Absolutely not. Quite the opposite. Being English-speaking you get the unique joy of hearing all these cool non-English convos around you that add to the experience, but basically everyone speaks English to some level. In particular I found the Portugese and others actually wanted to converse in English once they find out how far you've traveled. (Which is just about always a novelty and scores you much respect.) I doubt I encountered 5 times where a persons English was so poor (thus matching my Spanish and Portugese lol) that we couldn't converse. As is often the case many western europeans speak better English than Australians!
English is the universal language of the european festival world, apparently at all big festivals almost everything is displayed in English alongside the host language just like it was at BooM.
It's more that these things build their own unique vibes and my time BooM (along with friend's shared experiences from Ozora, Burning Man, Universo Paralello, and a few smaller ones like Lost Theory) showed RSF has it's own that holds up extremely well and importantly is very unique. These things must build over time and RSF's is individual, strong, and Australian. There is a quirkiness we have here that doesn't exist there which I almost missed amongst the ridiculous tribal dancefloor explosions in Portugal. I'm very hopeful the Eclipse represents this too.
Comparisons are perhaps unfair. BooM was amazing - specifically the dancefloor experience - and with it having over twice as many people as RSF comparing can be daft. In the end I'm probably just surprised that RSF is such a worthy comparison to what are apparently the best festivals in the world.
On the organisation front they certainly shat on Boom and I've heard the same about the other festivals I named above. It certainly is the icing on your experience. Overall it's somehow made me more excited for this year's unique summer here at home when tbh I thought right now I'd just be missing europe.
Enough about BooM, I'll later put some anecdotes in that thread in Global Clubbing (as much for my own memory as anything) so quiz me there if you want to know more. I also put some stuff in the trance forum earlier. Let's look to the future.
Aside from Ace Ventura and Filteria almost all my favorite acts from there (Dickster, Circuit Breakers U-Recken, Shane Gobi, Captain Hook, and surprisingly Regan) are coming to Eclipse and I forsee much destruction on the Sun Stage. Also stoked I got my few rookie errors out of the way re: 7-day festival length which will save some unnecessary pain for my crew now that I know the pace a bit better. Roll on November.
EDIT: Woke up at 4am. You were right Simon
Last edited by MongooseFiend: 16-Aug-12 at 07:32am