Understanding Eastern Europe

The odd thing about Hamburg Reeperbahn Festival’s “Understanding Eastern Europe” session was that the panelists and the audience were nearly all Eastern Europeans.

Maybe Western European delegates stayed away because they’ve had to accept that they do things differently over that way and it’s probably best to just leave them to themselves.

Pohoda Festival Michal Kascak chief spent five minutes telling the Reeperbahn panel how he’s opposed to corruption. Apart from that, he couldn’t get away with it anyway because, with Slovakia’s biggest festival, the 30,000-capacity event near Trencin must be seen as transparent.

He said he doesn’t pay bribes and has absolutely no problems with local officials.

“The mayor of Trencin is the drummer in my band,” he explained.

He then produced a half-dozen bottles of vintage Tokai and poured several generous glasses in a bid to “persuade everyone to say how much they’ve enjoyed the panel.”

Earlier, Basaran and Kascak had joined locally based FKP Scorpio chief Folkert Koopmans, Lowlands Festival manging director Eric van Eerdenburg and Open Air St. Gallen’s Christof Huber to discuss the 2013 festival season.

Koopmans, van Eerdenburg, Huber and Kascak have major events that sell out on a regular basis, while the rioting and violence on the streets of Istanbul forced Basaran to scrap most of his outdoor season, including major acts Blur, Snoop Dogg, and Thirty Seconds To Mars. 

Then things started to get worse.

Although Basaran managed to persuade top international agents that there was nothing he could do about it and many acts returned at least half of whatever fees they’d received on deposit, Pozitif found the lost deposits and other costs weren’t insured.

The agents and acts accepted something close to civil war should be covered by “force majeure,” but the insurers said the Turkish government would have had to have declared a state of national emergency for that to be the case.

Basaran, who’s impressively candid when discussing his company’s tales of misfortune, says he can only thank the agents and acts for making the situation “survivable.”

ILMC programme manager Greg Parmley, who’s also global communications head of Intellitix, kept the panel moving at a decent pace and mainly resisted any temptation he may have had to steer it toward the wonders of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and cashless payment systems.

The year was the first time Huber tried a cashless payment system at St. Gallen and he spoke favourably of it, while Koopmans is a little nervous after having difficulties at last year’s Hurricane Festival.

These were just a couple of 40 or so panels spread over four days as Reeperbahn cemented its place among Europe’s top showcase conferences, pulling close to 3,000 delegates Sept. 25-28.

The musical talent on display throughout virtually all of the city’s famous St. Pauli district included Kate Nash, Anna Calvi, Birdy, CSS, James Blunt, and Kraak & Smaak.