Not only one of the weirdest things I have ever been to, but also one of the coolest.
At 6:50 pm the station hall looked like it normally looks, at 6:52:50 pm people started to count down, and at 6:53 pm hundreds of people were dancing to their iPod’s, mobile phones or whatever other gadget with music in it. It was awesome. There were posh women on pumps, (friendly) skinheads headbanging, disco kings and queens, young people and older people: the whole station was filled with people dancing. If I was slightly hesitating in the beginning, I wasn’t anymore after about 2 minutes, everybody danced, and I had carefully selected tracks that would get my feet moving no matter what.
The weirdest thing was taking your earphones off for a short while. You could see a station filled with people dancing like crazy, but it was absolutely quiet, apart from the train information man calling out some train departures now and then. Surreal! I managed to keep dancing until about 8.00 pm, and I was far from the last person leaving.
What I listened to? Well apart from danceable tracks from Mika, Scissor sisters, Abba and the Kooks, there were two gentlemen fighting a serious music battle in my ears, as I had both Steffen Brandt and Billy Mack (it’s always Christmas in my iPod) programmed too. It made me realize how much I miss tv-2 concerts, but with the volume on soon-to-be-deaf listening to one of their live concerts, it nearly felt as being to one. I forgot everything about how silly it must have looked for people just passing not knowing what was going on.
Overall the atmosphere was fantastic. There was no noise, people behaved friendly and it was great to see that music can do this much good. Love + Rock, baby.
Fabulous. I gotta do that one day. Or video it.
You are definitely a girl who knows how to have FUN! It sounds like the ultimate event, planned spontaneity. Abandon. We were staying at the Victoria Thistle in September and spent time people-watching in the station. How odd it would have been if the crowds were to have suddenly begun dancing to unheard music! But how wonderful.
Ingrid, how fun! If we were only as hip in the States.
great! sounds a bit like ‘silent disco’. Ever been to Lowlands (NL)?
@Paul – everybody was videoing it, incl. a lot of press. Youtube is probably filled with clips. But yes you have to try it one time.
@Michele – the Victoria Thistle, that’s quite close to where I live. It was indeed wonderful, and it was weird to see that the station was just a normal train station again this morning. No traces whatsoever from the party yesterday.
@Jaci :-)
@Debsi – no never been there, but then I am not a festival goer, I have never really liked it to be honest (although I have been to a couple of them)
Sounds great fun. I’d have thought it would be good to give people a playlist for the first twenty mins so you were all dancing to the same music, that would be really interresting to watch.
@ Grigorisgirl – now that sounds a great idea but maybe more difficult to impliment (synchronised watches and podcasts…?). I think dancing to the same tune would look so more surreal and cool while everyone moves in time…ish. Maybe you could divide 2 sections into girls and boys for a dance-off…?
No – the fun of this is it’s unorganized nature. You would never ever be able to make a synchronized play list, and apart from that hard rockers wouldn’t like disco and the other way around. Now everybody listened to the music they loved, resulting in some very passionate dance moves. :-)
I already was familiar with the concept, but in a train station.. Sounds great!
Fantastic! My friend goes to these quite a lot. I’d love to do it one day. What must ordinary travellers think!
This sounds like such fun … I’d love to have been there. Your blog is one of my faves to visit! Hope you have a great weekend!
Awesome. And I agree that everyone dancing to their own music must have been the secret to success.