Full On Ferry Fiasco

Last night me and my girlfriend (as well as a couple of thousand other souls) went to the Full On Ferry Masquerade in Rotterdam. I had had some bad feelings about the whole thing for a couple of days, but I chalked it up to my s.a.d.
Anyway, we got on the train from Enschede at 21.57 to go to Rotterdam. A 2½ hour train trip and a subway ride later, we were showing the people at the gate our tickets.
Once we got inside, we started moving to the dance floor. The place featured only once large-ish dance floor, and a staging area where one could buy hotdogs (the only food available), and some trinkets and other knick-knacks.
We went to the dance floor to get a feel for the music. 30 minutes later, I was convinced that the DJ had not changed the record. Not because of mad DJing skills making for seamless transitions, but rather because it sounded exactly the same. Similar is ok, it's in the same genre, but the same?
Not only was the music incredibly repetitive, but it was also horrible. Labeled as a trance event, this was the housiest trance I have ever heard. And it wasn't the good kind of housy trance (there are a few tunes), but rather trance laid on top of a lazily crafted house loop. Absolutely nothing going on but the rhythm. The music was incredibly boring.
We left around 3 am.
The problem was that last night was the switch day for daylight savings time, which gave us a wonderful extra hour. Now, had this been at a great party, I would have liked it, but the fact that we were stuck in the cold Rotterdam night with no way of getting back to any kind of civilization made this extra hour seem like hell.
Our first train was scheduled to leave at 7.32, a lovely 4½ hours later. As this was clearly unacceptable, we embarked on a long winded train trek over what seemed like all of Holland, just to be indoors on a train instead of waiting out in the cold.
The train trip that normally takes just over 2½ hours took us somewhere around 4.
For those of you who don't know, Holland seems completely devoid of indoor waiting areas. This is fine in July, but it is unacceptable in October.

I've been let down by Ferry Corsten and his ilk before, but this was the last time.
From now on I will refuse to spend 39 EURO parties that I know will never ever be worth the money. If I also have to travel to another part of the country just to attend, I'll be even less likely to go.
I've known for a long time that spending anything over 10 euro on a party is too much, compared to the value I get for it, but silly little me, I keep on going anyway.
Well I say no more. The stupidity ends now!
No more crappy mainstream trance events. From now on I choose my parties with care. Even though it means going to fewer parties, I am totally fine with that.
Seeing as how I am a poor student, I can't afford to blow 100 EUROS for a party night anyway.

I hate seeing stupidity in other people, it's painful, but seeing stupidity in my self is the worst.
Hopefully I can remember this vow next time a big party comes up...

Fuck you Ferry, Fuck you very much!

Evening

I had a nice evening tonight. I was supposed to meet an old friend of mine, but for reasons unknown, she didn't pick up the phone the three times I called her, and she failed to respond to my text message, so I guess she had better things to do. I really don't like to be stood up. It is very damaging to my (quite possibly overinflated) ego.
In any case, not seeing her freed up the first part of my evening, so I hooked up with my brother and some friend of his to pass the time before the next point on my social calendar.
A friend of mine whom I have never met before was passing through Stockholm today, and we decided to meet up, since we were going to be in the city at the same time anyway.
I proceeded to meet my friend and his two companion on Mediterranean time, meaning just after dinner, around 23.00 o'clock.
We ambulated a bit, and then proceeded to go to a bar I had visited a couple of times when I was younger. It was your average high-school club. The people, women and men alike, were young, drunk, scantily clad, and apparently willing to do anything to get laid. Not a place I would normally visit, but as my friends were clad in shorts, we wouldn't have been able to enter any other establishment. In fact, we were barely able to enter this one. I also wanted to give them a taste of seedy underbelly of a normal night out for the people from Stockholm's B-(and C and D, for that matter)List.
Whatever damage my ego had previously taken had now been restored by the hungry looks from inebriated women with naught but a thread to cover their abundant décolletages.
I am almost certain that I could have taken home almost any of the numerous women from this almost seedy establishment. In fact, I'm certain that any of the four of us could have done the same. (I guess that would be men, in the case of my friend sister, but who's counting).
Being able to take someone home for some fun in the sack, and wanting to do it are two very different things. Even if I didn't already have a wonderful girlfriend, I'm not sure any experience with any of these people would have amounted to more than some uninspired thrusting and friction, followed by shameful sleep. None the less, I still felt like a dirty old man, looking at these young girls. Hell, I might be a full 10 years older than some of them, and it made me feel out of place. My age, had I chosen to wield it, could have been another weapon in my arsenal of bedding ready, willing and able maidens.

We spent around an hour there, had a couple of beers and talked about nothing in particular. It was nice to finally meet a person that I have talked to and known for a long time, but never seen In Real Life (or IRL, and the abbreviation goes).

