And if you are curious about my LED outfit, you can read more about it on my led peacock engineer medium post and if you'd like to read all my festivals or dreamstate, or clubbing posts, please click on the links higher on the page to get taken to those categories.
After going to Boom in Portugal last year, Ozora was the other big psytrance festival I had to check out, and thankfully it didn't conflict with Untold this year, so I was able to attend just after tomorrowland. I would say it is indeed the biggest psytrance focussed festival in Europe and likely one the biggest ones in the world.
Getting There and Grounds
Getting ready before the festival, barely enough time to recharge my gear before going to Ozora:
Flight to Budapest
More last minute charging at the bus station to Ozora :)
waited 1h30 for the next shuttle, nice bus
Here's the map of the main things, as you can see, once inside it's not too much of a walk, but if you zoom out, you'll see it is bigger, and the road you have to walk from and back to if you don't have a car, is far!
Finally got there, but they dropped us a long walk away from the real entrance when you have heavy luggage, no idea why. I got lucky on the way in with a tractor ride that is only there randomly, so timing was good. On the way back however, I waited over 1h for the tractor that was supposed to get around, and it never came. Dragging my luggage back out was absolutely terrible since it was more than 50kg total, and of course it broke the wheels after being dragged in pebbles and dirt for too long.
Also, you'd better know where you are going since there is almost no cell once you go in, so you won't be able to find any maps or easily know where you are.
don't fall off :)
long ride up, I can only imagine how terrible it would have been without the lucky tractor
If you get lost:
cool signs, but the first time, it's confusing
After strategizing for an hour and walking around, found a good place for my tent:
view from my porch
many stores and dining hall
Charging was tricky, I had to use a nearby store's back plugs but my things were not secure and some of the store owners were not super happy. There wasn't a very good solution to this:
Power was non trivial, vendors and eating locations did have some power plugs, but of course leaving anything to charge was at your own risk, and theft was reported to be an issue. Honestly only people with a car they could lock up, were safe. Everyone else was taking risks and I heard people who had their entire luggage including passport stolen from their tent, not good :-/
But back to lights, kudos to all the people who brought some, including fancy ones
For most people, they had to hunt for a plug:
Now, you would say, why don't you just go use lockers, well, lockers were not really that but just a bunch of numbered holes that someone was kind of watching. I honestly don't think I'd feel that comfortable leaving my passport anywhere but a locked car, so I kept it on me the entire time, along with other things, which wasn't too convenient.
this was the 'lockers', would you leave your wallet, or passport, or computer there?
I had a massive failure of my LED strings, thankfully I had just enough tools to barely fix it:
There were basic stores close to where I camped:
prices were very reaosnable
Camping was everywhere and some things were far:
There was even a farm:
Middle Earth
One thing I really liked about Ozora, was the middle earth feel:
very cool
Interesting set list:
Also very nice at night:
row of food and drink stores with reasonable pricing
Also another row of random stores, mostly clothes and trinkets:
Mainstage
But of course, everyone was there for the music. There were multiple stages, but mainstage was the main one, and by a lot...
Of course, night was the best time:
yes, it is a bit crazy at times, yo have to live it
can be enjoyed from almost anywhere :)
I was pretty impressed by the amount of LEDs and lights, considering it was not easy to charge
things got crazy late at night, BPMs went higher and higher, reaching almost 200 :)
yes, it's real, this was captured by my phone
Other Stages
There were 5 or 6 stage depending on how you counted, one was not far from my tent. Yes, it was warm during the day, but they had you covered:
Lots of stages and lots of DJs, definitely a lot more variety than Boom:
People
Some people came with costumes, but not too many, and not too many LED costumes
this guy brought his bed at mainstage
found some friends
ok, and that too I guess:
Enough people brought shiny stuff, thank you:
nice outfit
DJs
Compared to boom, I liked the music better at Ozora, there was more variety, and more kinds I was able to enjoy. It was exiting to see some of my favorite psytrance DJs in their natural habitat :)
Electric Universe!
I was excited to see nice psytrance and Astrix of course:
Similarly, Flemming and Lawrence were loads of fun:
they found me for a picture :)
My last day before departure, I was super excited to see Man with No Name, whom I had never gotten to see before:
so thankful to have a picture with him
Would I go back? Should You Go?
