Tomorrowland! I'd been waiting for this all year ever since I finagled my ticket back in January. Once I moved here last year, I knew from right then I'd have to go to Tomorrowland, and I knew that it was going to sell out crazy fast, which is why on the first (and only) day of sales, I was on their website, which was swamped with thousands of people like me accessing it from all over the world, frantically trying to get my ticket before everything sold out.
Because of this slight desperation, I didn't fully pay attention to the available options and thus didn't notice that there was camping available. And so I took the cheapest hotel option: a hostel called the "Train Hostel." Also, despite usually being a penny pincher I decided this was an acceptable "treat yourself" moment and so also bought the "Belgian Journey," tours of Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp in the week before the festival.
Finally the long-awaited Monday morning in July arrived. I had everything packed up, and with a few hours to spare before departure, a took a walk to my local outdoor pool and got in a nice 1100m breaststroke--the most I'd ever swam in one day--before dragging my baggage to the local S-Bahn station.
There were three train rides that day, not counting commuter trains. First was a quick ride from Stuttgart to Mannheim on an ICE (Intercity-Express, Germany's high-speed trains). Then a somewhat slower ride from there to Köln/Cologne on a not-so-fast IC, and then a third fast but long ride on another ICE to Bruxelles-Midi, one of Brussels' two main rail hubs.
From there, Brussels' S-train--a commuter train, their equivalent of S-Bahn--took me a couple stops north to Schaerbeek (pronounced like "scar bake") which is where I'd be staying every night. Schaerbeek's train station is right next to a museum called Train World, with the Train Hostel being a few doors down. I had to blindly follow some signs to find the hostel. When I got there, I was given my room key--a keycard that you merely touch against a reader on the door to open it. I opened the door, fully expecting to find a bunch of bunks behind it, but to my surprise there was only one bed. Despite being in a hostel, I was getting my own room to myself. I won't complain about that!
After checking in and leaving my luggage in the room, I next had to meet my ride taking me to the "Welcome Drink" at a swanky bar downtown called Plein Publiek. They had a car service pick me up at the hostel.
At Plein Publiek I got to meet most of my fellow Belgian Journey travelers. A surprising amount of them had flown there from the US, and oddly enough, a great deal of them had come from the same city: Houston! There didn't seem to be a reason for this other than pure coincidence. It also turned out that none of them had gone to the now-legendary Middlelands festival, at the Texas Ren Faire grounds two years earlier, though they had heard of it and had wanted to go. I could write a whole other series of blogs on the magic that was Middlelands... [Note from the future: I finally did write one blog, not a series, about it.]
Everyone at the party was entitled to one free beer, one free wine, and one free mixed drink with vodka. They also had popcorn and potato chips in bowls on all the tables, but sadly this was the only food available. That plus the beer and wine was going to be my "dinner" that night. On vacations like this where I'm constantly on my feet, I tend to relax my usually-strict personal rules on eating and drinking, and I was definitely starting early on that.
The Welcome Drink party was a nice introduction to everything, and I got to meet a lot of other festival veterans, not only the aforementioned Americans but others from places like Brazil. There was even a TV news crew there for a while. Tomorrowland really is a big deal in this country. After a few hours, though, I and three others had to meet the car service again so I could go back to the hostel.
On arriving back in Schaerbeek I wasn't done with the beer, though; I was in Belgium after all, and I really wanted a couple more glasses of strong, abbey-brewed ale. So I stopped by another bar, called A La Ville de Louvain, near the hostel and had what was probably too much Leffe. I don't remember how much I had but it may have been more than "a couple more." This was a mistake...
Other articles in this series:
- Tomorrowland day 1 - Getting there & Welcome Drink
- Tomorrowland day 2 - Bruges
- Tomorrowland day 3 - Ghent
- Tomorrowland day 4 - Antwerp
- Tomorrowland day 5 - First Fest Day
- Tomorrowland day 6 - Second Fest Day
- Tomorrowland day 7 - Train World and Last Fest Day
- Tomorrowland day 8 - Final Thoughts and a Little More Brussels