Dance Valley 2007

I can't exactly remember how it started, but in the end, I went to Dance Valley 2007 on Saturday with some friends from Sweden, one of which lives here in Holland right now. The cool thing about dance valley isn't so much its enormous size, but the fact that the whole spectacle takes place during the day.
The gates open at 10 and close 13 hours later at 23. As any party animal will tell you, 13 hours of partying, especially intensive dancing situations like this, is not for the faint of heart. We arrived, after much ado, at around 2-3 o'clock. This meant that we only spent a little more than half of the opening hours participating in the event. If was a lot of fun though. The sun had decided to come, the people were great, and the atmosphere was completely electric.
If you haven't already, I really recommend that you try it some time. I can also say from experience that Dutch parties are better than English parties. They're both filled with ugly people, but at least here in Holland, there's a possibility of finding people that actually look human. Most British people I've met all over the world, at least from ages 50-ish and down look like complete dogs, and they act out the role to perfection. The atmosphere is generally more colloquial at Dutch parties too, I feel.

If you can't make it to the big events, make sure you help our your local organizers by showing up at their smaller parties, outdoor and in, and enjoy the music and give a helping hand.

Disappointed

This long weekend saw me going to two rave parties.
One was at this German club, just across the border, called Index. The lineup mentioned Jens Lissat, Marusha and Yves deRuyter. It promised to be a night of old school rave. This was a lie.
The other was one of the worlds best known rave parties, Mayday, in Dortmund, Germany. They had lined up names like Westbam, Ferry Corsten and Armin van Buren. It promised to be a night of trance. This was a lie.

The night at index failed in the fact that not only was the music played nothing like old school rave, but they also had a very weird timing lineup. Jens Lissat was, unannounced, given the 12-03 shift, at which time I expected the club to close. This was not to be, but at 03, some mockery of music was put on, and we left, disappointed at how the evening had turned out. Looking at pictures from partyflock, it turns out that Yves deRuyter did indeed play, but I can't imagine it being a big step up from what we had heard. Had I know it was a 6 o'clock thing, we would not have arrived at 22.30, but rather something like 12 or 01. What I will say about index though, is that it is a really cool club. They have something like 6 large dance floors, passageways and balconies that connect them, several bars, and outdoor area with a pool, climbing wall, and giant pillows for lying down. Quite possibly one of the coolest venues I have ever seen. I am going back at some point, that I am sure of.

The night at Mayday failed for many reasons. One of the biggest being the fact that the music that was played in no way matched up to what you would expect from the DJs playing it. Sure, had I been rolling, it probably would have been a great evening, but I shouldn't have to pop pills to have fun. Especially not when I shell out big bucks for the opportunity.
Another thing with the trip to Mayday was that the trip itself was nothing short of a cluster fuck. It started with the ticket machine at the station only taking coins (who the fuck carries 30 euros in coins with them?), so we missed the first train because of this. This caused us to have to change trains and wait and all that jazz, which really put a damper on the collective mood. What ticked me off even more was that when I checked the route on Google maps yesterday, it would have taken us half as long to drive, at half the cost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that public transportation was supposed to be cheaper than driving, so that people would choose this alternative to save both the environment and the traffic situation.
The reason that we didn't drive to Dortmund was that I didn't know what kind of substances would be consumed there. I do like to drive, but I will under no circumstances do it under the influence of anything stronger than caffeine and sugar.

Something that did amaze me with both parties were the awesome laser light shows. The one on index was more intricate and detailed, but the one at Mayday was massive (check the related links too. I would put my movies up, but I'm too lazy).

Wednesday Madness

Our school year here is split into four quarters. This is the last quarter in the school year, and as luck would have it, I have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off. Today is Wednesday. I thought to myself: "This will be a good day to go downtown to do some shopping and check some stuff out". Imagine my surprise when I found all of Enschede downtown at the same time. It wasn't just at lunch time either, it was before and after. People were swarming. All the cafés were full, as were all the stores. What were these people doing there? Didn't they have jobs to go to? Didn't they have school?
You'd think that lunch time in the middle of the week would be a good time for people to not be out and about on the town. Weird.

In other news, I finally replaced my old backpack. It wasn't getting old, but it was so rugged and abrasive that it was tearing up the backs of all my shirts. This time I bought a nice one with some kind of contraption at the back that always keeps the bag off my back by a couple of centimeters, letting the air flow nicely. Another good thing about this contraption is that no matter how much I stuff in to the bag, the feeling against my back is always the same. Perfect.

Today I also got my tickets to Mayday. This party has been happening for a long time (from 1991 in fact, according to wikipedia), and it's about time I went. Now that I live so close by.

Trance Energy

It ended up being a good party. At first, when I got to Utrecht, I had been sleeping on the train, and for some reason I was hungry too, so I had a creeping suspicion that the night was going to such. The stomach problems just kept building and building, the closer we got to the entrance.
Once inside, I tried to get some food and found just some terrible french toast with spiced cheese. That was 2 euros I'll never get back.
As the night progressed though, things started to feel better and better though, culminating in a three hour stay at the main stage until they threw us out.
Now my plan is to stay awake until dinner time (5-6 hours to go), and then just crash to wake up fresh as a daisy at 6 or 7 am tomorrow morning, getting a head start on the day.
We'll see how long I can stay awake for, I'm hoping that it'll be possible to go all day. Maybe I should get one or two hours of sleep in, just to make it a bit easier, fix the worst part of the sleepiness. Maybe a shower will help. I mean, I have been dancing all night.