Thursday, 29th June

Event registration and official opening ceremony at 18:00.

I woke up around 09:00 took a shower and played some games on my Xbox, which also has been to every ESWC event so far, and waited for Sizah to finally wake up from his hibernate. After Sizah got ready we went outside and tried to find us a decent breakfast, since not many restaurants still serve breakfast at 12:00 we ended up with a cheap sandwich from some kind of mini market, which in my case felt more like a sponge and in Sizah's case more like a stone.

After that we searched for the event entrance which took us a walk around the Palais Omnisport due the lack of signs leading to the actual location. It didn't take us long though and since we're registered in advance as press it wasn't that hard to pass the registration and receive our press passes, although they had some troubles finding Sizah's name on the list as he was listed by his first name instead of his surname.

From now all we could do the day was wondering around the event having a look at the exhibition booths and meet up with people, including Vo0 and Lauke which both came as spectators to the event. Today felt like I was in Paris for already a whole week, but then finally at 18:30 with a half hour delay the official opening ceremony began.

At the ceremony they showed us a movie compilation from the previous ESWC events and had a chat about all the sponsors and organization of the event. You might have seen a trailer from this movie, which was released some while ago. I must say the movie was really impressive, after the movie and chat it was finally time for the group drawings.

The ceremony also gave us a first glimpse of the really impressive gaming arena where all the tournaments will take place starting from tomorrow and after the ceremony there was the possibility to grab some snacks and drink at one of the upper areas of the venue.

After the snacks it was time for diner and we went to an Italian restaurant together with the Gamelux crew, Redeye, Cash, Zerter and Forever, at this time Tosspot was shoutcasting the Eurocup Enemy Territory semi-finals live from his hotel room in Paris.

Zerter and Forever left after diner for the players hotel as their tournament is starting early the next day and the rest went to another place and enjoyed ourselves a drink on the terrace.

I left terrace around 23:00 and headed back to the hotel room to write these journals and get some rest, about 2 hours later I'm sitting in the hotel lobby uploading these writings.