Sssso! Lowlands recap
I'm a bit more rested now ;) (Yay for asking a week off after lowlands!!) So here we go.
We left on friday morning around 10ish-11ish more or less, after packing our stuff and making sure we didn't forget anything (including tickets! I still remember our Rock Werchter Fiasco when we drove all the way to Belgium only to realize THEN that we had forgotten the tickets at home.) So, with tickets in hand, we made it to Lowlands without any real delays, the traffic was a bit slow at some points, but no big traffic jam or anything.
We did forget something after all, close to Lowlands we realized that we forgot our breakfast at home LOL (We had bought some buns (bolletjes) and meaties to eat in the mornings, so now we had to go buy food at the camping stores instead, oh well!)
Amazingly enough, the queue to go in was not very long, and out of sheer luck I picked up the fastest-moving queue too, so we were inside in about 20 minutes or so (that certainly beats the 5-hour queues that we've experienced years before). We headed to camping no. 2 where our friends had pitched their tents and had saved us a spot. :) Robert had on purpose placed his tent in such an incovenient way that nothing else could be set up around it, but once we got there we could move his tent a little bit to the right, giving us enough room to pitch ours! Yaaay for space. :D
Our friends Jan-Maarten and his GF Suzanne (sp?) were there by the tents so we chatted with them while we pitched ours. We've gotten very experienced on that so we were done in about half an hour, tent nicely set up and all our stuffies unpacked. (Sleepmats, sleeping bags, etc.) After that, we were ready to rrrrrrrrrrrrumble!
We headed to the festival terrain and met up with the rest of the crew there. Listened to some bands, had some dinner, listened to some more bands... (In total we saw "Ronie Size Reprazent", "Pete Philly & Perquisite", "Pendulum", "Roisin Murphy" and we went to check out "Bong-Ra" but he was only playing gabber music so we didn't stay for long.
At around 12.00 I went to hit the sack. The others wanted to see a movie so they headed to the "Sneak Preview" at the Echo tent around that time, only to find out that the entrance was closed already so they missed the film! :( They went to check out the DJ "Deadmau5" instead, returned to the camping not long afterwards, and also called it a night. I couldn't sleep too well because it was cold that night, and some people nearby kept singing loudly and playing a guitar till like 5 in the morning or something. (I had their tune "Bier en tieten, tralalalaaaa, bier en tieten tralalalalalala" stuck in my head all day long, too.) If any other Lowlanders also heard this song, then probably we were camping very closeby LOL I had to laugh when a girl asked them to sing the song for her, but this time with "wijn en piemel tralalalaaaa". They actually did! The crazy things one hears at Lowlands! :D
The next morning we woke up kind of early as the sun was shining brightly, making it impossible to stay inside the tents, it was boiling in there LOL! So out we go! We had a bite at the camping site and then headed off to the festival terrain for yet another bite ;) and more bands. On this day we saw "Volbeat", "Nightwish", "Does it offend you, yeah?" and we made it to the Sneak Preview in the Echo Tent this time. They showed the film "Young People Fucking", which was kind of amusing. I enjoyed myself. (Though getting into that tent is HELL, they really have to do something about it!! Everyone pushes like crazy and if it hadn't been for Jeroen I'd have been trampled, little tiny me! ;P)
After the movie Jeroen and I still went to check out the drum&bass DJs at the India tent, we danced for a bit, and after a while we called it a night.
On Sunday, same story, it was too warm to stay in the tent for long, although it was cloudier than the past couple of days. We chilled by the tents for a bit and then went to the festival terrain again, although there were no bands we really wanted to see this time. Still we went along for the lulz, had another bite there, listened to "We are Scientists" and then we went to check out "Textures". It was already around 4.00 and we wanted to be home by dinnertime, so we said our goodbyes, handed out the remaining muntjes we had amongst our friends, and went to pack our stuff. Just as we were done packing our tent and all, the first drops of rain started to fall. No big shower, just a few droppies but we were glad that our tent was nice and dry when we packed it, and we headed to the car hoping the rain would wait for us, and it did LOL. We made it there nice and dry (but tired as HELL) We checked the buienradar.nl site at home later in the evening and it was raining cats and dogs in Biddinghuizen so we left right on time!! Shame of those hardcore Lowlanders who stayed till monday morning, they had some major craptastic weather after all those beautiful sunny days!
Jeroen drove back home, we had a major traffic jam between Zwolle and Apeldoorn-Noord so it was past 7 by the time we made it back home! Meh. Anyway, we cuddled the cats to death, Jeroen went to get some chinese food from around the corner, we took a well-deserved shower, and hit the sack at around 10.00pm, so tired were we! :)
So, the pros:
1) The weather ruled, we caught our share of sunshine but it was not searing hot either. As there was no rain, there was no mud either so our clothes and shoes stayed reasonably clean and you could sit down on the grass almost anywhere.
