It’s Reading Festival this weekend and super festival fan Marina Vassilopoulos says whilst navigating hook ups is par for the course for lots of partyers, some things are just “too much”
Marina Vassilopoulos is a festival super fan with more than 30 under her belt – including fives times to Reading Festival alone – but she reveals that she knows all the best secrets about what truly happens behind the scenes and what you don’t see on the TV.
The 28 year old from Manchester loves the classic, carefree experience of festival life and believes it’s a place to truly let her hair down with music, mates… and the occasional tent hookup. She speaks openly about having casual sex at festivals and shares ways to keep it fun, safe and hygienic – from timing it early in the weekend, when everyone’s still relatively clean, to always giving a mate the heads-up on where you are.
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She worked at Glastonbury this summer where “everyone kept walking into people having sex” and found it horrifying that people were doing it in the make shift public toilets.
“A lot about people were hooking up in the long drops in Glastonbury this year which would recommend against because it’s one of the most awful things I’ve ever had the experience of witnessing.
“Long drops are like the notorious toilets at Glastonbury that are just really horrible. A toilet seat that goes down into like a big cesspit effectively.”
She also revealed that the southeast corner of Glastonbury is referred to as “the naughty corner”, because that’s where a lot of people like stay up very late and there’s always music playing. “I can imagine all the things that were happening in there.”
Marina believes that “everyone has the right to hook up” and that sleeping with someone at a festival is “no different” from people backpacking, going home together after meeting at a bar and getting together in hostels or at Full Moon parties, but she did urge people just to “be aware of your surroundings” and one other key point – cleanliness.
“There is the question of hygiene,” laugh Marina. “I would say, if you’re gonna do it, I would say do it in the first couple of days instead of towards the end of a festival, because in my opinion… well, you know!”
Marina did admit that festivals are taking safety seriously though with Glastonbury “enabling safe spaces” and handing out a “lot of little kits that had like lube and condoms, as well as leaflets about contraception and STIs. They really made the effort.”
