Awake Festival: A Boutique Festival in Romania Like No Other [Event Review]

Attending a boutique festival is a must on the to-do list of any serious raver. That’s why this August we returned for the second time to explore Romania’s Awake Festival.

We dived full of courage into the land of Dracula to find a small village, Gornesti, which hides between its prosperous fields – a castle. “Welcome to the Awake Zone” the signs read as we got closer and closer to Teleki Estate, and we couldn’t help but feel we were onto a big secret. An 18th-century baroque castle surrounded by an enormous garden full of secular trees doesn’t sound like the perfect place to have a party, but somehow, that’s exactly what it turned out to be.

Only two years old, Awake Festival has already cemented its place into the top Romanian festivals and we’re about to spill the beans why. While last years headliners included Axel Thesleff and Knife Party, this yearsthe organizers shifted the trend and welcomed to the Awake Main Stage Morcheeba, Milky Chance, Wilkinson, The Subways, Fink and DJ Shiver. An exclusive appearance was made by Romanian band Vita de Vie, who were joined on stage by Targu Mures’ Philarmonica in an outstanding and definitely unique performance.

All You Can Dance / FORM Space Stage wasn’t neglected in the least bit, featuring players like James Zabiela, Eelke Kleijn, Culoe de Song and local DJs turning it into…well, the all you can dance party. We spent our late nights here to avoid the crowd and lose all worries before we were eventually called back home by our sleepy feet. The Wire Stage and The Castle Lounge by J’ai Bistrot fulfilled the rest of our music needs as we strolled through 16 acres of land during the 3 days of Awake Festival.

Because a boutique festival is supposed to have the best-curated experiences, Awake organizers created a varied portfolio of activities to do during those lazy, not-quite-feel-like-dancing hours. For the bookworms like us, there was a forest library equipped with any new book you could think of (to our shame, or not, we spent a little too much time here). If you weren’t into reading, coloring books were also available for the young at heart. We were also given the Feed Your Mind platform with activities that got our gray matter working, a playground to go back to our childhood years, a lake to relax by, a boutique to shop at and a food court to fill our bellies.

There is so much to talk about in this year’s edition that we’re sure we’d lose sight of everything in a simple review. That’s why we decided to divide it into three smaller articles. So, if you want the ins of everything that happened at Awake this year, be sure to return soon to read more about it. But before we let you go, keep this in mind about Awake Festival 2018: It was the perfect mix of an amazing party meets a relaxing weekend, and overall an experience we can’t wait to redo next year.

Connect with Awake Festival:
https://www.facebook.com/AwakeFestival.Ro
http://awakefestival.ro

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