Press Tour: From Paris to London

Garre du Nord, one word sums up this amazing building: chaos, shear chaos. There were dogs running around, people selling things, people buying things, people sleeping in corners, parents running around with children crossing the many platforms to catch their trains. In the middle of all this noise and chaos there was one constant sound of rattling, I was trying to figure out where this came from until I literally bumped into it. There was this huge mechanical board with all the departing trains on it, there where so many trains departing simultaniously that the departures kept shifting down the board. This was the cause of all that rattling throughout the entire station. While I was staring at the departures board and feeling the amazing atmosphere of this huge train station, I suddenly saw the train we had to catch on the board. Me and my contact Ashley with our huge amount of electronic luggage ran up to the first floor to check in for this train. I got through customs yet again without any trouble but Ashley was from Australia and had an Australian passport. This delayed things a little because they had to check him inside out and he had to fill in several forms before they let him pass. Luckily we got to the train on time and got to our seats. We had a moment to breath.....

We had dinner on the train which was quite good but not as good as what we had eaten for lunch that very same day. But again what I didn't know was that this would be a lot better than anything we would eat in London.

Me and Ashley discussed many things concerning the product I was presenting, some refreshing ideas were exchanged and we had great fun sharing them. Meanwhile the train arrived at London Hammersmith, we grabbed our bags walking to the exit of the train station to grab a cab. There was a huge line in front of the cabs and there was someone regulating the flow of passengers that wanted to get a cab to their desired destination. I refused to wait in line for a cab so I suggested we would take the metro or bus to where we had to be. I was in for an adventure but Ashley really didn't feel like getting his hands dirty considering the fact that we were traveling with two very expensive computers and two equally expensive laptops. We called Claas our contact in London and he confirmed that he had justed arrived at the Crown Plaza Hotel in London, his plane had landed thirty minutes before our arrival at Hammersmith and he was already enjoying his Guinness in the hotels bar. The cab took us exactly where we wanted to be but funny enough this hotel we were standing in front of didn't really feel like a Crown Plaza Hotel...
In fact it looked kind of dirty and it had drunk teenagers running around looking for more booze. Me and Ashley were hoping that they had some kind of suite prepared for us to drop our gear off at. We walked up to the reception with high hopes and checked in, they were nice but the hotel seemed like it was in total chaos, not the interesting kind of chaos I encountered in Paris but the filthy annoying kind of chaos. Little did I know that most of the presentations we had to do in London went together with the same kind of chaos. After a lot of negotiation and proving who we were we finally got our key cards for the rooms we had. We where situated on the sixth floor and took the elevator to go there. We entered the elevator...... We were staring at each other, speechless. I was wondering how I suddenly got back to my flat in the ghetto of Amsterdam. This elevator resembled the filthy elevators I had come across my entire youth, not just one of those elevators but a whole bunch. The Crown Plaza Hotel had managed to bring together the nastiest aspects of ghetto elevators and presented it as if it was a four star hotel. We were shocked, the sixth floor was a maze, I ended up walking in circles a couple of times before I found my room. As I entered my room I had this fear of encountering a big bald Londoner that was going to ass rape me in the cockroach infested bed I was going to be sleeping in that night. The lock opens, the key worked, no big Londoner but a fairly clean room with two neatly made up beds. I dropped my bags and suitcase and took a shower, the toilet seat actually had a hair on it. This was not amusing I had never been in a hotel like this ever, let alone for a high profile press tour. But I really didn't give a shit I was tired, I took my shower and went down to get loaded. I met Claas and we had a great time drinking till the early morning, I went to bed and went into a deep coma......