Monday reflections: never forget: Pukkelpop 2011.
Fifteen years.
Thomas quietly repeated those words to himself as he stood there, looking across the festival grounds.
Fifteen years since he had stood almost exactly where he was standing now.
Everything around him looked different, yet somehow familiar. Music thundered from one of the stages in the distance. Thousands of people walked across the field, carrying drinks, laughing with friends and discussing which band they wanted to see next.
Exactly as it should be.
This was Pukkelpop.
This place was supposed to be filled with music.
But for a moment, Thomas couldn’t hear any of it.
Instead, he heard the rain.
2011
They had been looking forward to that weekend for months.
Thomas and his friend had discussed the bands they wanted to see, the inevitable clashes in the timetable and all those little things that suddenly seemed incredibly unimportant fifteen years later.
They had no idea that August 18, 2011, would become a date Belgium would never forget.
Thomas remembered watching the sky grow darker.
At first, it was just rain.
People ran for shelter. Some laughed as they tried to escape the downpour. After all, getting soaked at a Belgian summer festival wasn’t exactly unheard of.
But this was different.
The wind became stronger.
Much stronger.
Suddenly, nobody was laughing anymore.
Everything happened so quickly.
Rain turned into a violent storm. People were running everywhere, desperately looking for somewhere safe to hide. Trees bent under the force of the wind. Structures that had seemed perfectly solid only minutes earlier suddenly weren’t.
Music disappeared beneath the sound of thunder, wind and people shouting.
Thomas remembered being afraid.
He remembered losing sight of his friend.
And he remembered believing that he would find him again.
For a long time afterward, that thought remained with him.
I’ll find him.
But he didn’t.
Five people lost their lives as a result of what happened at Pukkelpop that day.
His friend was one of them.
The festival grounds eventually became silent.
And for Thomas, music would never sound quite the same again.
2012
People had asked him why he wanted to return the following year.
Thomas couldn’t really explain it.
Perhaps he needed to prove to himself that Pukkelpop didn’t belong to the storm.
Perhaps he wanted his final memory of this place to be something other than rain, fear and loss.
Or perhaps he simply wanted to stand there once more for the friend who couldn’t.
So he returned.
Almost exactly one year later, Thomas stood among thousands of people again.
This time beneath a beautiful evening sky.
And then Foo Fighters took the stage.
At one point during their performance, Dave Grohl stopped and spoke to the crowd.
He remembered how, one year earlier, the band had been travelling toward the festival when they received a phone call telling them that something had happened.
They stopped.
They waited.
They hoped everyone would be okay.
Then came four simple words.
“But not everyone was okay.”
For a moment, Thomas wasn’t standing in the crowd anymore.
He was back there.
One year earlier.
Looking for his friend.
Grohl looked out across the thousands of people gathered beneath that peaceful sky and dedicated the next song to those who couldn’t be there that night.
Thomas looked upward.
He didn’t know whether his friend could hear the music.
He didn’t know whether he could see him standing there.
But Thomas stayed.
And he listened for both of them.
2026
Now, fifteen years later, he was there again.
Around him stood another generation of festivalgoers. Some of them probably barely remembered 2011. Others had been too young to understand what happened.
And that was okay.
They should dance.
They should sing until their voices disappeared.
They should complain when two bands they desperately wanted to see were playing at the same time.
They should take ridiculous pictures with their friends and wake up the next morning wondering why on earth they had thought sleeping in a tent was a good idea.
Because that was what this place was supposed to be.
Pukkelpop was never meant to become a monument to tragedy.
It was meant to be a festival.
A place where thousands of strangers could stand together and sing the same song.
A place where memories were made.
Most of them beautiful.
Some of them unforgettable for entirely different reasons.
Thomas looked across the festival grounds once more.
For a brief moment, three different years seemed to exist at the same time.
He saw the dark sky of 2011.
He saw himself standing beneath the beautiful evening sky of 2012, listening as a musician onstage remembered those they had lost.
And then he saw today.
The stages were standing again.
People were laughing.
Somewhere in the distance, another band began to play.
The music had returned a long time ago.
And Thomas was glad it had.
Because moving forward doesn’t mean pretending that nothing happened.
Returning doesn’t mean forgetting why you once left.
Sometimes remembering simply means allowing yourself to hear the music again.
Fifteen years had passed since the music suddenly fell silent in Kiewit.
Tonight, it played on.
And somewhere between two songs, Thomas allowed himself a moment of silence.
For his friend.
For the others.
For the five people who never got to hear the music return.
In honor of all the victims of the extraordinary tragedy at Pukkelpop 2011.
To those who lost their lives, to those who lost someone they loved, and to everyone who survived that devastating day.
And still, fifteen years later, a massive shout-out to everyone — including the people behind Pukkelpop — who found the strength to stand tall again, even when others no longer could.
The music returned. The memories remained.