2008 February 25 « Home @ Miliux

I arrived in Utrecht around 8.30 from 8.07PM train from Amsterdam. I have never seen that many partygoers crammed inside a train station in my life. All buzzing with anticipation and gathered up in groups. If feels that the whole train is dedicated for those going to Trance Energy party.

Then i arrived around 9pm and there were massive people gathered outside of entrances. It took us about 20min wait to finally go inside. The first process is just going through in parallel files. Then once you go inside it’s the hall surrounded by locker facilities. I needed to collect a key from the counter and it costed €5 deposit + €6 hire which equals €11 overall. I shoved my bag, hoodie jumper and only took with me a camera and wallet. Rest goes in the locker!

Another round of gate. This time it’s the security personnel padding you and checking your wallet and pocket for dangerous and prohibited item. The whole security screening process didn’t take that long at all…all done very efficiently.

Near the security screening are booths ranging from token purchases to food, bars, mechandise items, piercing studio, kandy kid utilities and a big section for the emergency crew. I knew i had to purchase tokens to buy foods and so on. It costed €10 for 4 tokens.

I winded to the main hall. It was actually like 400m walk from the security screening to the entrance of the main hall. Inside, there are blue spots illuminated by above by spotlights. It was quite empty and there were even a small crowd way in front singing and chanting to start the music. The venue opened at 9.30 but the music doesn’t start in main hall at 10. At first it didn’t felt that excessively big, but once you fill the empty hall with people, then you can actually feel the extent of how massive this hall actually is!

The first DJ in main hall was Kyau & Albert and he played a mix of electro/house. It was a mellow feeling and felt that i should discover other 3 halls before making my home here. So made my way to the high contrast/hard trance hall, which was located on the other side of the exhibition centre. There was a decent crowd getting the hang of the music. It was hard trance, not hardstyle and it often mixes with minimal elements.

The crowd is a lot different to the ones in Sydney. Everyone wore comfortable clothes and there’s less presence of ’sects’ such as adlays and kandy kids. Although it is a trance party and not a rave, it is still less trendy. There were a few kandy kids however, but washed down version with a fluro ‘phatty’ pants without beads and headbands. There were many people all over the world such as Czech, Russia, Israel, Chile and U.S. Many built their whole holiday around this event.

I went back in the main hall about 1pm, that was an hour before Tiesto starts to play. Then space between goers starts to shrink until it’s totally shoulder to shoulder. When Tiesto started to play, it was totally full many people got stuck while trying to ‘travel’ to the front. The only way to go out of this hall was to follow others like a train and hopefully carve through the crowd. That is what i did. I stayed for about 40min then at a point where the hall was so full that it became less comfortable and even unenjoyable location to dance.

When i exited out of the main hall, there were security personnel stopping further crowd approaching the hall as it was so full it may pose safety risk.

So i headed back to the high contrast/hard trance main hall and there were actually a good crowd there. I would have thought that the other halls would be empty as everyone wanted to go see Tiesto. Marcel Woods was playing in that hall and had elements of hard trance.

In the end, it was a pretty good experience. Now i’ve listened to top 50 trance/hardstyle DJs and went to biggest trance party in the world, it does feel that i have done something special while living in Holland.

Beginning of Clubstage