Soon after that seeing Man with No Name, I had had more than plenty, almost a full week and it was intense, so I packed my tent, and did the long and painful walk back out to the shuttle back to the airport.
In theory there is a tractor that's supposed to do rounds and bring you back to the exit, but after 1H of waiting, no such luck. I had to do drag my luggage out a very long distance and partially destroy it in the process.
And it's now that I'm supposed to give you all my wisdom on Ozora :), so let's see what I can do:
it was a unique experience, I'm glad I did it
it was also rough and obviously far, getting in and out without a car and with luggage was unfortunately the worst experience of any festival I've been to.
specifically, going without a car to drive your stuff to your campsite and lock things securely, was difficult, I'd even say very painful if you were carrying all your gear like I was, including electronics, lots of batteries, chargers, decent size tent and all.
being dropped off not even at the real entrance, and the very long way in, if you're carrying any luggage, was punishing, especially if you aren't lucky enough to get the tractor ride. Maybe it is worth to rent a car for the week?
Yeah, you're going to tell me to travel light, but with all my LED gears, a proper size tent, clothes for a week, camera and laptop gear, and batteries, many batteries, it's not possible to be light. I really wish they had better help for people who have to carry stuff and can't be expected to drag it on a dirt path for several kilometers.
I arrived late monday, festival opened on friday and most people came early. I read about huge lines that backed up the main road, due to how inefficient the check in process was (thankfully not an issue by the time I arrived).
Check in process was manual ID verification before they would carefully put a wristband on you in a way you could not take it out. Honestly I'm fine with festivals verifying tickets, but when it's to that level (and Ozora is far from being the only one), it's not great.
the stories of theft I heard were not good, that included people losing all their luggage and belongings. That made me quite nervous for the rest of the week since you can't really lock a tent
for the average person, finding a plug to charge your phone will be fine, but if you have more gear like me, it's a lot less trivial (maybe again, a car would help)
the weather is uncertain, and it can rain a lot on some years, be ready
the middle earth village and decors were absolutely awesome and worth seeing. Let me actually say that it was truly unique and in some way worth by itself, going to Ozora to experience.
there was a good variety of psytrance and other music that did not feel as experimental as boom, so that was a plus. Actually to be more clear, there was enough variety of music at Ozora, that at all times there was something I could enjoy, so that was really a good thing.
cell phone service was close to non existent (boom had much better coverage).
there was some wifi close to vendors, but it was extremely poor. This means that meeting up with others via phone would not be easy.
the food options were varied and well priced. Similarly true for drinks.
few vendors took credit cards, but all of them gladly took Euros despite it not being legal tender in Hungary. I'll give a thumbs up for not requiring any fake and unreliable wristband virtual money. Real money worked great, thank you!
The only security was to make sure I had a valid ticket, nothing beyond that. That was nice and refreshing, outside of the theft issues.
Many folks, including most vendors, spoke little english but it was not an issue unless you really needed help with something specific
But would I go back?
Honestly, probably not. A few reasons:
some of the crowds were pretty far out for me, very hippie like to a level that was a bit difficult for me at times (and I've been to burning man 14 times, so I've seen a few things :) ).
I saw a few folks being very messed up on no idea what drugs it was, but it wasn't good. I remember one guy being dangerous and aggressive.
I saw demented parents taking a small crying child around the front row and looking like it was good when clearly the child wanted out
it looked cute, but the child looks very unhappy :(
I believe I heard someone ran into a big fire and died :-(
I got reasonably lucky with minimal rain, some years it's a lot lot worse
Overall I felt like I had a hard time fitting in and belonging, I can't blame others for that, I guess it just means it was at the edge of what's a good fit for me, hence my "probably not" answer. I'll admit that the poor transport options inside to carry luggage over long distances on foot, and the not feeling at peace due to the theft concerns, did not help.
I'm happy I got to see and experience it, I'm super happy I got to see some DJs and music I wouldn't have seen elsewhere, but otherwise it felt kind of rough, at least at times.
