No plastic junk and you can pin everywhere. This is how the Hello Festival gets rid of old annoyances

Hardly any waste. Good food with something for everyone. The Hello Festival in Emmen is running smoothly. Only the smartwatch is not completely satisfied.

It might be wise to have lunch before going to a festival. Anyway, once you arrive at the Hello Festival, your stomach growls. So just score a hamburger sandwich right away.

Completely vegetable

Check it out, there’s one too vegan version, so completely plant-based, let’s try that one. At 9.50 euros, the environmentally friendly delicacy is 75 cents more expensive than the meat version. The friendly boy who serves it suspects that the preparation is more expensive. Well, it does taste. Anyone who doesn’t know any better would think he just eats beef. Despite the heat, the lettuce leaves are fresh and fruity.

This good vegetarian snack is the first plus for the Hello Festival. The second comes immediately: you can pay everywhere with your debit card. Gone are the days when you had to pay with those plastic coins at festivals. They were always up when you wanted to offer someone a drink and there were always a few expensive copies in your pocket when you went home.

Tight as a billiard cloth

In the meantime, it’s quite cozy on the grounds. Fortunately, there are many trees and therefore also shade. Many know where to find them, and otherwise you can still cool off in the water.

Hello Festival now also has an advanced system with a deposit on plastic beer cups. It wonderfully puts an end to the annoyance that you see plastic floating everywhere on the floor at such a festival. Here the field is clean and as tight as a billiard cloth. Well, except for a few stray snippets. It does take some study what you have to do if you want to get rid of your cup without wanting beer in it again, you will get a token with which you can buy another cup without paying a deposit.

But of course it’s all about the music. Queen must go on evokes nostalgic memories of Freddy Mercury in the older visitors and the band does this so well that many young people also like it. A little later it gets full at the main stage where the Hague band Son Mieux performs.

Yellow card

This is again a lot more modern than Queen’s music, but young and old also enjoy it here. But when entering the big tent, the smartwatch inexorably draws the yellow card: there are too many decibels here. In the past you didn’t have that and you were carefree close to the speakers. Then ‘what you don’t know, what doesn’t hurt’ applied, now the reverse is true.

Still keep a little distance. And next time bring hearing protectors. Or leave the smartwatch at home.

To Emmen for La Fuente

“Our friend Yvette has moved from Arnhem to Emmen for her great love, now we are at the Hello Festival for the second time”, say Annemiek and Naomi (‘our ages are a state secret’). They really like it here. “Emmen says Hello! Arnhem says: do I know you from somewhere”, says Naomi. The company is especially looking forward to the performance of La Fuente and that of the Daredevils.

‘Dad makes us festival lovers’

Jörgen (49), Casper (16) and Inge (12) only had to cover three hundred meters to get to the festival. They live beautifully on the Rietplas. “Dad is a festival enthusiast, so he wanted us to come along,” says Inge, “so that we like it too.” The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Casper really enjoys Queen must go on, although the music was a bit older when his father was 16 himself.

‘We’ll see if there are nice artists coming’

Chantal (21) and Caya (22) from New Amsterdam are not particularly fans of the Hello Festival. “We just see if there are nice artists somewhere and then we go.” Caya has already been three times, this year Chantal decided to join her. Downside: they were just too late for Suzan and Freek. But Queen’s music is also nice, both think.

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