Belgium- Sensation White

03/12/11

     I started off my Saturday morning with what seems to be becoming a weekly routine, waking up, taking a quick shower, and hopping on a plane to a new location! This time, we were off to Brussels, Belgium. We were flying Ryanair though, so of course we pretty much had over half a day traveling in order to get where we wanted to be. From the time I left my apartment in the morning until the time I got to the hotel we were staying at took a total of 7 hours. Thinking about it makes me exhausted! First we had to fly into a city outside of Brussels, then take a bus to the city center. This was followed by a walk to the other train station in the city center where we would take a train to Hasselt. Hasselt is the name of the city where we were headed for the concert Sensation White that started at 10 p.m. 

     By the time we even got to Hasselt it was almost 5 so we grabbed a bite to eat since we hadn’t eaten since leaving the apartment that morning. Because Belgium is known for its fries, we made sure to stop somewhere with fries. I got a cheeseburger with everything on it and fries. They put the sauce directly on the fries and it’s typical to eat fries with mayonnaise there, but I just couldn’t do it and stuck with ketchup. From here, we went to our hotel. We were staying at the Holiday Inn and it was actually cheap because again, we fit 8 people in a 4 person room. Walking into the hotel was really fun because it was jam packed with college students studying abroad coming in from all across Europe. Before starting to get ready, we went up to say hello to the girls from Grenada and the guys from Barcelona. We also had friends in from places ranging from Verona, Switzerland, Milan, Versailles, Vienna and the list goes on. 

Sightseeing while walking through Brussels

     As we all started getting ready and hanging out in the hallways, they suddenly started getting loud with kids getting ready and starting to put on their all white outfits. Sensation White is a house music concert with several DJs and all those attending wear all white! We gathered with all of our friends between two hotel rooms. There were over 50 kids I knew from U of I there and we were all hanging out. It was such a strange phenomenon to me to be in a foreign place as random as Hasselt, Belgium and to be surrounded by so many people I knew. 

My roommates and I

Rome & Grenada Girls

Some of the boys

     After hanging out for a while, we started our half an hour walk to where the concert was held. As we walked up, it was massive crowds of pure white everywhere. It was such a cool experience. We walked in and the light show was really cool that accompanied the DJs and it was pretty much a rave of everyone dancing and having a good time. The concert began at 10 p.m. and lasted until 7 the following morning. I did my best to stay as long as I could, but come 5 in the morning I couldn’t last any longer and me and two of my roommates headed back to our hotel room. The rest of my roommates walked home as the sun rose and came into our room at 8. This was one of the coolest concerts I’ve ever been to, unlike anything I’ve ever seen and an experience I will never forget!

03/13/11

Because we went to bed so late, we all slept until noon to get a decent 6 hours of sleep in before starting the next day. Unfortunately, our flight left at 5:30 so we had to repeat the travels of the previous day, just backwards. While I didn’t get to sight see Belgium as much as I may have liked to, it was definitely worth the trip. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all my friends I normally see everyday and haven’t seen in two months was really fun! When we finally got back to our apartment that night, we all ran straight to our beds and went to bed for the night! I consider it a very successful weekend, but we had to get our rest in because the week ahead of us was midterms followed by a long week of traveling for spring break!