Green Farm Festival at Hallbergmoos near Munich

I had a truly wonderful time, the craic was 90 from the word go and it was an absolute pleasure and a privilege to play there. And many many thanks for the encore - first time for everything, I'll be better prepared should that ever happen again

Amazed that everyone who looked after us managed to keep the festival running so smoothly and keep a warm smile and a quip handy - I guess it's easy when you love doing it. Respect. Great location, great folk and a lovely atmosphere. General post-festival consensus was "Why can't this happen every weekend? A whole year to wait? Buggah."

But 'tis all about the music and I can genuinely say that I saw many groups perform over the weekend that I'd go and see again - this coming from someone who wasn't the biggest trad/folk fan in the world, call me a convertee. Many's the eye-opener, of the bands I saw I'd have to mention Celtic Chakra, amazing musicianship, their speed-harmonising blew me away; Banshee, an all-German folk group who really have the draíocht* in spades; L.Bow Grease who sound like they'd just fallen out of the soundtrack to Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?; The Paul Daly Band and St. Patricks Day In Munich, crowd reaction was great and ODi. I missed Declan Rynne and Iontach but I heard that they were excellent as well.

Actually, ODi were my highlight of the weekend, Clare and Dave are really talented musicians and songwriters, totally down-to-earth lovely folk, by rights they'll be huge. Think they were slightly miffed that I'd played some Glen Hansard tunes they wanted to play - sorry lads Their interpretation of Bruce Springsteens I'm On Fire is simply beautiful and I really hope they come back to play Munich soon.

The Saturday night music session was great as well, music being made en masse by lots of very talented folk, right into the wee small hours. It felt like being at home again.

Many sincere and heartfelt thanks to Garibaldi, Crusoe, Paul Daly and all the wonderful folk at the Deutsch-Irischer Freundeskreis stand who did an absolutely sterling job in making the festival something unique, warm and joyful. Long may it continue. Bualadh bos!

*_{Irish Gaelic for magic.}

Parnell, we still have to count up exactly how many people were there but they were better spread out than last year - the lakeside stage was new this year (created especially for Punchbear) and on the two afternoons there were rakes of people over at the sports field for the Highland games and the hurling ( go riri and team!). Going by gut feeling, the Saturday and Sunday were about the same as last year, whatever figure that was, and the Friday was much more successful because unlike last year there wasn't a bleedin' thunderstorm with lashing rain and the S-Bahn getting struck by lightning. (All those who say they wish there had been a thunderstorm, kindly step outside.) Anyway, we had a fab time!

Who was the guy on the lakeside stage that kept singing "side by side they fart and died"?

Dunno, give us a clue. Was he solo or with other musicians? When did he play? What did he look like? We may want to invite him back next year if he was amusing enough.

Had a really great time on Saturday, watching and taking part in the games and dances, and listening to the bands. There was so much to see and do, it would have been helpful to have had more detailed info in the programme about start times for the various Highland Games and ceilidhs, so that you could go away and listen to the musicians for a bit and then return to the field in time for more fun.

I never expected to stay so long, and would recommend the event to anyone. Thanks to all the organisers and well done to the TT Tug-of-War team!

Amen to that

I was really torn about not going this year and you all have just rubbed it in . I'll probably celebrate my birthday there next year though, saves on all the organization.
Seriously, it sounded like it was going to be great and apparently it was even better.

Group with a girl or two sitting (he stood on the left side of the stage), he was a bearded guy with a thick accent (spoke Irengrish and German), played around 4-5ish, sang a lot about drinking, being drunk, having a hang-over, and sang about people farting and dieing.
Definitely good and worth being invited back. Fart jokes aside, we had a lot of fun.

Ray O'Sullivan? The Dopes didn't play and there's nobody else pencilled in on the stageplan I had, unless somebody who'd played already filled in last-minute for The Dopes.

It's mighty, so it is, that so many TTers dropped by. I'm fierce glad you all had a great time, so I am.

The only TTers I had the pleasure of meeting were punchbear, crusoe, riri, exquitius and corcaigh. The first two were involved in the artistic side of things, the middle two in the physical punishment side of things and the last one was there to look good and raise the tone of the event.

We had ice cream, so we did, but it was inside the hall. We didn't advertise it too much beacuse we had complaints last year from parents who claimed that we shouldn't be serving cold things to their childher in the boiling heat and that our ice was too cold. So whaddya do?

Yes, Ray O'Sullivan farts hard. The Dopes pulled out for some intellectually obscure reason.

We're seriously thinking of doing the festival again next year.

I think The Dopes have called it a day, their last gig was on Saturday evening in Schrobenhausen.