2) No one got majorly drunk so there were no nasty hangovers or sick people ;) In the past there would be tons of beer consumed, but now most people drank coffee, tea and cola! We're getting too old for this shit LOL. I loved that phonecall exchange with our friends:
"Where are you guys?"
"We're by the Grolsch Tent, sipping tea!"
"Tea??"
"Yeah, awesome tea! And really good cookies!"
"Wow, you guys are going wild over there, aren't you?!"
3) I only had one tiny headache so I only had to nap once, normally I nap a lot more often during this sort of festivals, as I always feel very tired. I still was tired this time but I think I had a little bit more energy than previous times.
4) We had a lot of fun with the friends, very gezellig!
5) The wok noodles from LaPlace. Mmmmm. *Drool* Their burritos weren't too bad either!
6) The Dethklok cartoons on the big screen! Had me LOLing.
The cons:
1) Although we had nice weather, it did cool down a lot in the evenings, we went from 23 degrees down to 7, so it was extremely chilly in the tent at night. Even my extra fleece blankie didn't help much.
2) There were not too many bands that we actually cared for this time! I was looking forward to Nightwish, but they got a new singer and I think she kinda sucks. Well she's not bad, but her voice style is different and I prefer the previous singer all the way. She stuck out like a sore thumb too, all the band members were dressed in their gothic yummy outfits while this chick was standing there in a white shirt and jeans. She looked like a country singer or something LOL. Totally not in vibe with the band. Oh well :(
3) 2.30 euro for a glass of cola/sinaas/beer???? The muntjes get more and more expensive every time :P
4) My feet were extremely tired so it makes the whole experience less enjoyable. The festival itself involves walking and walking and standing up and dancing and walking some more, and even though we had plenty of opportunities to sit down this time (as opposed to when it's muddy like hell), my feet were still killing me. I will make sure to get better walking shoes if I end up going next year.
5) We didn't see much crazy shit going on ;) Normally there's lots of weirdos running around in funny outfits (not necessarily guests from the camping, but also people from the organization), but we didn't see much of them this time. Also, due to the nice weather, there was lots of eye candy for the men, but not as much for the women! I demand more nice manly bodies next time!! ;P
So, I think that's about it for Lowlands 2008! :D
On a completely different note, I got a call from the doctor's assistant again, my new pee sample is still not good, so she said she'd talk to the doctor to see how to go from here.
If she doesn't call I guess I don't have to worry, otherwise we will see what she says :P
*waves*
Nichersss
We left on friday morning around 10ish-11ish more or less, after packing our stuff and making sure we didn't forget anything (including tickets! I still remember our Rock Werchter Fiasco when we drove all the way to Belgium only to realize THEN that we had forgotten the tickets at home.) So, with tickets in hand, we made it to Lowlands without any real delays, the traffic was a bit slow at some points, but no big traffic jam or anything.
We did forget something after all, close to Lowlands we realized that we forgot our breakfast at home LOL (We had bought some buns (bolletjes) and meaties to eat in the mornings, so now we had to go buy food at the camping stores instead, oh well!)
Amazingly enough, the queue to go in was not very long, and out of sheer luck I picked up the fastest-moving queue too, so we were inside in about 20 minutes or so (that certainly beats the 5-hour queues that we've experienced years before). We headed to camping no. 2 where our friends had pitched their tents and had saved us a spot. :) Robert had on purpose placed his tent in such an incovenient way that nothing else could be set up around it, but once we got there we could move his tent a little bit to the right, giving us enough room to pitch ours! Yaaay for space. :D
Our friends Jan-Maarten and his GF Suzanne (sp?) were there by the tents so we chatted with them while we pitched ours. We've gotten very experienced on that so we were done in about half an hour, tent nicely set up and all our stuffies unpacked. (Sleepmats, sleeping bags, etc.) After that, we were ready to rrrrrrrrrrrrumble!
We headed to the festival terrain and met up with the rest of the crew there. Listened to some bands, had some dinner, listened to some more bands... (In total we saw "Ronie Size Reprazent", "Pete Philly & Perquisite", "Pendulum", "Roisin Murphy" and we went to check out "Bong-Ra" but he was only playing gabber music so we didn't stay for long.
