Friday - Getting there
4.30am is a very early time to wake up. There's not a trace of sunshine breaking through the clouds, pubs have stopped serving, and even our beloved Dixy Chicken have closed their doors.
4.30am is, however, the time that Cardiff Uni korfball players, destined for international glory, chose to leave for the shores of Holland to play in the biggest student korf-fest of its kind.
Having first stopped at Tesco for refreshments, the Niblett-mobile still arrived at Harwich 2hours early, followed in turn by Nathan, then Sally. After changing the dates of the tickets for those of the right ferry, we boarded our vessel, in some cases already pissed.
The 4 hour ferry journey was occupied mainly by games of shithead, and “circle of death” - through which I rediscovered my love for the number 10.
Bets were also taken for the first to sleep/first to hurl sweepstakes - the first of which took a disappointingly short period to be collected by Sally, after Yo drifted off to the land of nod.
Arriving at the Hoek van Holland, we caught the train to Rotterdam, before getting on the second train to our final destination, Eindhoven. All of us had begun to feel the alcohol by this point except Donna, who couldn't have been a more radiant picture of sobriety if she tried…
After climbing the bowling ball statue and a few token pictures, we made our way to the sports hall to engage in a few more beverages before making our way into Eindhoven for the night. The place was like one big street party, with Dutch people dressed up in orange everywhere, to celebrate “koninginnenacht” (that means Queen's Night to you and me). To the best of my knowledge everyone went to a nice little restaurant off the square (same place as last year in fact), then got party hardy on the streets of our host city. Team Jack; accompanied by Mr. student korf - Fro, weekend team mate Kev, and others from BSKS, decided to go on a random pub crawl which included doing a runner to get some free beers, and ending up in a night club so fantastically euro pop, that even Flares would cringe from the cheese factor.
The last of us got in at about 1.30am, ready to recharge our batteries for the big time korfball that awaited us.
From here on in I get hazy….
