Single-malt folk in the Netherlands!

SCRUM is my favorite band. They come from the Netherlands and play powerfolk music and, funny enough, I found them by pure coincidence! 🙂

I and a couple of friends of mine wanted to see them live anyway, and Eva (One of our Dutch friends) suggested IJsellstein near Utrecht. Date and time was just perfect, so we booked a hostel from Febuary 4th until Febuary 6th, 2018 and bought the tickets for the concert.

Most of us met in Duisburg on the train to Utrecht Centraalstation. In utrecht, we were waiting for the assistance, who didn’t show up. However, the platform was full of people, and sometimes the assistants just wait until the platform is empty enough to locate people. Eitherway, we decided to find the service point where we were supposed to meet Eva by ourselves.
The problem we had was that we were (again) less (partially) sighted people than blind people, so we sometimes lost each other. Luckily though, people who were walking alongside us realized that we lost the others even quicker than we realized it ourselves and reunited us with the rest of us.

We picked up Eva and went to the bus stop to pick up Pawel, who arrived by Flixbus, before we went to the hostel to check in and have some dinner.
We took the tram to IJsselstein and arrived at the concert just in time.

The concert was awesome, and we even had a short talk with Leon, the singer of SCRUM. After having a few drinks in the main hall, we went back to the hostel.

The next morning, Pawel was supposed to check out and leave earlier. Because we were 7 people, Pawel staid in a shared room with some other people. We told him that one of us will come to his room to help him checking out at the reception.
Unfortunately we overslept and all of a sudden, Pawel stood in front of our door and informed us that he just checked out. We were quite surprised when he told us that he just tried to find his way on his own, occasionally got help from other guests or hostel staff members and eventually, he ended up at our room door.

In the eraly afternoon we met Tali (who was present as a volunteer at ICC2015) and her friend, whom we informed that we’d come to Utrecht.
Together we explored the city a bit and had some sandwiches for lunch, before we had to split up and say good bye. Tali and her friend took Pawel to the bus station, whereas the rest of us continued wandering around for another while. At some point, however, we went back to the hostel for a chill-out.

Dinner took place in a fry-shop and we spent some time in a nice shisha bar. Back in the hostel, some of us watched the Superbowle, which was streamed in the hostel.

The next morning, Mel (One of our partially sighted friends) brought Philipp and me to the train station, where the assistance took over.

Philipp and I splitted up in Duisburg. I had breakfast at Le Crobag, but the assistance didn’t show up at the time where my train was scheduled. I first tried to find the service point on my own, but (luckily) I found another person who guided me to the right spot. There, it turned out that I was one hour too early; I just mixed up some numbers. A while later, the train station staff arrived to get me over to the platform.

In the end, I must conclude that we had a great time in the Netherlands, but two days – in this case – were more than enough.
Special thanks this time goes to Mel! She had enough sight to locate places and to coordinate the rest of us. As mentioned above, we sometimes lost each other very quickly and occasionally we had some issues finding each other again.
As a matter of fact, we had some stressful moments and blamed each other, but I’d say Mel was the one who had to handle a lot more things than we had to worry about, especially the coordination.

Nevertheless, it would not stop me from planning another trip!
Cheers!