Wednesday, 28th June

Today I arrived at Paris around 17:00 after a four hour train ride from Amsterdam Central Station to Paris Gare du Nord

Having packed up all my stuff the night before there was really not much preparation left before I could hit the train to Paris, I’m traveling along with Sizah and our train left from Amsterdam at 12:56. The only thing I needed to make sure of today was that I made it on time for the train. As I live only a 15 minute subway ride away from the Central Station this shouldn’t be that hard, but I’m a natural in getting late, which my boss and friends would gladly confirm.

I woke up at 10:30 got a nice long shower, had some breakfast and headed to the subway station where I arrived just in time to wave the subway driver good bye while he was getting off the moment I walked up the station. From now it became a close call as the next subway would leave at 11:37 which left me with only 19 minutes to catch the Thalys to Paris Nord, since this would be the fourth time I’d visit the ESWC and I’ve traveled with the Thalys each time I know it will always leave right on schedule.

Acting cool on the phone with Sizah while he must have been getting sweaty as I had both of our train tickets, I was hoping the subway didn’t run into any delays, which it luckily didn’t. I arrived at the Central Station just in time and the moment I got on the Thalys and put my luggage away, the train left Central Station.

Now that mission was completed it was time to grab a beer at the Thalys bar, together with the Dutch Counter-Strike team Conzto we’ve spend about 3,5 hours of our four hours train ride at the bar enjoying our beers and having conversation.

Arrived at Gare du Nord we met up with Forever the Dutch Quake 4 player who was already in France for a booth camp with Winz, as the players left to the players hotel we continued our journey together with the crew of Gamelux to Gare de Lyon, which is almost next to the Palais Omnisport of Paris Bercy where the event is held. After having some small problems finding our hotel which is located only 100 meters from the event, we checked in our rooms and went out for a drink together with Tosspot and Redeye and had diner at 23:30 in a restaurant across the street.

We went back to the hotel around 01:00 where we ran into Sujoy and watch some movies from last years ESWC at Carmac’s room. After we watched the movies and the security guy came to the room to shut us up we went to our rooms and tried to catch some sleep, it still took me until 4:30 until I finally fell asleep in these not to comfortable beds.