娱乐英语新闻:Experiencing Roskilde Festival, a musical feast

Scandinavians truly reveal their exuberant side at the Roskilde Festival, and whether in the live music or the camping areas, you can find people dancing and partying to the different musical rhythms.

On the last day of the festival, young people from all over Europe pack their sleeping bags and tents and hold the festival's final carnival in the camping area, which is divided into east and west zones. The young people usually gather in the western zone.

"There are parties in the west area every day. There is even a fashion district in the west area which is hot among the young people," a Roskilde Festival staff member told Xinhua.

Beer drinking is central to these parties and fans at Roskilde drink prodigiously before, during and for some time after the festival. Figures show an incredible one million liters of beer and 40,000 liters of other beverages were consumed during the festival in 2010.

The numbers are said to be even bigger this year, so you should not have been surprised if a stranger grabbed you and talked to you as he or she was drunk.

In a warm-up to the festival, organizers also arranged a lover's special event. The 'lovers' volunteer to wear a specially-designed t-shirt and thereby show people that they are in love. The lovers give hugs and good wishes to ordinary people passing by.

And in what must be the festival's oddest tradition, Roskilde Festival Radio organizes a nude run around the camp site, with one male and one female winner receiving a ticket worth 2,000 Danish kroner (around 400 U.S. dollars) to the next year's festival.

Indeed, on Saturday, a small group of runners covered in nothing but body-paint, splashed through a muddy track inside the festival grounds, to the adulation of the large crowds gathered on the sidelines.

GREEN CREDENTIALS

Created in 1971 by high school students Mogens Sandfear and Jesper Switzer Moeller, and promoter Carl Fischer, the Roskilde Festival was initially known as the Roskilde Sound Festival. At the time, only 13 performances were played during the then two-day long festival. Now Roskilde Festival has become the largest music and cultural event in Northern Europe.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, garbage has become a major problem, as the festival produces on average 1,600 tons of trash per edition. This year Roskilde launched a garbage event known as "Your Clean Hour" as a festive addition to the traditional clean-up work.

Since the 1990s Roskilde Festival has presented numerous environmentally friendly initiatives, with organizers aiming to maximize the level of waste recycled. They say 99 percent of the garbage generated by the festival this year, will be recycled.

Moreover, Xinhua noticed that some students from Denmark's Technical University were collecting waste oil from restaurants on the grounds, and will find a way to generate electricity from it.

Another DTU sustainability project encourages festival-goers to sort and recycle wastes such as paper, cardboard and hard and soft plastics such as beverage bottles, and in return, be rewarded with a soft cushion to sit on, which is itself made of recycled garbage. The cushion's contents can be emptied and recycled when the festival ends.

Furthermore, since 2009, the Green Footsteps campaign has encouraged the festival audience to act with consideration for the climate and the environment through a series of green activities before, during and after the festival. This trend continues in the festival this year.

Indeed, the organizers prepared a long line of green initiatives. For instance you could stay in one of the eco-friendly green camps, recharge your phone battery with the watts generated by pedalling a bicycle, and listen to music and buy food in the festival's so-called Sustainable Zone.