Outrage following poor organization at Lollapalooza Berlin

Since its creation all the way back in 1991, Lollapalooza has been one of the world’s most well-attended festivals. In contrast to the one-time events happening around the USA at the time, Lollapalooza started out as a touring festival, traveling across the United States and Canada. Further expanding its reach, the festival would go on to make international debuts in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paris, Israel, and Germany. The Berlin based edition was the first Lollapalooza held in Europe, with the event featuring a mammoth 70,000 visitors per day last year. The 2016 edition held at Treptower Park, featured a star studded lineup including the likes of Radiohead, Kings of Leon, Major Lazer and dance music’s very own Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike.

Following the massive global success of the event, particularly its Berlin counterpart, the 2017 event held great expectation for European festival-goers. With this year’s lineup including Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons, Marshmello and previous world #1 DJ, Hardwell. Eager followers had spent up to 500 Euro on tickets expecting a weekend they won’t soon forget. In an unfortunate turn of events, the highly anticipated festival left up to 8000 attendees with a rather negative memory. After day 1, droves of people were left waiting for buses and transportation. Festival-goers soon rushed to twitter, pulling no punches, calling the organization of the event “The worst ever”.

With a serious lack of buses, chaos ensued as attendees were forced to wait hours before entering the event. At the end of day 1, the focus had now shifted to a similar scenario, as droves of people who had eventually managed to enter the grounds, were now even more desperate to get home. While attention has been focussed on the events poor organization, some newspapers report that it might not, in fact, be the organizers who are to blame. According to differing sources, the bus service hired by Lollapalooza had pulled out on the same day the festival started. As the heavens opened, people were further frustrated, now having to contend with nature as well, leaving a number collapsed due to exhaustion.

The event’s organizers have in turn released a letter of apology on their Facebook page, shown below