Helga, at the Ring

Rock am Ring is Germany’s largest rock festival, and for most of its existence it’s been held at the Nürburgring race circuit in the Eifel region—a natural amphitheater of hills and track infrastructure that holds 80,000 people in a way no flat airfield quite manages. One of its defining rituals is the chant of "Helga"—a name that erupts from the crowd at no predictable moment, spreads like a wave, and then collapses back into noise. Nobody knows where it started. Nobody has stopped doing it. That’s more or less the definition of a tradition.

The festival spent a couple of years at a nearby airfield in Mendig after a dispute with the circuit’s management. The move never quite worked—logistically, atmospherically, or financially. Environmental regulations at the Mendig site kept multiplying, demanding new investment without guaranteeing future permits, and by the end of 2016 the organizers had had enough. The announcement of the return to the Ring was received by German rock fans with the kind of relief that’s slightly disproportionate to the news itself, which tells you everything you need to know about what the venue means.

I’ve stood in that valley and yelled "Helga" into the night air with tens of thousands of people, all of us shouting the name of someone who may or may not exist, for reasons none of us could articulate. There is no rational defense of this. It’s exactly the kind of thing you only understand by being there.