CS:GO Major Trip to Antwerp, Belgium – justPlaudern
The best trip of my life …
Together with a friend of mine, I decided to travel to Antwerp for the 17th Major in the history of CS:GO. For everyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about right now: CS:GO is an Esport title with millions of players and normally has two „Majors“ per year. Those are special events that are comparable to the Champions League for example. The winning team doesn’t only secure themselves a spot in the history books, but also half a million US Dollars.
For me personally, it was the first-ever CS:GO event that I watched live in an arena and it was one of the best and most hyped experiences ever. But let’s start at the beginning.
Travel Day – Flight to Antwerp
On Thursday I had a pretty intense travel day with little sleep and long waiting times as I didn’t want to risk missing my flight due to a train delay. After multiple hours of traveling by train, plane, and again train I arrived in Antwerp and met up with a friend that I was with the first day, as my travel buddy only arrived on Friday. The first day in the Stadium was already amazing and quite impressive to see everything for the first time. Compared to the following days fewer people were in the Arena and we had time and place to check out everything. In the evening we had a fun time in the city and explored the first bars, as well as the main shopping street in Antwerp, which was quite empty.
The following days in Antwerp
Our daily schedule was pretty similar each day and started with a breakfast and some work for EsportFire. After that, we grouped up with friends and explored the city before heading to the arena at around 3-4 p.m. in the afternoon. For the first time in my life, I tried out those rent E-Scooters. They were quite fun but the time it takes to find enough of them for everyone in a group would have also been enough to simply walk. One of the most extraordinary things in Antwerp was that motorcycles were allowed to drive on the bike rail, can’t imagine that in Austria.
The arena and atmosphere were absolutely stunning the whole weekend and reached an unbelievable level on Sunday. I have rarely in my life felt as energized and hyped as I did in the crowd of this event and I have been to quite a few cool sport events, mainly soccer, but nothing came close to the emotions in that arena. Very special about the weekend was also the insanely nice people we met from our Twitter community during and after the event, which made the whole trip even more special.
Final words
Overall, I once again realized how much I love traveling, meeting new people, and gaining new experiences. This moment were we all together stood in the crowd and watched the final moments of the game, there was such a hype in the crowd, every single person in the stadium was emotional, each of us was! One of the most special parts of the atmosphere in the stadium was that there was no home crowd, as in most other type of sports events and surely also some CS:GO events, but in Antwerp, the whole stadium was in for the game and cheering for each round, each play, each winning moment!
What’s your favorite travel experience? Where would you love to travel once? Feel free to share some thoughts down below in the comments, have a great day everyone!
Cheers – Alex