Don’t Be a Stick in the Mud

I do love me some boots. Not the delicate kind, though. I’m not a delicate kind of person. No, give me a solid set of goth platforms every day. Whether it be the grocery store or the pub or the mosh pit, there’s nothing like having a good clomp.

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Of course, sometimes you have to sacrifice style for practicality, and throw these on your feet instead.

Those are the boots Ron and I wore at Wacken Open Air, a heavy metal festival near Hamburg, Germany. We hadn’t planned to, but on the first day of the festival, the sky did this:

Which turned the festival grounds to this:

So we went into the village and bought rubber boots from a hardware store that had set up shop in someone’s driveway. We didn’t want to risk ruining our good boots, or even our day-to-day shoes, for that matter. Which, considering how many people got so stuck they simply abandoned their footwear in the viscous mud, I think was a good call.

I was never one for playing in the mud as a child, so I didn’t join in.

I’ve just never been one for getting dirty. So I appreciated the campground’s facilities.

After all, when modelling the latest in festival fashion, it’s nice if it isn’t caked in mud.

Some people found the whole thing romantic.

But come the festival’s end I, and many others, it appears, were just as happy to leave our boots behind to be donated.