We Survived The War

Wow, what a ride! Words can't even explain how brilliant Sensation White 2005 turned out to be. It was, quite simply, perfect. I had waited four years to go and it was worth every minute of it.

Picture this - Amsterdam Arena (the size of Telstra Stadium), Kat and I dressed in our white tennis gear, racket not included, along with Irma, Grant and Arnold also dressed in white, Irma in her massive white fur vest, dancing in the middle of the arena with 45,000 of our closest friends all dressed in white while David Guetta drops 'The World Is Mine' with live vocals! It was epic.

The theme for the night was about a futuristic man vs machine war that's erupted across the entire world. The story goes something along the lines of humans creating machines intelligent enough to realise us pitiful humans were merely a waste of space and determined to extinguish the entire race. They pulled it off impressively, I couldn't imagine it could of been done any better. There were fireworks, actors, massive screens with wicked visuals, a chick voice-over robot telling the story throughout the night. The highlight would have definitely been the Megamix, a half-hour or so long mix of all the biggest trance and house tunes hitting the floor these days. We saw them preparing for it up in the stadium steel beams a few minutes beforehand and knew it was going to be sweet. Next thing the music screeches to a halt and the robot narrator informs us all the machines are launching a full scale attack against us and our only weapon of defense is the Megamix. Guys dressed in black bungy jumped from the beams holding laser guns slicing through the crowd among a billion pieces of silver foil as the Megamix got revved into gear. Machines appeared on the stage right in front of us 'attacking' the crowd with their lasers. I'm embarrassed to say but I was actually a bit frightened. As the attack went on our defense system moved into place and fireworks representing missiles shot up into the arena. There were awesome fireworks setup that were supposed to be shots ricocheting off the walls, the lights, the TV screen, all above our heads. I guess we won because the next time I looked around all the machines were gone and I didn't see them again apart from a few here and there partying with the rest of us.

The whole night was made even better by just how great everyone we met was. The people there were so nice and it was surprising that every single one of them could speak pretty much fluent English. Not only that but they seemed ecstatic to meet someone they could speak English with. Actually, there was this one chick who grabbed my phone while I was texting a friend back home and started speaking Dutch at me. She was giggling and everything and when she realised I didn't understand a word of what she was saying she literally ran off from embarrassment. Quite bizarre really. Where we were dancing was where all the dancers and DJ's were coming through the crowd to get to the DJ booth and stages in the middle of the Arena. I was lucky enough to shake hands and say 'hi' to David Guetta after his set, it was so damn cool!

I couldn't believe it and was extremely surprised when Irma dragged us over to meet her friend from Sydney who'd come over and met her there, and it was one of my friends Karen! Neither of us remember the next five minutes after that because we were so excited and overcome, it was really weird running into someone I knew like that, but apparently we were screaming and hugging each other like we were long lost relatives. Another unbelievable part of the night was when the one of the world's top classical piano players, Jan Vayne, appeared on stage and mixed it up with Armin Van Buuren for half an hour or so. You'd never think of it but it was great. You can checkout photo's and video of the Sensation White 2005 party at http://www.id-t.com/ if you can get past the Dutch.

It got light at about 5am and flooded the Arena through the glass rooftop. Probably not one of the nicest moments of the evening as I looked around at all the rubbish everywhere. It all wrapped up a bit after 7am and we all caught a cab back to Arnold's place after fighting with the cab driver who was trying to rip us off something chronic. Contemplating about going out into the city for lunch over a few glasses of champagne, we eventually did and went to a gorgeous restaurant for some more drinks and a great tasting bread with goat's cheese and honey. It's really yummy, you should all try it. After a few minutes we met Fermin. Fermin is from Spain.

Later on that evening we hauled ourselves onto a cruise near Centraal and basically danced ourselves crazy while cruising around the outskirts of Amsterdam. I met some more friendly, fun dutchmen who were always up for a good chat. The boat was rather impressive - a rooftop deck fully equipped with a DJ where we spent most of our time, a pub/lounge mid-level and a nightclub down the bottom with fully illuminated walls. I somehow managed to get the bartender to bring me drinks from the bar to where we were laying about in the nightclub. Feeling a bit like royalty, we left the cruise around 11 and headed to Arnold's favourite bar. Deliriousness, population all six of us, spent the next hour acting like complete crazies and laughing until we cried.

Back to Arnold's place far later than we should have, we all collapsed, some making it barely a few feet from the door. Three hours of sleep later had Kat and I running through the streets of Amsterdam back to the Hans Brinker in the rain to catch the bus to Berlin. Absolute blast of a time!