Anytime you see someone new you make assumptions about who they are. I think it's natural to link certain attributes to people based on how they look, talk or behave. Maybe you can guess what they like or how they are correctly and maybe not, but you form some kind of opinion about them anyway. Of course, this can change when you get to know them, but you always get that certain first impression.

Many people told me that when they met me, they thought that I would be different. Based on their first impression they thought that I would do certain things differently or that I would enjoy something else. I'm not going to talk about things that they assumed about me in details though. I'm going to focus on music only.

Apparently, I look like someone who likes pop music and those sugary boy bands. This made me laugh loud out. I might have enjoyed these music styles when I was 16 like many other girls did but here I am, many years later with totally different music preference. But to be fair, I was also surprised when I realized that I enjoyed harder styles of dance music.

Before I met my husband, I liked techno and many of my friends made fun of me as they liked either pop or R'n'B. I enjoyed their company and didn't mind going with them to the parties that I actually didn't enjoy. When I returned home, I would turn on my kind of music though.

My husband introduced me to the harder styles of dance music. He is Dutch and these music styles are very popular in the Netherlands. He was talking about it with so much passion that I decided to give it a try.

My first hardstyle rave was in 2012. It was called Q-base and it was held at an abandoned airport in German Weeze. I was anxious as I can have a panic attack when there are too many people and I feel like there is no air to breathe. We agreed that we would leave as soon as I wouldn't feel well.

Let me tell you that I didn't want to leave the party! It was the best night of my life. We were there with a group of his friends and had so much fun. By the end of the party they were my friends too and we were making plans for another parties already.

There were more than 20000 people from various countries. Many of them flew to Germany only because of that party. The atmosphere was fantastic. There was so much energy in the air that you wanted to dance all night long. I hadn't experienced anything like this before and I knew back then that my new passion was born.

Q-dance became my favorite organisation because even though there are so many people in one place, they make you feel safe. You go through the security check when you enter the party and there are many security guys walking around and making sure that everything stays peaceful. I haven't experienced any issues in all these years with Q-dance.

I've been to at least 30 festivals so far and the last one was held last Saturday. It was called DEDIQATED and it was held in Arnhem to celebrate 20 years of Q-dance. All Q-dance parties have 'Q' in their name.

It was a day festival which started at lunchtime. We arrived later as we went for lunch in Arnhem first. The venue was a footbal stadion called GelreDome with capacity of 34000 visitors. I have heard that there were 30000 tickets and the party was sold out, so you can imagine that it was many people there.

We got premium tickets and enjoyed a separate entrance, a free locker and a free drink. There was also one floor dedicated to premium visitors which was cool, and we stayed there almost all the time.

As it was a celebration of 20 years of Q-dance this party was different to the rest. About 1 hour was dedicated to the celebration with many balloons, fireworks, carnival music, and much more. I must say that this was not my favorite part but people seemed to enjoy it.

At some point, there was some technical issue and the music stopped for more than 5 minutes. People were surprisingly patient and some of them didn't seem to notice that there was something wrong as they were either too drunk or too high.

It must have been a big issue as at the end there were only big speakers in front of the hall that were working which changed the sounds completely. I don't even remember if they managed to repair the rest of them later or not as I was having too much fun to pay attention to it.

Important part of these events are laser shows. They match the music perfectly and are so complicated that sometimes I find myself staring at them with open mouth.

Here you can see how many people joined the rave. I would never go in the middle as it's scary, too crowded, too hot, you have no space and can only jump up and down. Plus Dutch guys are usually at least 20 cm taller than me and my head is in the same height as their elbows, so there is a realistic possibility that I would get a black eye.

When we went to the bar and ordered our drinks we stayed at the table until we finished them as we were not allowed to take them with us back down. We were having a conversation and suddenly there was one guy who came to us and started to talk. We quickly realized that he was a magician and joined his 'show'. It was so much fun! He showed us many tricks and we even tried them once he left but had no idea how he did them.

He asked me to hold three foam balls in my hand. I swear that they were just three of them when I took them from him. He asked me to hold them tight. I was holding them so tight that my fingers started to turn white. After a few seconds he asked me to open my hand above the table. When I opened it there were 10 tiny foam balls flying around the table. The funny thing is that I didn't feel anything happening in my closed hand and suddenly there were so many of them. This was just one of his tricks. He had many more!

DEDIQATED lasted until 11 PM but we left at 9 PM as our friend had to travel back home for 3 hours and we also like to leave earlier because it's quite inconvenient to leave at the end of the party with 30000 other people at once.

Here are some more photos for you 😊

I usually don't talk much about my private life here but it was fun to show you something that you maybe didn't know about me before.

Thank you for reading!

Cheers!

Martina

PS: These photos were taken at very bad light conditions with my smartphone, so please don't be too harsh on me 😊