Junktown 2019

Good morning, Wasteland!

We’re finally back and we have something to tell you about our recent travels - Junktown! 4 days of parties, around 1700 visitors and a hell of a fun!

We believe Junktown itself doesn’t need much of an introduction, but what’s that and how it goes?

Junktown is a Post-apocalyptic festival at an abandoned military base close to Prague, Czech Republic. Tons of dystopian crafters, cars, music, jugger matches, dancers, wrestling, drinking, doing stupid shit… long story short - you could find tons of shit to do you could only imagine and a post-apoc gig.

Junktown now has it's own history and lore and you can join eternal confrontation between Benzine and Atom! And it grows only bigger and bigger with each year like a nuclear mushroom.

The festival location itself is divided in several central stages in the middle of the festival location with bars, food tents, music stages, stores, etc. and Tribe Camps in a circle around two main stages. Literally any community of crafters or just wasteland junkies could set up a camp for their tribe and plan their crazy activities for the gig.

Wasteland Warriors tribe from Germany... and some other countries. (photo by Konstantin Zhdanov)

Have to be honest here - for the first-timer it’s a bit unclear whether you can visit those tribe camps or not. Lots of info is in Czech and it’s a bit unclear whether those are just regular tent camps or there are any attractions inside. Hear me - visit every single one. Talk to people. See what you can do. There’s tons of crazy shit around. We’ve found lots of cool stuff only when people showed us around. It’s easy to miss something. There’s lots of things to do - try your luck with alco-slot machine and burn your guts.

You could find people from all different countries setting up their Tribe Camps around like Wasteland Warriors from ‘mostly’ Germany, Brotherhood of Beer from OldTown, Poland, and much more. Everyone builds up and there is tons of cool stuff to see from custom bikes, art installations, gear and more.

By the way, do listen to org advice - do not bring food and drinks with you, spare yourself some bag space. There are tons of bars and food tents and, if you have Charisma 7 or playing a female character, you will have some extra dialog options.

Festival schedule is pretty tight as well: crafting workshops, custom car, bike, costume contests, survival lectures, video game speed runs, wrestling, dance shows, mud fights, eating hot pepper contests, name it… and of course you could participate in everything. Junktown has 4 or so old rocket hangars (?!) used for some gigs like lectures, dance parties or music bands. Also some events like workshops, mud fights were held at different Tribe Camps organized by Tribes directly.

God bless the Mayor for his musical taste: Rocket Dogz, Twisted Rod, Delikvence and much more! Psycho, rockabilly, punk, there was even a Swing Band! Damn, only bands were worth coming to Junktown! Musical stage was indeed badass, there were lots of bands and DJ's playing during both day and night and they added a good portion of fun.

Car contests was one of the best collection of Wasteland cars we’ve seen so far compared to other Post-apoc gigs. Not just trash cars, but real custom cars with 10l engines, buggies and much other cool stuff. Of course it’s not a custom car convention and there were a dozen cars at most, but you can see how much time and effort people put in them and do respect that. Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and more. People rode all the way to Junktown.

Aside of different shows and contests there were a lot of different survival, post-apoc lectures and workshops, but for a foreigner they all were unfortunately in Czech. The festival guide is also in Czech - you can understand it (the festival is in Czech Republic, d’Oh) and you could always get help or directions from anyone, but some lectures would be cool to listen as well.

Photo by Andulinna

Overall we’ve spent a great week at Junktown. It was incredibly tense and you could barely manage to see everything and I can bet - we didn’t see everything as well. Maybe that’s why we will mention some sad news - there will be no Junktown next year. But don’t be sad - orgs are just taking a pause and there definitely will be Junktown 2021! What we can be sure of is that you need to visit Junktown and see it for yourself that there is No Future.

Photos by Konstantin Zhdanov and Andulinna.