My #1 favorite music festival in Belgium! I love the atmosphere, you really get a great mix of people, both young and old. This festival tends to be at the beginning of the festival season in Belgium, at the end of June for 3 days over a weekend, when the exams end (for students, that is). The music is a mix of world, pop, rock and alternative. The venue is at Tour & Taxis, which is somewhat remote in Brussels, but still about a 10 min walk from Belgica metro stop and about 15 min or so from Brussel Noord train station.
There are a few different stages at the festival, which offer a number of different artists performing at any time.
Drinks are reasonable at the festival--cool thing is, if you collect enough cups (I think it's like 50 or some crazy high number like that) and return them, you get a free drink. If you see younger (read: students) people carrying around a tower of cups, that's what it's for. Great idea to keep the festival a bit cleaner by rewarding those that are willing to pick up the trash! But it only works so much...
There's also a pretty cool market/vendor area where they sell more crafty kinds of things, cool to check out.
You buy drinks based on a token system (buy tokens to pay for your drinks). Note: best to buy all the tokens you need at the beginning of the festival to avoid lines later on....also, water is free by the public toilets (they don't make you pay to use the bathroom!!!) if you bring an empty water bottle with you.
Now, food! OMG I think this is my favorite festival just for the food alone! They offer a crazy variety of food in one of the huge covered buildings on the premise. I've seen anything from various African, Asian, South American foods to even bugs (granted, it was 1 stall, but still cool they offer it for people to try out!) You really can find any possible food here for reasonable prices!
Another cool thing about this festival, they offer buses as transportation to get you back home safely after you've had too much to drink. I believe this follows the Notis routes and is included in the price of the ticket!
A couple of things to note: Don't drive there! Traffic is terrible and as I mentioned above, your ticket includes free transportation. If you must take your car, then drive to a metro station in more the outskirts of Brussels, take the metro there, then the bus back.
Although a very family-friendly festival, there still is a lot of people smoking pot. I don't partake but still leave feeling a second-hand high....but that's the only "drug" use I've seen at the festival.
I'm really not doing this Couleur Cafe justice in my review, so just check it out for either 1 evening or the whole weekend! read more