Spring Break: HASSELT

This will be a short post because I was in Belgium for all of 24 hours, and was only in Hasselt itself for about 16 hours. We took a train from Amsterdam Centrale to Antwerpen, Belgium and from there to Hasselt, Belgium.  Never heard of Hasselt? Me neither...

By the time we decided to go to the rave in Belgium all the hotels had been booking up- mostly by American students abroad who were going to Sensation- so we grabbed the first available room we found. Top-Class Hotel (classy, no?) ended up being a good 15 minute (and 30 euro) cab ride from the center of Hasselt... oops. The hotel itself wasn't too bad but the location was pretty awful considering how little time we had in Belgium.

We immediately put on our white outfits (required for entry) and went back into town to meet up with Colgate people. Walking through the town square at 6pm dressed in all white was interesting, the locals clearly knew why we were there but luckily we weren't the only people already dressed for the night. There ended up being around 30 Colgate students all hanging out at an apartment one of them had rented for the night (much smarter). It was really nice to see familiar faces but was also a little bit surreal that we were all randomly meeting up in Hasselt, Belgium for a rave. We headed to Sensation around 9 and after getting a little bit lost we found the white crowd of people heading towards the arena.

We all had an amazing time at the Sensation White itself. I'd like to clarify what the rave was... my dad had some retroactive concerns and questions that included "isn't that where people go to do hard drugs???". Wellll father, Sensation White is basically a giant concert but instead of having bands, there are a bunch of different DJs that play techno and house music. The light shows are a also little bit more intense than a regular concert.  And although I made far too many jokes for comfort to my parents, family-members you can be assured that I did NOT partake in any rave substances (sigh of relief all together now). As I mentioned before, this particular rave required everybody to wear white and the effect was pretty cool once you got inside. All the Colgate people ended up getting up on the center platform and took over a quarter of it. The entire night was so much fun- the music was really good and having all the Colgate people together made on the platform made everything seem less crazy. We all lasted until about 3:30am and headed back to crash before our 9am train to Brussels.

Me and my friend Dayne with the rave in the background

 And yes... I did wear that white afro wig.