At around 12.00 I went to hit the sack. The others wanted to see a movie so they headed to the "Sneak Preview" at the Echo tent around that time, only to find out that the entrance was closed already so they missed the film! :( They went to check out the DJ "Deadmau5" instead, returned to the camping not long afterwards, and also called it a night. I couldn't sleep too well because it was cold that night, and some people nearby kept singing loudly and playing a guitar till like 5 in the morning or something. (I had their tune "Bier en tieten, tralalalaaaa, bier en tieten tralalalalalala" stuck in my head all day long, too.) If any other Lowlanders also heard this song, then probably we were camping very closeby LOL I had to laugh when a girl asked them to sing the song for her, but this time with "wijn en piemel tralalalaaaa". They actually did! The crazy things one hears at Lowlands! :D
The next morning we woke up kind of early as the sun was shining brightly, making it impossible to stay inside the tents, it was boiling in there LOL! So out we go! We had a bite at the camping site and then headed off to the festival terrain for yet another bite ;) and more bands. On this day we saw "Volbeat", "Nightwish", "Does it offend you, yeah?" and we made it to the Sneak Preview in the Echo Tent this time. They showed the film "Young People Fucking", which was kind of amusing. I enjoyed myself. (Though getting into that tent is HELL, they really have to do something about it!! Everyone pushes like crazy and if it hadn't been for Jeroen I'd have been trampled, little tiny me! ;P)
After the movie Jeroen and I still went to check out the drum&bass DJs at the India tent, we danced for a bit, and after a while we called it a night.
On Sunday, same story, it was too warm to stay in the tent for long, although it was cloudier than the past couple of days. We chilled by the tents for a bit and then went to the festival terrain again, although there were no bands we really wanted to see this time. Still we went along for the lulz, had another bite there, listened to "We are Scientists" and then we went to check out "Textures". It was already around 4.00 and we wanted to be home by dinnertime, so we said our goodbyes, handed out the remaining muntjes we had amongst our friends, and went to pack our stuff. Just as we were done packing our tent and all, the first drops of rain started to fall. No big shower, just a few droppies but we were glad that our tent was nice and dry when we packed it, and we headed to the car hoping the rain would wait for us, and it did LOL. We made it there nice and dry (but tired as HELL) We checked the buienradar.nl site at home later in the evening and it was raining cats and dogs in Biddinghuizen so we left right on time!! Shame of those hardcore Lowlanders who stayed till monday morning, they had some major craptastic weather after all those beautiful sunny days!
Jeroen drove back home, we had a major traffic jam between Zwolle and Apeldoorn-Noord so it was past 7 by the time we made it back home! Meh. Anyway, we cuddled the cats to death, Jeroen went to get some chinese food from around the corner, we took a well-deserved shower, and hit the sack at around 10.00pm, so tired were we! :)
So, the pros:
1) The weather ruled, we caught our share of sunshine but it was not searing hot either. As there was no rain, there was no mud either so our clothes and shoes stayed reasonably clean and you could sit down on the grass almost anywhere.
2) No one got majorly drunk so there were no nasty hangovers or sick people ;) In the past there would be tons of beer consumed, but now most people drank coffee, tea and cola! We're getting too old for this shit LOL. I loved that phonecall exchange with our friends:
"Where are you guys?"
"We're by the Grolsch Tent, sipping tea!"
"Tea??"
"Yeah, awesome tea! And really good cookies!"
"Wow, you guys are going wild over there, aren't you?!"
3) I only had one tiny headache so I only had to nap once, normally I nap a lot more often during this sort of festivals, as I always feel very tired. I still was tired this time but I think I had a little bit more energy than previous times.
4) We had a lot of fun with the friends, very gezellig!
5) The wok noodles from LaPlace. Mmmmm. *Drool* Their burritos weren't too bad either!
6) The Dethklok cartoons on the big screen! Had me LOLing.
The cons:
1) Although we had nice weather, it did cool down a lot in the evenings, we went from 23 degrees down to 7, so it was extremely chilly in the tent at night. Even my extra fleece blankie didn't help much.
2) There were not too many bands that we actually cared for this time! I was looking forward to Nightwish, but they got a new singer and I think she kinda sucks. Well she's not bad, but her voice style is different and I prefer the previous singer all the way. She stuck out like a sore thumb too, all the band members were dressed in their gothic yummy outfits while this chick was standing there in a white shirt and jeans. She looked like a country singer or something LOL. Totally not in vibe with the band. Oh well :(
3) 2.30 euro for a glass of cola/sinaas/beer???? The muntjes get more and more expensive every time :P
4) My feet were extremely tired so it makes the whole experience less enjoyable. The festival itself involves walking and walking and standing up and dancing and walking some more, and even though we had plenty of opportunities to sit down this time (as opposed to when it's muddy like hell), my feet were still killing me. I will make sure to get better walking shoes if I end up going next year.
5) We didn't see much crazy shit going on ;) Normally there's lots of weirdos running around in funny outfits (not necessarily guests from the camping, but also people from the organization), but we didn't see much of them this time. Also, due to the nice weather, there was lots of eye candy for the men, but not as much for the women! I demand more nice manly bodies next time!! ;P
So, I think that's about it for Lowlands 2008! :D
On a completely different note, I got a call from the doctor's assistant again, my new pee sample is still not good, so she said she'd talk to the doctor to see how to go from here.
If she doesn't call I guess I don't have to worry, otherwise we will see what she says :P
*waves*
Nichersss