Last week Matthijs was asked by Frank (of the Gonnagles) to help him with the sound tech at a ball this Saturday in Amsterdam. Since we didn't have anything planned yet for Saturday and Matthijs likes the sound stuff (yay, buttons!) he said yes. I was included in the invitation and sleeping place was arranged at the place of one of the Gonnagles in Amsterdam.

The ball started at about 20:15 with dance initiation, which I don't really need anymore but always is a nice warming up. There were quite a few new and inexperienced dancers. One of them was Maarten and I kind of 'adopted' him for the first half of the evening as student.

There were three bands with the Gonnagles playing as second. They were the best, however it is hard for other bands to compete with the Gonnagles. ;-) I did a lot of dancing, getting blisters on my feet but ignoring them. Since Matthijs was busy doing sound when Frank was playing his trumpet with the Gonnagles I danced a lot with other men. I find it easier to dance with partners of about the same height as I am. However, Matthijs, being my love, deserved a few dances as well when the last band was playing. ;-)

At about 02:00 the ball had come to an end and we went to Henning's house a 15 minute walk away. Fortunately I did have other shoes with me so the blisters didn't bother me. It was a very weird house, a former school, with very high rooms and multiple living groups in it (I spotted 3 kitchens). After some socializing and making the beds we went to sleep at 03:30.

Sunday we slept in as late as possible, meaning 11:15 for Matthijs and me. We had to get to the train at 12:54 to go to Rotterdam Ahoy for the Walking with Dinosaurs show. We calculated some extra time for putting saldo on my OV chipcard. I didn't really trust it to work at once since I had lots of trouble (and not even a success at the end) with getting saldo on my card via the ov chipcard site. The machine worked ok though, as long as you were able to use PIN and no cash.

Our seats at WwD were crappy. The chairs themselves were hard and Matthijs' seat was even broken. We were at the front row of the highest gallery but for safety there were fences there that blocked our view. Fortunately resting my arms on the railing improved the view and I'm still young enough not to get stuck with a back ache.

The show itself was impressive. No thanks to the actor playing the paleontologist (I found him a bit over acting at times, too forced) but because of the great dinosaur-machines. When you ignored the bases below them (colored like the floor they were on) that helped them move, they were really life like. There were even some smaller dinosaurs 'worn' by humans, you could see the human legs. The legs and feet moved life like, the eyes blinked, the bulk of stomach and fleshy folds at joints looked like real flesh and some dino's could even eat plants or other baby dino's. ;-)

I have long passed the age in which I could have believed the dinosaurs were real and there were some small kids sitting nearby exclaiming that they could see the human legs or asking what the thing was underneath the bigger dinosaurs. However, part of the fun I have at such a show is looking at how stuff was made. Matthijs spent some time gawking at the tech department and I was pleasantly surprised by how the growing plants were done; balloons blown up so the plants seemed to grow gradually. Hearing the machinery inside the dino's work made it all the more impressive for me.

At 21:30 we were home again after a weekend well spend and not long after we went to bed.

Next weekend is the last Symbols event, but somehow that hasn't really sunk in yet. I'm not yet larp oriented at the moment.