I hope this lets you decide whether you should go, or brings fun memories if you went :) and if you were wondering about Boom vs Ozora
Ozora vs Boom
Sure, I'll play :)
Boom is one year out of two, Ozora is every year
Ozora is 2-3 days longer than Boom technically but honestly you'll already do a lot with 6 days at each.
When you took the shuttle at Boom, you were prechecked and could enter directly without another line
Boom got you in much closer to your campsite. The Walk from the road to camping at Ozora was punishing
Boom is hot and dry, Ozora is warm and can get very rainy
Boom offered tipis and cardboard tents with matresses you could rent, that was a big plus for visitors. Ozora offered nothing, you had to bring your own gear. Many apparently buy gear after arriving in Budapest, and then discard it :-(
More stages at Ozora, and more music types at Ozora. I definitely prefered the music variety at Ozora
The bus ride to Boom was much longer and the line to leave boom on the last day was ridiculous (many hours) while Ozora has reserved shuttle slots without any wait
Cell phone at Ozora was mostly unusable, while it worked fairly well at Boom
Boom required unreliable wristband money to pay for some things, Ozora was cash only
Prices for food and drinks were very reasonable at both
Boom had better stores than Ozora from variety of food to camping and cooking gear
Boom had nice decors and art, but Ozora had overall much better decors atmosphere that sure felt like middle earth
I believe Parookaville is the biggest EDM festival in Geramny. From the website and FB group, it looked like the festival was mostly for Germans, but most things were also in english. The one thing that was not was the main FB group, which included non trivial questions to join, that were in german only.
Anyway, about the festival:
500E per person for 3 day VIP is not cheap but given the size of the festival, not outlandish either.
A good amount of stages with varied EDM, even if it was a bit light on trance overall (but had more than tomorrowland that had close to none)
It was great to see some DJs I had never seen before, including Scooter. I also enjoyed Drum and Bass and Bass played in cloud factory
The stage production level was good, not EDC level, but better than most festivals
It was somewhat big to walk from one side to the other (and the 2 biggest stages were opposite corners), that said, not a bad thing
Lots of food options, but useless to me since I do everything I can to avoid buying and using fake money. Their loss.
Some other attractions, including a few rides
It rained pretty hard for 1-2H one day. This can happen, that location is not immune to rain.
Things I didn't like as much:
The required personalization and ID check with full intrusive info all the way to birthday and all the stuff that can be used for ID theft, is borderline unacceptable. I bought 2 tickets separately from the official site, named them to me, and they refused to give me the 2nd wristband and made us stand in a very slow and stupid line to "fix" the 2nd ticket, and they even may us pay for the privilege. Honestly, I was pretty pissed, one hour lost for nothing, missed DJs I wanted to see and in exchange they forced us to give private information they have no business having. I realize tomorrowland is just as bad, but that does not mean it's ok.
Festival is very tricky to get in and out due to active airport, but not having shuttles and bikes enter the north of the airport feels like a big mistake. They make everyone, even bikes, enter the south side, and then wait in a line for shuttles to drive all the way around the airport (and that's slow). The offsite parking shuttles were stuck in long lines of cars. When I considered camping, people on the FB group told me they got stuck in 6H lines to get in. Honestly, they should reward people biking in and taking shuttles by having them enter from the north side (but that entrance is for staff only), while everyone else driving in enters from the south side and create a traffic jam that doesn't affect people using alternate way of getting in to relieve congestion.
Mainstage was a death trap when it was full, with cops preventing you from leaving because it was the wrong exit, despite scary overcrowding
VIP felt barely worth it. There was no VIP wristband help when they denied me entry due to their personalization requirement, and the mainstage VIP is all the way on the left, very far away from the entrance, and near impossible to reach or leave from when mainstage is full.
I missed fireworks out of fear of being stuck in a 1h+ line for the shuttle back to our bikes (see above how they should allow bikes to come in from the north). That sucked as they looked good, but the line after that would have been massive.
