My ass is fine, not sore at all. I know how I began my first blog for this website with some whiny bitching about being afraid of getting a sore ass and I just wanted to tell you that I won’t do that anymore. People called me an ‘ouwe zeikerd’, which means something like ‘whiny bitch’. I don’t care, ‘jammer dan’. So, my road trip to Jönköping has concluded; my ass is okay, my back hurts a little and I managed to conquer the snow (there is no snow AT ALL!!).

My road trip started in Houten around 11.30 AM. We made stops in Eindhoven, Enschede, Germany, Denmark and finally in Sweden, after which it was 7 AM. That means I sat in the Intel Pack4DreamHack bus for almost twenty hours. For twenty hours I was surrounded by Limburgers. Limburg is one of the Dutch provinces and in each province they manage to speak with a different accent. People from Friesland (in the north of the Netherlands) are hardest to understand, but people from Limburg (in the south of the Netherlands) holds the second position. Their ‘g’ sounds like they’re sighing and they end almost every sentence with a high pitch in their voice. And while I have some pretty ‘grote oren’, big ears, I’m not always the best listener. So imagine being me, surrounded by these Limburgers and some Belgian dudes as well; it was horror!

Just kidding. While it is true that they’re not the easiest to understand (they talk a bit soft as well), I had a good time and I’m glad that Rob, Rina, Eric and Frido (‘Frodo’ in Dutch) were there to talk to. Daniëlle, Edwin, Hennie, Lieneke and Herman, the non-Limburgers I sat close to, were also nice and fun to travel with. Rob took care of most of the questions the packers had, while I had to make sure no one got left behind. We made a good team, as shown on the photo above, and I had something to do.

I already knew a lot of these people, like Aster, Thijs, Steph (who will blog later by the way (there you go Steph, can’t escape now muahaha!)), Tom, Dennis and Luc Marc. The dudes from our awesome video team were easily recognizable as well. One of those new video dudes had to barf (‘kotsen’ in Dutch) when we stopped (lucky-lucky), I always have something to remind people by. Most of my other bus mates were easily met as well. I had this amazing boy on my bus and his last name was ‘Spook’, which is Dutch for ‘Ghost’, and a Belgian guy who made me confused about which of his names was his last name. A lot of Belgian people I met in the past are a bit shy, but he had to laugh as hard about it as I did, which was cool in my opinion. I immediately added him to Facebook.

Sleeping in the bus was terrible. The Intel sleeping mask, neck pillow and ear plugs were handy, but not handy enough to sleep nice. I’m not complaining here; I already knew that sleeping in a bus isn’t as nice as in your own bed. At the moment I’m writing this I still need to sleep (hm… wondering why I am writing this right now…), but I am pretty obsessed with watching my neighbor play MapleStory. Annelize is sitting next to me, and together with Dick (that’s his name, we call the ‘dick’ you’re thinking of ‘piemel’) she did all the work on the other bus. Well, Dick did most of the work I guess but she was very helpful. Everything went super in the other bus as well and everyone arrived in Jönköping safely. My doubts about traveling so far were for nothing. You will read more about my DreamHack adventures later.

Jeroen den Hartog

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