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Exit Festival To Welcome Even More Brits in 2008 Serbia’s Exit Festival announced that next year’s event will take place from 10-13 July this week, as the Novi Sad event won the ‘Best European Festival’ at the UK Festival Awards. 10,000 Brits attended this year’s event to see acts including the Prodigy, Plastikman and Jeff Mills though Exit press chief Rajko Bozic told Skrufff they’re happy to handle more. “We’re not planning any limits on ticket sales at all, the festival is a live organism driven by audience and we select our audience based on our programme and services,” he said. “We always aim to shape our programme to be appealing to both local and international audiences and the relationship between EXIT and UK audience is already really special,” he said. As recently as three years ago, just 300 Brits ventured to Exit, with Serbia being represented in the mainstream press at the time as an edgy dangerous place, though Rajko said the arrival of 10,000 this year prompted some alarm amongst locals. “Here in the Balkans, English people have a reputation based on football hooligans and the worst Ibiza excesses so when it was announced that thousands of Brits were coming some people were expecting hordes of mad Vikings,” he laughed. “What happened in reality that city was flooded with all these lovely girls and boys – who were charming, curious, relaxed and impressed with Serbian hospitality. So many friendships were made, and we’re all so proud about it. So many of us young people from Serbia can barely travel at all because of the harsh visa regime and having a massive UK audience at our festival is almost like having a bridge to the outside world we’re not allowed to visit,” he said. http://eng.exitfest.org Article by Jonty Skrufff Subscribe to Skrufff music newsletter at www.Skrufff.com
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