A corner of a foreign field that is forever Glasto ... Crowds at Serbia's Exit festival
The young man at Heathrow with the suspiciously speeded-up approach to life knew why he was going to Serbia's Exit festival. "The way I see it, yeah, there's no Glastonbury this year, so I'm just going to go to every festival there is all summer, yeah ..."
Exit is a four-day music event in the town of Novi Sad, about 80km north of Belgrade, and the organisers say over 3,000 British Glastonbury exiles are here this year. The event started as a political protest against the Milosevic regime six years ago, and so retains some of that right-thinking Glastonbury vibe.
I certainly felt some of that Glastonbury magic on the opening night when I turned up to the Austro-Hungarian fortress where the festival is held, and saw the red sun sinking down across the silvery Danube.
It was only a little later, when I saw the Serbian girl next to me trying to take a picture of the Cardigans' lead singer with her mobile phone, that I realised how different the two festivals are. The girl was trying to take a picture not of the stage, but of the video screen, and looked close to tears when it didn't come out. Glasto-goers would be far too blasé for that. But for fans like that girl, the appearance of these bands on her home soil is not just a rare chance to see them - Serbians often have trouble getting visas for the EU - but a sign that their country is no longer a pariah state.
I put this to the festival's founder, and he agreed. "I had to laugh the other day," he said, "when I saw an invitation to tender in the Financial Times. The Serbian government is willing to pay millions of euros to hire a PR company. And they didn't even call us!" For him, Exit is some of the best PR Serbia can have.
The emotional response to the visiting bands among the young crowd, which at times borders on tearful gratitude, makes for an electric atmosphere. Franz Ferdinand came on, said "hello" and "thank you" in Serbian, like the well brought-up young men they are, and consequently had the crowd eating out of their hands for the rest of their set. They returned the favour, giving a very cheery, enthusiastic performance.
FF's lead singer, Alex Kapranos, pointed out to the crowd that the band owes the historical resonance of its name to one particular Serbian: Gavrilo Princip. He dedicated Walk Away to Princip, which struck me as an odd choice. Surely it should have been Take Me Out ...