Security was nice and chill, that was appreciated. It was however questionable to have rules like "no camelbacks" or "no bottles of any kind, even plastic, unless it's the exact 0.5l plastic foldable kind that we sell". It was very nice and the right thing to do to offer free water stations, but filling those small and fragile containers took a while, and many ended up breaking and leaking. Unfortunately I found out too late and one leaked in my backpack later, and shorted a $3000 laptop :( Parookaville, please drop this silly rule, allow refillable soft plastic and camelbacks, they are not a treat (unless hard plastic and glass).
Stupid plastic money that even got devaluated so the prices didn't match what I tried to pay when I was donated plastic chips. By devaluated, I mean that someone gave me some of their pastic money to say thanks for my LED outfit, and when I went to buy a drink, I was told the price on the board was wrong, and it was now double. WTF?
They proudly announced that their fake useless money will be digital next year. Great news I guess? To me it's just another festival trying to be a bank and credit card company when there are already perfectly good, working, tested, and safe credit cards.
Grounds
This will give an idea of what's going on with regard to airport location and shuttles. Obviously not impacting actual traffic to the airport for the few daily flights from ryanair, is also making everything more complex. Note that the track shows entering by bike, cars would get in another way. I make no claims that this is an easy location to work with, but I'm hopeful it's possible to segregate shuttles and bikes from cars in line for parking. Germany is a green country afterall, they should encourage this :)
Since I did some research and read pretty terrible things about being stuck in traffic and parking lots trying to drive in and out daily. So, I figured let's drive to the nearest shuttle or bus station and get in that way, but I unfortunately found out after research on the FB group, that the shuttles were kind of a mess too, and the ones to offsite parking lots would and did get stuck in the same traffic jam than cars trying to get in. That was disappointing news (people talked being stuck 2H in a parking lot trying to get out and barely moving towards the exit road).
So I briefly considered camping to avoid the daily commute, but then I also read people literally saying they were stuck up to 6H in a pretty terrible line towards the camping grounds and saying how ridiculous that was too.
So in the end, I opted for finding accomodations not too far, and biking in, which worked as a hybrid of driving the bikes (big Dutch bikes that so barely fit in the SUV) to a place we could park and biking the rest in.
basic accodomations in Holland in a campground
very very tight fit
biking from Holland to Germany
then biking towards the airport and the bike parking lot
sadly the bike parking lot was nowhere close to the read entrance and needed yet another shuttle with a not super short line
Biking helped getting in and out, but because Parookaville did not allow bikes to park close to the real entrance and walk in, it still took quite a while since we were stuck having to take shuttles that took quite a long time. And by that I mean this, especially on the way back:
Because of the long line for shuttles back to the bike, we left a bit early on day 2 and sadly missed some nice fireworks. I wish I could have stayed the last 15mn, but the lines to the mandatory shuttle to get out, would have been way too long:
it did look sweet, bummer!
Anyway, once inside, let's look at the city:
Bill, the city Mayor
nice of them to have water, unfortunate they mandated small and fragile containers
Post Office, cute!
So yeah, the bank you had to stay in line for, and a currency that made no sense so you didn't know how much you were spending:
They had a few performers, that was nice and added to party (few attendees had costumes and did the same, though):
Multiple places to have fun, like EDC:
I'm not sure how the swimming pool worked, you had to bring spare clothes, towel, and everything?
at least one big ride
and some shows
Reminder that we were on airport grounds:
a few ryanair flights every day
Good food options, but given that they refused legal tender, I was unable to try any of them:
Let's look at stages, they were nice:
People
I'll be honest that Parookaville did not have a lot of people with outfits, it's just not the thing people do there, fair enough. I found just a few:
there were picture opportunities
The 3 Festival Days
Day 1
Mainstage looked a bit tomorrowland-like, a bit smaller, and more worryingly all the getting in and out was only from the right side, which was a huge issue if you were on the left in the VIP area and everything was full:
Maddix!
Ray Volpe was fun:
Day1 Summary:
Day 2
It did rain a good amount around sunset:
nice resulting sky, though
Armin was up:
Day2 Summary:
Day 3
Aname!
I was very excited to see Scooter:
the second biggest stage was also very nice
Back indoors to see above and beyond:
and Giuseppe next
And left a bit early at the end of night 3 again for the same reason, to avoid a huge line for the shuttle back to bikes:
missing a few more fireworks in the process
Day3 Summary:
Would I go back? Should You Go?
