Hospex Parties are the Best!

First publishes April 30, 2005

Only a few more days before my trip to Lithuania, and I'm travelling again, this time to Scheveningen, the beach near The Hague.
It's a short trip by car, less than 2 hours.
In the back of my car are Major Phil and Andrea, two Canadian friends (from Montréal and Quebec) who speak a language that challenges me : Canadian French. The accent, the words, even the grammar are different from the French we speak here in Brussels. After a while I got used to it, however.

The music that accompanies our trip is by The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kate Melua. A strange combination at first but time passes quickly.
Without any big traffic jams we arrive in Scheveningen and register at the Hospex check-in. The party, which will take about 3 days, is being organized in an alternative vegetarian squatters' place which hosts a group of very different and interesting people : anarchists, vegans, vegetarians, squatters, hitch-hikers, Wwoofers (bio-organic farmers), animal-welfare activists, anti-globalists, green boys & girls, backpackers and many more.
We just arrived too late for dinner, but since I knew about 25% of the 70 people that participated at this event, I had plenty of time to talk to them and I forgot I was hungry..

In the evening we went in little groups to the centre of The Hague for 'Queensnight'. The city was nicely lit, everywhere were thousands of people laughing, drinking, smoking grass (this is Holland after all). Rockbands on every corner, food stalls, fun fair attractions : it looked like everybody had a reason to party.
There were so many people that we couldn't avoid being separated from the main group, so in the end we just remained with three people : Auste, Asia and myself. Together we walked back to our bed in Scheveningen, which took us about 90 minutes !
The other members of BeWelcome slept in the "Curse of Scheveningen", but I had found a sleeping place at the house of a Canadian, Mark, and his Australische friend Hew. A house with a sauna, garden, shower...just our luck !