Wednesday, March 21, 2012

My "Sensational" Weekend





So, this past weekend was one of the craziest experiences of my entire life. A lot of us from the program had planned this trip a very long time ago. It was one of our first priorities. The goal for this trip was to go to Sensation White http://www.sensation.com/belgium. This concert took place in a small town, about an hour outside of Brussels, called Hasselt. (In Belgium) There was very little to do in this small town, but they did have a massive arena to house everybody that would attend the concert. (20,000 people ended up going to Sensation) Our flight landed on Friday night in Charleroi and so we had to take a taxi ride. (There were seven of us) The taxi ride was a very funny start to a very fun and interesting weekend. Our taxi driver was a very interesting man, driving us to Hasselt at an average speed of 90 miles an hour or so. It might have been even higher, except that he decided to stop at a gas station to have a smoke and talk to some other taxi friends. We decided this was a good opportunity to try some Belgian beer. We bought a six pack and hung out in the car until the taxi driver was ready to get us to our hotel. Once we arrived in Hasselt, we checked in to the Holiday Inn Express-Hasselt. Now, the only person who wasn't the "nicest person I have ever met" in this entire town, just happened to work the front desk at our hotel. We were planning to have more people stay in our room, but we only booked a twin. The manager was not very nice and wouldn't let all of us stay there. After some debating, some people ended up getting a room across the street for Friday and then on Saturday they would be able to stay with us. (Nobody in the hotel would be worrying about where people were staying) So after we figured everything out on Friday, 5 of us guys left to go get something to eat. The only place that happened to be open was a little place called Hasselt Fried Chicken. It was absolutely delicious. The owner was very nice to us and kept the place open late so that could finish our meal. Afterwards, we headed down the street to a little bar to get a beer. We asked the bartended what his favorite beer was and he served us this beer that was voted the world's best beer in 2010. I can see why. This was probably the best beer I have ever had. It was delicious. The best part about it was that each of us had one beer and there were 5 of us, and the total cost was only 14 euro. In Milan, each beer would average about 5 euro each. Another example of how everybody in Belgium is extremely nice, a man at the bar bought us a round so we decided to stay and have one more before turning in for the night. The next day we decided that we would do something more interesting than just sitting around all day, waiting for Sensation. The event did not take place until 9:00 PM (we ended up going around 10:30 PM) A couple of us decided to board a bus and go to the Netherlands for a few hours. Before we boarded the bus, we ate a burger at a little sandwich shop across the street from the station. The burger had "cocktail" sauce on it, which sounds strange, but was one of the best burgers I have ever had. This sauce was not normal cocktail sauce, but I am very curious as to find out just what kind of sauce it is. We rode the bus for an hour until we reached the town of Maastricht. The busride was very interesting, on account of a man who was very intoxicated, to the point where we stopped on a street and he urinated on some old man's mailbox. Poor old man. The Netherlands is another great and friendly place. The little town square was filled with people walking around, eating food from all over the world and enjoying the day. There were tulips everywhere (but no wooden shoes that I saw). The weather was a little typical of what we imagined it would be-a little rainy, gloomy and about 50 degrees. It was still very nice and we enjoyed a very relaxing afternoon before, what would be, one of the craziest nights I have ever known. So we arrived back in Hasselt after another long busride and hung out in the hotel for a while. At this point, more and more people were showing up to the city and our hotel, many of them dressed in all white. We had many people in our room, spending the last couple of hours before the party. Everybody was so excited for the night and there were so many people from our program there. The time for us to leave for the concert was finally upon us and we all headed out in a giant herd of IES students. I was wearing a white button-up shirt, tucked into a pair of white jeans and white shoes. The outfit actually ended up being pretty cheap. (The pants and the shoes are still there. They were beyond the point of return) We arrived at Sensation, walked in and were immediately blown away. There was a giant lotus-shaped stage were the DJ's were set up that would rise and fall with the music. There were giant light-up balls on the ceiling that would also rise and fall and the lights would do all kinds of things. At times, you would get the feeling that the floor was rising with the way that everything would move up and down. We danced, along with 20,000 other people from about 10:30 to about 6:30 in the morning. After everything was done, we walked back to the hotel and passed out for maybe an hour or so. We then woke up and spent the day in Hasselt. We ate some Belgian waffles and waited for our taxi to the airport and then waited at the airport for our plane. (That is where we also bought some chocolate) The rest of the trip was spent trying to come home, falling in and out of sleep on buses, trains and finally,once reaching home, passed out. I am still trying to catch up on some sleep from the weekend, but it was so worth it. I have not been great at keeping up with the blog lately, but I promise I will try a little better. Midterm week was crazy (I will write another post about that) and I am heading to Rome tomorrow with two lovely ladies (I will right about that too). Now, time for some sleep.
Luke

1 comment:

  1. Did NOT know you had this. Keep writing, man! Miss you!

    Joshua

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