Ok, so I'm clearly not a local so a EU festival has to be really special for me to want to fly back multiple years in a row. In this case, I didn't feel like this festival was special enough for flying across the world, but if you are in Europe, it is definitely a first rate festival worth visiting. If you area German, or just across the border, then it makes a lot more sense to go.
Thoughts for the festival organizers if they ever read this:
Please fix the shuttles so that people who park offsite, or come from the train station, get a dedicated shuttle route that does not get stuck with cars going to parking lots. Is it even possible for those shuttles to enter directly from the north entrance that is right by the festival, and saves the very long drive all the way around the runway?
Can bikers please be allowed to bike in the north entrance, and bypass the required long shuttle around the runway, that same shuttle that was ultimately the reason why I missed nice fireworks on both nights, to avoid a very very long shuttle line (missed with the kiss and ride folks), to get back to my bike?
More generally, please separate people driving and parking from pepole using shuttles and biking in, to reward people using other modes of transportation.
The fake money, fake bank, staying in line to buy fake money, later return it (making you miss a shorter shuttle line), and all that BS, seriously, must go. I'm not going to keep repeating the same thing forever. They actually proudly announced that the joke looking plastic money was being replaced by [digital pointless fake moneyg/perso/clubbing/post_2024-06-05_The-Issues-with-Festivals-That-Require-Use-of-Fake-Festival-Money.html]. Oh boy, how exciting. So sad that we don't all actually have digital money on all our phones and credit cards. Is it too late to switch?
Mainstage, when full, is kind of a death trap, especially when you are on the VIP side, most opposite from entrance and exit. After paying so much for VIP, being afraid to go there for fear of being stuck and/or having to cut through huge crows to reach it, is not ok.
That episode when I tried to leave mainstage VIP, had 10 minutes of hell cutting through crowds to get to the nearest exit, just to be greated by a row of cops blocking everyone from leaving, not allowing anyone else in, and basically pointlessly keeping us hostage, was beyond words. They kept pointing us to some far exit that was mostly unreachable due to over crowding, and not understanding that keeping us hostage was both unsafe and very uncool. It ended up being so bad with the crowds about to rush the cops to get out, that they eventually started getting worried and let us out. They were never aggressive, but this was totally pointless and kind of unsafe. I really hope they work out this mainstage access thing, it's not a good situation for a festival that big.
Forcing each ticket to be personalized to each person, taking personal information that they cannot be trusted to keep safe and is probably causing GDPR issues, as a required condition of entry, is not ok. Then forcing people to stay in a low slow line to fix a name (in my case I had my name on both tickets, and they refused to give me the 2nd one), and then to add insult to injury, charging a fee, any fee, to fix the name on the 2nd wristband??? Why, oh why? This really had an unpleasant "papieren bitte" feel to it :-/ (and cost me 1h of delayed entry on the first day as well as missing the first DJ I wanted to see)
The restrictions on preventing empty camelbacks, which are so useful at festivals, and allowed absolutely at every other festival I've been to, really should go. Those required 0.5l soft water pouches are crap, mine broke, and one I stupidly used later and it leaked on my laptop, killing the motherboard (yes, my fault, but just to say they leak and they are crap)
But things that went right:
All the staff was pleasant and helpful. They all spoke enough english to help.
Security was nice and reasonable, that was appreciated.
Food options looked good even if I was unable to try them since they used fake money I was not going to buy.
There was a good amount of other entertainment in the city, which was nice. That whole city feel was indeed very nice.
The stage variety and production level were very good
Random thoughts that may help you choose:
If you're German and like EDM, it's a no brainer :)
If you're within Europe during that 3 day weekend, it is a premium festival worth considering
There was some trance, not every day, but enough for me to be happy :)
If you plan carefully, it's easier to get in and out than tomorrowland (but beware of parking lots inside that could take 1h or more to get out as per what I read online)
If you wanted to go to Tomorrowland but can't, Parookaville is honestly not a far second. While it has a few things to work out with crowd flows for mainstage and shuttles mixing with cars, and it is a little bit smaller in footprint and number of stages, it's a comparable festival otherwise and worth considering.
