More than 800 people from around the world are participating in a live action role-playing game inspired by post-apocalyptic fiction.
The Old Town Festival, which takes place at Kluczewo Airport, Stargard in Poland, is the biggest post-apocalyptic festival in Europe. For 72 hours, the festival area is transformed into a town destroyed by nuclear war.
Hundreds of people create remarkable settlements, wear self-made outfits, build camps, and drive custom made cars built specially for this occasion.
“In Poland, live action role-playing games, so-called LARP’s, have been organized for years,” says organizer Wojciech Cysdorf. “It started with a rally of ‘Fallout’ computer game fans. In those days, dozens of people gathered and decided to play a small outdoor game. Over the last 12 years, it’s evolved
to a huge size, especially since a new ‘Fallout’ game and ‘Mad Max’ movie came out. They caused a boom.”
“We try to simulate an actually existing town,” continues Cysdorf. “We have our own currency, a functioning economy, a variety of tasks called quests. Players have a lot of work, someone fixes a weapon, someone is working in a hospital. There is a town guard, which charge a fee. People trade among themselves.”
People have travelled from far and wide to take part.
Ida-Emilia Kaukonen is from Finland, this is her the second time attending the event.
“A year ago I was on the internet, just facebooking with my friend and she posted a link about Old Town and said ‘Look, look, look…it looks so awesome lets go there. Then something started there a group, whatever happens we are going to be in Old Town. So we came here last year and we totally fell in love. We fell in love with Poland, we fell in love with Old Town all the surroundings and the people and decided we want to come also this year.”
Kaukonen describes her style post apo (apocalypse), with a hint of ancient Finnish shaman.
“Different kind of inspiration, like ‘Mad Max,’ ‘Fallout’ and then we browsed Pinterest and internet, we searched for different kind of cool outfits and then combined them. The way that inspires us and we have this different, very special kind of Finnish faction called ‘Children of Ashes’ and we are like post apo (apocalypse) tribal shamans and that is why we combine post apo (apocalypse) style with old ancient Finnish pagan shaman style”
The festival website has detailed advice to participants crossing international borders to attend on the best way to bring replica weapons into Poland without causing a terrorist incident.
The event is accompanied by concerts, sports, crafts workshops, parties and will last until 24 July.
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