to Novi Sad, as the Mayor, Igor Pavličić, and EXIT general manager, Bojan Bošković, both made short speeches of welcome. Then we walked around the venue together, sampling the range of different musical styles of offer. The fortress is in many ways a fantastic venue, with thick walls providing good sound insulation, so the different stages can be quite close together and work at the same time, without creating musical confusion. The crowds were peaceful, with lots of young people clearly set on having the first of several great musical nights. We visited the main stage for a while, and watched a British rapper, Roots Manuva, and his band. To be honest it's not what I would normally listen to, but he got a great reception from the crowd. Meanwhile our Embassy consular team had set up their stand at the Festival camp site, and were starting to provide a range of assistance to the roughly 4,500 Brits who were camping there - providing information, and helping resolve various problems including some suspected cases of swine flu and other medical issues.
Then in the early hours of 11 July we got the tragic news that a young British visitor to the Festival had been killed in an accidental fall. The consular team in London were in touch with the family, and our team at the camp site worked with the local authorities and with the friends of the young man to establish what had happened and how. Naturally the friends decided not to stay at the Festival, and our consular team and the organisers worked hard to help them return to the UK that afternoon. For the young man's friends, it was a very distressing end to something that had started so well, and it left our team deeply saddened too; but they did their jobs professionally and saw the group to the airport and onto their planes.
The rest of the Festival passed without serious incident, and most Festival goers seem to have had a great time. The Festival itself ended early on Monday 13 July, but the camp site stayed open until Wednesday 15 July, allowing people to disperse slowly. As always, a small number of people were detained for possession of drugs, having ignored all the advice that we and others had been giving out. They ended up in court, and were fined. And for the past few days we have been processing cases of missing passports, in some cases re-uniting people who thought they had lost them with their passports that had been found and turned in by others, in other cases issuing emergency passports to get people back to the UK.
So that's it for another year. But for many of us the abiding memory of this EXIT will be of a young man's tragic death. Our thoughts are with his family.
Posted at 15:36 16 July 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[3]
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I went to Novi Sad on 7 July, to hand over a patrol vehicle to the head of the local police. We are just coming up to the annual EXIT rock festival in Novi Sad, and this year, as for the last two years, we are expecting about 9000 Brits to turn up. They arrive in various ways, some by air via Belgrade or Budapest, others by bus, train or car: many will spend four or more nights camping at a special festival camp site. Altogether, some 100,000 people will attend over the whole period of the festival, but visitors from the UK make up the largest single foreign contingent. Many of the guest bands are British too.
Naturally, this great influx of visitors imposes a considerable burden on the local administration, the police in particular, and over the last few years we have worked very closely with them in the run-up to each year's festival. This year, we arranged for two Novi Sad police officers to visit the Glastonbury festival, so they could see how the Somerset police manage things, and when we asked what else they needed, they said some support with vehicles. Which is why I handed over the keys to a new Skoda (the same make as their existing cars) this morning. It will help them patrol the event better, and when that's over they will assign it permanently to the 'foreign visitors' section of the police car pool, so it will go on helping them to support the growing number of tourists who come to Novi Sad.
After that I went with the Mayor and police chief to look at the camp site, where many Brits have already arrived. The site is new this year: last year one visitor from Macedonia was killed when a branch fell from a tree at the well-wooded site, and so they had to find somewhere new, and safe. The first idea was to place the camp by the river, but the Danube is very high this year and that site flooded. So the plans changed again, and another site was found, at an old army barracks within the Petrovaradin fortress itself (the festival site). Everything had to be got ready at top speed, but they managed it, and the first arrivals seemed very happy with what they found.
EXIT opens on Thursday; we will have an Embassy team on hand, to help with any consular problems. Let's hope there aren't any serious issues to deal with, and they can just enjoy the music too!
Posted at 09:30 08 July 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[6]
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EXIT Festival 09 - stay safe and enjoy!
Today we are hosting an entry written by Ian Craig, member of our Consular team that will be in Novi Sad during the EXIT Festival, 9-12 July, to assist British visitors in case of emergency. Although there has been an Embassy presence at EXIT for many years in 2008 the British Embassy set up an help and information stand at the EXIT campsite. This year we will doing the same and myself and other colleagues will be there from 10 until 5 everyday of the festival, we also be on call 24 hours a day on special designated numbers which you can find on our Embassy site and on this blog. The site and blog will also tell you what we can and cannot do for you. Enjoy EXIT, keep safe, drink lots of water, slap on the suncream as it will be hot and sunny and hopefully we won't see you for anything more than a chat.
EXIT is one of the best and most enjoyable festivals in the world and even people of my age can have a flashback to long gone days of jumping around to Eton Rifles (Paul Weller 2008) and this year getting those too tight Fred Perry T-shirts out for some Nutty Boy mayem from Madness. EXIT is also a great showcase for Serbia and the majority of people leave with nothing but good impressions of the country, as is shown by the many who return year after year.
Posted at 19:33 26 June 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[0]
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