Jason's Daily Notes

I woke up at a decent hour, maybe 7:30am (I did sleep very early last night). I had a sore throat but the rest of my body was pretty well-rested. I went into the living room and just surfed around online while waiting for Nike and Guido to wake up. Katrien did not come home last night (and she didn't come home until the afternoon, rendering our plan to make lasagne for lunch useless).

I stayed in most of the day. Nike went to walk the neighbor's dog. I went out to buy some food. I went to the kebab shop Break & Fast, and got a chicken durum with 2 orders of fries. I ate my food as Nike and Katrien were getting ready to go to the clothes swapping event. I looked up the train ticket and it was cheaper than the bus! Win. I packed my bags and soon went off. I couldn't walk very fast because my bags were heavy. And I promised that I would say bye to Nike and Katrien at Kassa, so I walked all the way there and soon only had 30 minutes to walk back and find my train. So no time for a beer, but I did manage to buy a belgian flag for only €3.

The first train, to Roosendaal, was almost full, but I managed to get a seat for myself and my bag. Soon I arrived. I twas cold, and I had to wait 25 minutes for the connecting train. People were already dressed up thoroughly for carnaval, colorful and wacky costumes everywhere. This was awesome.

I took the train to Breda, got off amongst throngs of carnaval revelers, and walked to Jannes's friend Elsa's house, which was a bit of a ways away. It was starting to snow. I made it, and I met Elsa, her friend Pauline, Elsa's boyfriend Jonnes and his brother Zander (born and raised in Costa Rica but now studying in the NL), and Elsa's housemate Rowand (sp?) from Lithuania. We drank and chatted, and then some more people arrived. Jonnes' nephew and his friend Gert. Victoria and Nick. Another couple. We played King's cup, but with totally different rules. It felt weird and somewhat wrong. But nobody really cared.

We then all went out, dressed up (I was fully decked out as Michaelangelo), in the snow, walking to the center. Elsa helped carry my bag by putting it in her bike's basket. Everything was covered in snow. We got to Cafe Walkabout and Elsa located Jannes for me. I said bye to Elsa and co., and Jannes helped me coat check my bags.

The bar was packed, and the diversity of costumes was amazing. Few people had the same costume - everyone was different! (The only overlaps I saw were Mario & Luigis.) From morph suits to sailor outfits to superheroes to guys dressed as girls to disco queens to Marie Antoinette to banana suits, bears, tigers, pigs, Waldo, pirates, cowboys, police, clowns, even redneck Americans! This is what Halloween should be.

To get drinks at the bar, you need to pay with tokens that you buy from the coat check. Ok, so I got 5 tokens, which means 5 drinks. Perfectly reasonable considering that we were anticipating taking the last train to Eindhoven around 2am. But eventually, Jannes's manager offered to let us crash at his place, so that was off. We walked to the other Walkabout (the restaurant location) just around the corner. Jannes and I got some food at an automat (where you buy food from the wall and can order frites), where we chatted with some Belgians from Antwerp. Apparently this day (Saturday) of Carnaval is when people from other cities *Rotterdam* descend upon Breda for the celebration.

We walked to another bar near the water, where Jannes met his good friend Eva. They caught up, I drank more but soon was feeling completely done (and it was only 2am), so I held on a bit longer. We returned to the original Walkabout and kept at it for another hour and a half. I was exhausted and was already starting to feel a headache/hangover coming on (seriously?) so I shifted to drinking water (good move, Jason!). I swayed and danced amongst the drunken crowd. People kept calling me Donatello! D'oh!

Around 3:30 we got my bags from coat check and left. After waiting for Jannes to pick up his stuff from backstage, we walked to his manager's house which was only like 10 minutes away. There was his friend (Michael?) already passed out on the couch, and Wendy, whom I did not recognize without her wig and glasses. Chugged some water, pumped up the air mattress, and passed out finally around 4:30.

Boom. What a day.