All, last weekend I had the ability (because I'm not going to say pleasure) to go to Faschnaut and I wanted to give a little review and heads up to anyone looking to go ever, please use my experience as a cautionary tale.

Last year my wife and I got the great idea to take our children to Faschnaut, I mean it looked cool and sounded fun, a few weeks before the event we tried to get tickets and found out that they sold out very quickly months prior so this year we were determined to go. I learned that tickets went on sale on new years day, so I set I reminder on my alexa for the exact time so that we could ensure we got tickets to go this year. Sure enough, new years day, the alert goes off and we get tickets for 2 adults and 2 kids for under 100$. Score!

Last weekend we packed up our costumes and headed to middle west virgina to our air bnb (which happened to be 45 mins away from Helvetia.) First let me state that the drive to middle West Virginia is one that is quite harrowing. Not solely because of the mountains and dirt roads that you are often forced to navigate, but nothing prepared me for the level of poverty that is central west Virginia. I'd like to preface this with the fact that I have lived in poor areas in cities all over the United states, in every corner in fact. I have NEVER seen soo much shit and garbage and busted trailers that were inhabited in my entire life. The hoods in Pittsburgh where I'm from atleast have roofs with no massive holes in them, most of the windows are intact and there is running water and sewage, that is not the case where we went. But I don't want to discuss the plight of west Virginia, you are here to read about faschnaut, so I'll get on with it, I just want you to be aware of what you are getting into should you choose to attend.

Saturday it started at 50 degrees in the am and proceeded thru out the day to drop to 30 degrees, we arrived at the festival and it was beginning to snow and was very windy, I was prepared for the cold but it ended up being pretty brutal. We arrived to cars parked all up and down the road and there wasn't really much actual lot parking in the town so we ended up parking on the side of the main road and walking about a half mile. Maybe a little more. When we arrived our initial idea was to go to the restaurant in town but there were 100 people in line waiting, the alternatives were a hotdogs truck (which was so overwhelmed, they stopped taking orders for an hour when we arrived) so we went to a building that sold filipino food. I was pumped, after the military I moved to Seattle and met a veteran who taught me to cook filipino chicken adobo which till this day is my favorite dish of any of the many countries cuisines I know how to cook. I hadn't had adobo made by real Filipinos in over 15 years. What I received was a disservice to Filipinos all over the world. I, a white person, make adobo aeons better than the 3-5 filipino women who cooked this abomination. It tasted like chicken boiled in soy sauce. Massive disappointment ensued.

Next, we left the eating area and ventured out to find our wrist bands. We walked thru town and saw some pretty cool costumes, we were dressed up and got some requests for pics, took some pics, and found our wrist bands. We did notice that a large majority of the people there didn't have wrist bands and didn't realize that you don't need one unless you are going to the star band hall and drinking. Since I had my kids with me, and we had to return home that night thru an hour of the most treacherous backwoods, hills have eyes, you got a purty mouth, mountains I have ever been in, I wasted 100$.

We walked into all the buildings and when I say lackluster, I mean this event is lack-fucking-luster. There were 2 vendors outside, 2 or 3 buildings with used and new clothing that were little more than old dirty shacks with old junk strewn throughout, it may have been antique but it wasnt cleaned or displayed in any presentable manner, it just looked junky, 1 larger area with homemade crafts that you would see anywhere else, a general store that sold natty light for x bucks a pop, or oreos for 8 dollars. My stomach was upset by that point from the filipino food so I got pepto and we ventured back out into the cold. We finished up the entire town in about 2 hours, there was nothing more to see and it was a quarter till 4. The burning of old man winter didn't occur until 645 and since there was no real shelter or even outdoor heaters, we left, cold, a bit disappointed bit mostly confused on what the fuck we stumbled upon.

Here's what I deduced. It's an amazing idea, I love the culture behind it, but the execution is abysmal. No shelter in early March is a stupid idea, none of the buildings are large enough to fit more than 50 people except maybe 2 which were packed due to 500 or 600 tickets being sold. If you aren't beteween 20 and 40 and drinking, there's nothing there for you. This is mainly a drinking event, that's the only way I could see this being somewhat entertaining but with barely any hotelling around for MILES, I fail to see how this isn't just a dui fest. Things that would have made this event 1000x better. A Pavillion, tents with stand up heaters, hell, fucking burn barrels randomly placed. Entertainment for kids, more food vendor options. Or just go there on acid without kids, get hammered and pray you make it home or to your hotel without driving off a cliff, getting electrocuted by the 2x power lines that were down in the mountains we had to drive around, the 3x fallen trees nearly covering the entire road or going down the wrong road and getting killed by what most certainly are meth shacks that litter the landscape like sand on a beach. Long story short, fuck faschnaut, fuck the mountains and fuck central WVA. 2/10 will never go back to WVA again.