Donauinselfest

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Zucchero in 2007

One of the small stages (Socialist Youth)

Masses in 2006

Lots of grilled chicken

The Donauinselfest (German for Danube Island Festival) is an annual open air music festival on the Donauinsel in Vienna, Austria. It takes place towards the end of June (Friday through Sunday) - except for 2008 (Sept. 5th-7th), due to Austria (& Switzerland) hosting the European Football Championship.

The festival is free and, according to numerous media reports (including Wikinews) being Europe's biggest open air event, expected to soon hit the 3-million-visitors mark. Some 1500 volunteer assistants plus a reasonable presence of police make the Danube Island Festival one of the most secure big events. To ensure this, "rules of the house" were successfully established by 2007. They disallow for instance to bring glass bottles and liquor to the festival area.^[1]

In 1983, SPÖ politician Harry Kopietz, had the idea to organize a one day's party near the Floridsdorferbrücke, in order to promote the (at that time unfinished) Donauinsel as a more attractive recreational area. Organizers expected some 15,000 people, but 160,000 showed up. The event became an annual one by the next year (300,000 visitors)^[2] and meanwhile always attracts more than two million people during three days of fun and music (2.9 million in 2006, "only" 2.6 in 2007, as, due to a heavy thunderstorm, a few concerts had to be cancelled on opening day).^[3]

On some 6.5 kilometres in the middle part of the 21 km long island, there are some 21 areas (called "islands" as well) and, in 2007, 20 stages, many of which are sponsored by local radio stations and newspapers. Musicians of an extremely broad range of genres perform (the 2006 performer list includes: Bloodhound Gang, Juli, Silbermond, Christina Stürmer, Fettes Brot, and Tocotronic; in 2007, there were for example Master Blaster, Gianna Nannini, Zucchero, Willi Resetarits, Hubert von Goisern, and Rainhard Fendrich whose concert attracted an audience of 200,000 to the main stage, immediately after the annual 20 minutes firework on Saturday night – also one of the highlights. On same stage, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performs one of its rare open air concerts on Monday evening (which is: the day after the pop event). In 2006, 25.000 visitors attended that concert.^[4]

A most memorable concert was Falco's in 1993, in front of roughly 100,000 fans: The weather was so bad on that evening that part of the stage was flooded, the following cut of the power finishing the performance.

In sheer countless food kiosks, visitors find Thai, Greek, Italian, Indian, Turkish and – of course – Austrian, including vegetarian food. Information and souvenir kiosks are there, of course, too. Although all concerts are free, financial experts calculate Vienna's economy's extra profit from this event almost € 40 million, due to increased tourism.^[5]