Last year, while living in Serbia on Remote Year, I went to my first ever music festival. EXIT Fest takes place over 4 crazy nights in and around an old castle fortress in Novi Sad, the third largest city in Serbia. What started as a student movement in 2000 demanding democracy in Serbia has grown over the last 18 years into a massive international party destination, with nearly 200,000 attendees a year. It has been hailed as one of the best music festivals in Europe.
Here’s a video from this year’s edition to give you some perspective:
It was an incredible and overwhelming experience. Fortunately, I had two seasoned South African festival goers as spirit guides to help me enjoy and survive the whole thing. Though Serbia is generally known to be a highly conservative and homophobic nation, one of my guides taught me how to find curious or closeted guys and engage in a secret, subtle form of dancing unique to music festivals. It involves furtive eye contact, elbow-rubbing, and dirt kicking. Though I was skeptical at first, seeking out clandestine dancing partners became the highlight of the festival, leading to many fleeting, strangely innocent, and yet thrilling encounters. In fact, EXIT Fest is up there with doing Ayahuasca as one of the most memorable parts of my Remote Year.
CORRECTION: At one point I describe Novi Sad as being on the “coast” of Serbia, but Serbia has no coast. The beach where we washed ourselves every day was actually on the Danube river. Geography never was one of my strengths…
