Upon my arrival at Stansted I was greeted by an attractive tall brunette lady called Noor, who was to be our group’s guide which was a good start to say the least!! Cheers transavia.com Anyway, we then got our 35 minute flight to Rotterdam where we were escorted to the Golden Tulip Rotterdam, which was to be our accommodation for the weekend which was pretty flash too!

Within a couple of hours we were unpacked, changed and ready to check out some Friday night action Rotterdam style! We spent the majority of the night at a fun and venue called De Unie where we saw a Geezer called Ted Langenbach on the decks. Ted, the programming director of Mytown, treated us to a mixture of commercial dance and ‘down the line’ classic house. Perfect to get us warmed up in what was actually a pretty nippy city! So, once we’d caned our drinks tokens we checked out the place next door which was a little different. In fact, The Bootleg DJ Café couldn’t have been more different if it tried! The combination of deep underground techno, weed and beer really set the scene! This place was more the Rotterdam that I’d pre conceived. A really nice vibe with extra friendly locals and decent tunes that you could get DOWN to!

We started Saturday off with the fattest breakfast I’ve had in months which pretty much set me up for the day. Our first appointment of the day was a slap up lunch at the delightful Restaurant Level, where we were joined by a dude called Stef van Dongen of Sustainable Dance Club who went on to tell us that “The Sustainable Dance Club combines contemporary lifestyle with the latest ideas on sustainability. Basically, you can soon generate energy while dancing on the energy (re)generating dance floor and flush the toilet with rainwater. The colour of the walls changes without any energy use as a reaction to the heat and you can drink a biological beer near the water basin on the ‘relax roof’ surrounded by the newest wind turbines.” This was some seriously off the wall shit, and I was loving it!

Then we moved on to Clone Records. There we met the label’s owner Serge Verschuur along with up and coming DJ Steven P who played us a few cool record and gave us a quick run down of the techno scene in Rotterdam. I got the impression that Detroit techno was pretty much what all the bods are playing at the moment along with the inevitable minimal presence. Steve then took us around a load of different record shops around town. We finished up the day in the recording studio of Secret Cinema (Jeroen Verheij). Where we got an insight to how a track is produced and how he prepares for large level gigs like Full on Ferry.

So this was it! Saturday night was upon us! We had a proper decent feed at Restaurant Toko 94 on Witte de Withstraat before putting on our trance trousers and heading over to the Ahoy. When we arrived at the venue it became apparent that this place was Holland’s answer to the NEC or something. It was MASSIVE! There must have been five or six thousand Dutch clubbers there and they were all BANG up for it!

The line up consisted of Ferry Corsten, Breakfast, Dogzilla, Secret Cinema, Christopher Lawrence, Fedde le Grand, Cosmic Gate, Erik E. If trance is your thing then you seriously need to consider jumping on a quick flight over to one of these gigs ‘cause it was absolutely JUMPIN’! Not to mention the entrance that Ferry made, he appeared in the centre of the arena on a moving DJ booth which then travelled through the air over the sea of thousands of ravers to the front stage. Fair play! That was WELL FLASH!

Ferry went on to deliver the kind of set that only he could and it seemed like they were turning up the volume after every track! The atmosphere in there was electric with the crowd quite literally going mental for every tune he dropped! In my opinion it was a well put together set which started with banging trance which later developed to more filthbag electro stuff! The 5000 + loons there were all over it like a bad rash!

OK! Needless to say I missed breakfast on Sunday morning! In fact it was well into the afternoon by the time we all surfaced. We were greeted by a lady called Iris Cornelis who was our guide from Rotterdam Archiguides. Iris took us on the best city guide I’ve ever been on! If you’re ever in Rotterdam check out the Holy Cow Bike Tour! Yeah you heard right. Chopper Bicycles Baby! This was interesting considering we’d been bang on it the night before! Highly recommended!

And that was it! We had just enough time to Squeeze in a few pints in the Irish bar and watch the Liverpool v Arsenal game and we were off to the airport. Job done!

I plan to go back of my own accord with a few mates as I was well impressed. It’s got everything Amsterdam’s got and better without have a huge sex trade shoved in your face! Basically, Rotterdam is a cool city with a seriously cool dance scene.

Get your arse there!

O