Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum (MPS) in Rastede

As you may have known based on some previous articles I wrote, I absolutely love medieval and fantasy events. I adore festivals with medieval and fantasy theme. Most of the people visiting the festivals have great costumes. I enjoy watching them, and visiting the various vendors selling those clothes on the festival ground. Among the most important things is also the music. On the festivals you can mostly hear folk rock, folk, folk metal, Irish folk punk etc. You get the point, the music with some medieval sounds and rock bands incorporating some awesome instruments like the flute, violin, bagpipes, and instruments that I don't even know the names of.

Last week I have visited another such festival: The Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum (MPS) in Rastede, Germany. The MPS festival is touring the whole season throughout the entire Germany. Since I was visiting the north of Germany, area of Hamburg, for a limited period this was the only medieval fantasy festival I found suitable and manageable to visit. If I could have made it to more, trust me that I would have surely done that.

What I am trying to say is, the MPS festival does not just happen once per year in one location. You still have the whole summer to catch one of the MPS festivals around Germany. Actually, I think there was one in Hamburg this weekend. I remember being kind of disappointed by my flight dates, since Rastede was a bit more over 2h car drive from the place I was. That means 5 hour drive total and my boyfriend not being able to drink at the festival, because he needs to drive. If it was in Hamburg, it would be closer and we could take the public transport, so he can enjoy beer and mead too.

That means we were at the festival only 1 day. However, the MPS festival in Rastede actually lasted 4 days and it was possible to camp there. It lasted from Thursday to Sunday, and since Thursday was a national holiday many people took one day vacation on Friday to have 4 days off from work in total. I was flying back to Bosnia and Herzegovina on Sunday, so that wasn’t an option for me. I tried to use my one day there to the maximum. Even though Thursday was cheaper, we’ve decided to visit the festival on Friday because a band I really liked played only on Friday.

When we arrived, we first tried to get sense of the place and walk through the whole ground slowly to see all the options awaiting for us. The festival grounds were fairly big.

Music

There were 2 stages with a schedule made in such way that when there’s a break between bands on one stage, there is something playing at the other and vice versa. Other than that there was a place in between of the stages where a band called Cultus Ferox played. I am not sure how often, but I saw him and a joggler performing in that area. I’ve enjoyed the band, lots of bagpipes. It did sound different from their stuff I’ve heard on Youtube, but I think it was even better than that. They have probably also played their songs I have heard on Youtube, but I wasn’t there the whole time, only a short period in the afternoon.

Great bands played on the big stages too. First there was Fiddler’s Green, an Irish folk punk band from Germany. I’ve mentioned we’ve only chose Friday due to one band, well, Fiddler’s Green is that awesome band that brought us to the festival on that particular day. They have played only once, for about 1h 45min in the evening/night, while other bands played several time during the day. Rapalje, a Celtic folk band from the Netherlands, was already known to me and they played good as I’ve expected from them. I didn’t about the Dolmen before finding out about the festival. A day before the festival visit, I’ve played a few of their songs on Youtube as was very interested in hearing them live. They did not disappoint. They had a harder sound compared to other bands, I would describe the genre as folk metal. Noteworthy are their good guitars. I think this band caught my boyfriend’s ear the most, as he did not listen to any of the bands before.

Ye Banished Privateers were slightly more different from the others, because they had a pirate theme going on in their songs and outfits. This band has male and female vocals which fit very nicely together.

Lastly, I remember I wanted to see Saor Patrol I can’t remember did I actually see them. We did lot of walking around and sitting and listening to the music in the sort of “tents” so we didn’t actually see every band on stage, but listened to some while drinking nearby.

I think that covers the basics you’d want to know about music on the festival.

Food

Next important item is food, and there was a lot of it. I ate a tasty hamburger that kept me full for quite some time. A vegan version of the hamburger was available too. My boyfriend are something similar to a hamburger but bigger and fuller, but I don’t know the name. In the evening we Knobibrot. The person working would smear sour cream with herbs or butter with herbs, depending of your choice, and you could add the rest as you wish, a self-service kind of thing. The options available were pepperoni, garlic, ajvar and olives. We were really surprised to see ajvar there, one of Macedonian’s national dishes. Our only remark was that they should have had more supplements, perhaps some sliced vegetables. Other things we’ve noticed are crepes which smelled very good, but we didn’t want to eat anything sweet. There was a surprisingly large vendor selling only different almond products, or different coated almonds to be more precise.

Drinks

Now we come to a very important issue, and that is alcohol. They had so many good choices for drinking at the festival. I had some good dark beers and a tasty and sweet strawberry wine. I’ve noticed some people having very interested drinks, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. For example, I saw people with bug mugs overflowing with a red fairly foamy liquid. Kirschbier (Cherry beer) was available at most drink vendors.

