Well, the weekend was great, and very exhausting as well.

We started early at 7:30 a.m. here, a time where I usually sleep, but I'm surprised that I managed to get up that early .. I guess I just was too excited

We drove about 6 hours from here to Antwerp, with a few little breaks and a bigger one for having something to eat (OK, I used the friday before to make pizza ... MANY pizza so I had my bag full of it, which rescued one of my friends later *gg* .. I have to say that I can't cook, not even the tiniest bit, normally my food ends up burned, but the only thing I really can make is pizza .. yes, I mean making the dough and everything myself ).

We arrived at our hotel at about 2.30 p.m.. The hotel was a quite small one and they had a cat .. OK, I have to say that the cat didn't look good, it was some kind of race with so short fur that he almost looked like naked, but he was a very friendly cat (he was named "Bartok", after the famous composer Bela Bartok).

After that we took a short walk, which was really good after that long time in the car.

Then it was time to start dressing up for the evening, but first I had to help my friend with my pizza. She was the one who drove, the whole distance and so she really was exhausted.

It was very funny as we returned to the hotel from our walk, we suddendly saw a group of three persons, dressed in black as we were .
As we got nearer we realised that we knew those three, they go to the same club as we use to do and so we knew each other, and they had rooms in the same hotel as we had

We left to the Gala at about 8 p.m.. It took place in a little town not far from Antwerp, called Kontich, inside a really amazing old chapel.

We only had to wait very long until we could go in because they had to look for every single visitor on a reservation list.
Although I really wore a lot of velvet, linen and silk, it was awfully cold. Wearing Pikes in such a cold weather is not the best you can do.

The evening was wonderful, although we could not see most of the shows. There was a tribal dance group and fashion shows from Viona herself ( well, you could see her dresses in real and not as usual on her photographs), Vecona (a german fashion designer I know from a forum here), and some weird lolita shop (sorry to all lolitas out there, it's just not my style ).

I met a few people I only knew from the internet so far, only Viona seemed to have too much to do on that evening, I only saw here twice ...

Sadly the music was not soo good at the end .. to much EBM and techno-like stuff. It just didn't fit in, not to the location and not to all those people dressed in beautiful gowns. I would have expected more stuff like neoclassic, ritual and neofolk, but OK, I hope next time will be better, almost everyone I spoke to was dissappointed of the music.

We came back to the hotel at about 1:30 a.m., we just were too tired to stay much longer and we really didn't like the music.

The next morning we took long time for breakfast, we met our friends again wo said that they stayed much longer than we did, bit the music didn't change much.
After that we packed our stuff and started to drive back home.

On our way we made a break at a friend who invited us to stay for lunch.
We left her at about 3:30 p.m. and drove the remaining distance with only a few short breaks and so we arrived home at about 8 p.m.

Although the music really was not our taste, it was a wonderful evening and I would love to visit the Gala again. The old chapel really is worth it, and I hope that the music will be better next time (my friend told me, that the first Gala had great music, she was there )

She made some pictures of us, but I don't have them yet.
In the meantime, just have a look on this:

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[link] (we were dancing, that's why we look so strange *gg*)

I'll upload a picture of my red dress as soon as I have the pictures

Badly, I caught a cold like I realised today .. and next time would be better to stay one or even two days longer, it really was very, very exhausting for all of us and it's such a great distance that staying a little bit longer would be better in general.