As a Scranton native, I arrived in Bethlehem three years ago, and by now I thought I knew the city well \u2014 its towering steel structures, hidden alleys, bustling streets, the Bethlehem Star, and the constant sound of train whistles and church bells in the distance.<\/p>\n
But in the time I\u2019ve lived in Bethlehem, I\u2019d somehow never been to the city\u2019s biggest annual event: Musikfest.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d heard about it \u2014 who hasn\u2019t? \u2014 but never gotten the chance to go. Musikfest was something happening around me: the extra traffic on my drive home, the crowds gathering downtown, friends asking which concerts I was planning to see, only for me to realize I didn\u2019t have an answer.<\/p>\n
So this year, I finally went. And I left realizing the magic of Musikfest lies not just in the festival, but in the city itself.<\/p>\n
Like a lot of people my age, I showed up thinking I had a pretty good idea of what Musikfest was. I expected huge crowds, long food lines and enough live music to make it impossible to walk more than a block without hearing a guitar or a drumbeat.<\/p>\n
Of course, all that turned out to be true.<\/p>\n
What caught me off guard was everything else.<\/p>\n
Living as a college student in this city can feel rushed sometimes. You learn a city through routines. You know where to get coffee before class, which streets are the quickest way home and where to find a parking spot if you\u2019re lucky. You start to feel like you know the place, even if you\u2019re mostly just moving through it.<\/p>\n
Musikfest slowed all that down for me.<\/p>\n
For the first time since moving here, I wasn\u2019t trying to get somewhere in particular. I wasn\u2019t looking for a sign. I wandered through streets I\u2019d walked dozens of times before, except they didn\u2019t feel familiar anymore. Main Street had become a sea of chairs, food stands and families. Music drifted through the air before I could even see the stages. Every few minutes, another corner pulled me in a different direction.<\/p>\n
I stopped trying to stick to a plan almost immediately.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d hear a song I liked and pause for a minute, only to realize I\u2019d been standing there through three more. I\u2019d follow the smell of fried food and end up watching a local artist instead. I\u2019d glance toward one stage, then get distracted by someone selling handmade jewelry or by a couple holding hands as they danced.<\/p>\n
It was beautiful to slow down and experience something I\u2019d never really seen before: the sense of community that takes over Bethlehem during Musikfest.<\/p>\n
The best part of my trip to Musikfest wasn\u2019t something I had circled on a schedule. It was realizing that almost nobody else seemed to be following one either.<\/p>\n
Some people were clearly there for the headliners. Others looked perfectly happy spending an hour on a bench, talking over ice cream while a band played somewhere in the distance. Families wandered without much urgency, laughing and teasing each other. Friends squeezed around crowded tables, cheering one another. Volunteers answered the same questions with the same smile they had probably been wearing all afternoon.<\/p>\n
For 10 days every summer, Bethlehem seems to agree on one thing: Nothing has to happen in a hurry. That might be what surprised me most.<\/p>\n
We spend so much of our lives moving from one thing to the next. My days are usually measured by deadlines and notifications. Musikfest felt refreshingly different. It invited people to take the long way down the street and stop for music they hadn\u2019t planned on hearing.<\/p>\n
The festival is known for its headliners, but after walking through it for an afternoon, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what keeps people coming back every year. The music is incredible, but it isn\u2019t the whole story.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the feeling of running into neighbors you didn\u2019t expect to see. It\u2019s strangers recommending their favorite food stand while you wait in line. It\u2019s hearing applause echo from somewhere around the corner and deciding to follow it just to see what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Bethlehem at its most open.<\/p>\n
When I moved here, Musikfest felt like something that belonged to everyone else \u2014 longtime residents, families with annual traditions, people who already knew exactly where to park and which returning band they couldn\u2019t miss.<\/p>\n
Now I understand why so many of them keep coming back.<\/p>\n
I thought I was finally experiencing Musikfest. Instead, it felt like I was experiencing Bethlehem for the first time all over again.<\/p>\n
Avery Folmar is a student at Lehigh University, and a summer intern for The Morning Call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a Scranton native, I arrived in Bethlehem three years ago, and by now I thought I knew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,1681,1213,22777,289,432],"class_list":["post-259630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-entertainment","tag-music-and-concerts","tag-musikfest","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}