A special thing about medieval festivals is that there is always someone selling mead, and I buy at least 2 kinds of mead every time I visit one of those festival. Besides of the classic mead (honey wine) there are a tone of different versions and variations and they all have that sweet liquor taste. Some of the ingredients they add are vanilla, cherries, cinnamon, apples, different berries, etc. They come on all of the rainbow colours as well.

This seller was different from the previous ones I’ve seen in the Netherlands, because they had great bottles. They were selling mead in bottles of different volumes, and the 250 and 500ml bottlers were so cool, they looked like potions. Moreover there was mead in blue and green colours, so it really looked like potion bottles. They call them elixir bottles. Normally, we buy 1l bottles of mead, but this time we bought one smaller bottler just because of its shape. We weren’t the only ones. Lot of people at the festival were carrying them beside or instead their drinking horns. They really fit with the costumes. We bought a classic mead in a potion bottles named Viking mead, and the oher was in a large bottler and was called Drachenglut (for German speakers: yes Drachenglut not Drachenblut even though it’s red). The Viking mead had that known classical mead taste of sweet honey wine. Drachenglut was probably made with some berries, but don’t take my word for it, it had a taste of an extremely sweet wine, a much better and sweeter version of wine.

I saw some coffee, water and juice for the non-drinkers too. 

Other

Besides food, drinks, music and cool people, there were interesting shows and activities too.

The biggest one was probably the tournament. The story was written for children primarily, but it was nice to watch for us too. It was a pretty standard introduction, a villain and a young couple in love – an elf and a human. Within the story a tournament takes place, where 2 bad guys participate, the aforementioned human boyfriend and a 4th unknown character.

Remark: One of the bad guys was named Vladimir; why are Slavs always the bad guys?

Anywho, the tournament was entertaining. The four contestants were riding their horses and at the same time aiming at apples and targets with their spears and similar challenges. The presenter and the villain engaged the audience a lot as well.

Another big show was in the evening, after nightfall, and it was a fire show including two performs and, you’ve guessed it, lots of fire. It’s a very relaxing night activity to just sit and watch after walking around the whole day.

Available activities were shooting from a crossbow, or a bow and arrow (both come in adult and kid versions), a dance workshop (to which we sadly came too late to), strength game with a hammer that appears to be called “The high striker”. There were more games for children, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. What we tried was the crossbow and it was fun as it was my first time holding a crossbow. In the end the guy working there would offer you some chocolates. I’ve also seen people at the High striker getting schnapps.

One of the first things we did at the festival is to see what merchandise was being sold. There were a lot of vendors for all sorts of stuff you’d want to buy at a medieval festival. There were the inevitable drinking horns and leather horn holders, but also the blowing horns. So many choices for costumes, from shirts and pants, over elfish dresses and coats to corsets and knight armours. Places only selling jewellery were also there, and different equipment like swords and bows. The prices were the same as at the other festivals I’ve been too, but it’s not really affordable to an unemployed Bosnian. However is you have spare cash, go crazy! I loved all the stuff I saw there.

The weather was great that day, a sunny day with around 26°C. I am surprised how some people handled the heat well in their costumes. I was walking around barefoot for a few hours, as did many others. There were a lot of open tents (maybe tent is not the right word, I mean those white cloth roofed areas) with chairs and tables where you could drink in comfortable shade. However if you’re in the sun the whole day and dancing in front of the stages it gets too hot. The organizers did a very cool thing about that. They had a buggie of some sort with a lot of water filled canisters and a hose. They were occasionally driving around and spraying people, a dozen people would follow them around until they’d cool down.

In the evening, when it got cooler, a fire was lit in huge bowls all around the festival ground. The roads were lit with candles and oil lamps. I must admit, it looked spectacular, very relaxed and romantic. That’s the moment when we wished we’d have come camping too, so we can stay and enjoy that atmosphere instead of driving home after midnight. Sadly, we had to leave that idyllic sight.

Useful to know

For the end, I will include some technicalities.

• The ticket prices vary depending on the day, age and the time you buy them. The earlier you buy them, the better. Children and people over 60 get cheaper tickets. Fridays and Saturdays are more expensive than Sunday and Thursday. However, keep in mind that not all of the bands and performers will play on all 4 days. For example, Fiddler’s Green played only on Friday.
• You can wear whatever costumes and gear you want.
• It’s very kid and pet friendly.
• The toilets were dixies, which is always difficult when you go in the evening, because you can’t see anything inside. The good thing is that they had a real sink with soap and paper towels. Every visit to the toilet was payed 50 cents.
• I don’t know about the camping conditions, but I know it’s an option. I’ve seen people writing about a pool nearby and also a post mentioning to the guests that they can bring their bathing suits. The festival was next to a lake, but the lake didn’t seem like you could swim in it, so maybe they just meant the pools nearby.
• The parking spots right in front of it were all full, but we did find a parking spot 10minutes walking away, in the Oldenburger street.

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