By Meri Suksi At first, I was skeptical about what kind of weekend is the Christmas weekend. I participated in the Introweekend and it was tough and not so relaxing weekend (it was still an awesome experience). It took several days to recover from the Introweekend. That’s why another Slopend weekend does sound suspicious. But I wasn’t going back to Finland for the holidays, so I sign up, of course, a lot of people did say that it’s more fun and relaxing and you have your own bed, which sounded promising.
On Saturday morning, I got my stuff and went to the train station and started the journey to the destination, which was a small village called Ellertshaar. After the train, the bus and walking we arrived at the accommodation and it was nice to see that there were beds and it was really comfy place to spend time. Also, the walking distance was short, not like in the Introweekend. On Saturday there were a couple of optional activities; mountain biking clinic and ice-swimming lesson. I didn’t sign up for them but then I heard you can still join them, so I went to the beginner’s mountain biking clinic. First, my bike had some problems with gears, but it got fixed and it was funny to see how awful I’m with mountain biking. Also, not sure is it normal that the front tire was moving sideways a lot, but at least it was a good experience and learned new things about using gears in different situations. I skipped ice-swimming because I only do that if there is a sauna nearby.
One of the main activities of the weekend was board games. So, after mountain biking, I started to learn to play different kinds of board games, that I haven’t tried before. I found a lot of new games that I want to teach to my friends! Of course, there were also games that I did know, but it was more interesting to take this as an opportunity to learn more games. Also playing was a really nice way to get to know new people, because there were a lot of faces that I haven’t seen before. It was nice to see that even though I was the only one who didn’t speak Dutch, everyone was fine to speak English. I know it is sometimes too hard to remember that, but I was happy to see people remembering it.
In the Sunday there was one big event; Adventure race. It was divided into five parts, which were mountain biking, running, going by car to somewhere, extra activities and a photo path. There were five hours to do the parts. I and Anna ware a team and we started with the running part. That was probably a mistake, because all the spots were kind of far away from each other, so it took a lot of time to get them. After giving up for running we took the car part and find the points in that location. That was pleasant, because the spots weren’t so far away, so it was doable. Then we went back to the accommodation and had lunch and at the same time, we tried to solve the extra activities. That was, for example, a crossword, a puzzle, building a house of cards and giving a hug to the organizing team. After finishing those we took the mountain bikes and started to navigate to the correct locations. Some parts of the map were just drawings of the different crosssections. Some parts we got lost but surprisingly we found ourselves back to the road. After biking we didn’t have a lot of time, so we hurried to do a couple of extra activities (bow shooting and apenhang) and then returned our notes. Sadly, we didn’t have enough time to do the photo path, but still, the adventure race was a really enjoyable event.
Sunday evening was also dedicated to board games. Some of the board games were more dangerous than others (Jungle speed was a really interesting experience). At the Christmas weekend, there was also a list of kitchen duties, so everyone had a turn to either cook or do dishes. Which was a good way to help the organization. Before going to sleep there was a night walk and it was wonderful to see the night sky full of stars.
On Monday the main event was the Christmas dinner that would start in the evening. In the afternoon we went to play a Dutch sport, which was throwing the ball in a certain direction (Klootschieten). Not sure what happened in our team, but we were far behind the other teams and it took us a lot of time to finish the route. Of course, there were a lot of discussions about the score. It was an amusing event, so it doesn’t matter that we were slow.
The Christmas dinner was a spectacle. It was a four course meal and then there were also performances (Bonte avond). The starter was different blinis. After the blinis, onion soup was served. Then the main course was either slowly cooked chicken or mushrooms stuffed in the vegetable, depending on are you vegetarian or not. We finished with a dessert and all the meals were so delicious. We also changed the seating order a couple of times to meet new people and that was a nice idea. There were a couple of performances, especially the synchronized swimming show was really entertaining and came in my mind. Other performances were also really amusing and fun to watch! Of course, there was also a need to do the Rasputin dance, which is apparently a Slopend thing. The whole dinner was a wonderful event and I had a lot of fun. After dinner, the dancing started and it was the final night of the weekend, so everyone was celebrating.
On Tuesday morning it was time to clean up the place and go back to Delft. I was happy that I sign up because Christmas weekend was really fun and I met a lot of new people. You can also make it as tough as you want it and the other way around. I want to thank the organizers and all the participants for a great Christmas weekend!
