Renée reviews: P!aTD and TØP.

Hey guys!!

Soooo guess who I saw live recently???? (clue is totally not in the title)
Yes, all of you are right. I went to see Panic! at The Disco and Twenty One Pilots in concert!!!!! And the best thing about going to see them was being able to spend a day in Amsterdam and purchasing some new books at Waterstones. So keep your eyes open for a lot of new book reviews in the near future!

Whilst waiting in line we met up with some other friends of ours and like that we waited for the doors to open, in the pouring rain. I've never been happier with bringing an umbrella than I was that night, even though I could barely unwrap my fingers as they had turned to icicles. When the doors opened, the madness began. Everyone obviously wanted to get indoors so they wouldn't get soaked more. For standing in line pretty late we still found some amazing spots in the audience. A classmate of mine had seen Panic! live before and told me that it's a band you just need to have seen live and she wasn't bragging. 

Jesus Christ, Brendon Urie you are amazing. The way he performed, the lightning, the entire show, how good he sounds live. It was perfect. Halfway through the concert I looked at my friends and we decided that Brendon Urie is god on earth. He's literally perfect AND he can do anything. He played piano, sang beautifully, outplayed the drummer. What can't he do?!?! The Panic! concert is one of the best ones I've gone to so far. He sang all the songs I needed him to sing and barely missed a note. I have no words for the amazingness of this concert. Brendon you are God and you did not dissapoint! Panic! at The Disco shows you how a live concert should be and there are lot's of artists who could use panic! as an example to up their own concert game. Besides the amazing show Panic! delivered, the opening act was pretty amazing as well. 
A band called Tigertown, it's like a cheerful version of Halsey. I truly recommend you look them up and give them a listen! You'll hear Tigertown more often in the future, I promise you that! A perfect opening for a perfect show. Panic! at The Disco and Tigertown, thanks for the amazing evening!

Around 17.00 we went to stand in line for the Twenty One Pilots concert. The first fans, the real die-hard fans, were already waiting in line before Panic! at The Disco had finished the night before. Just like yesterday we went in line pretty late, and I also had to go out of the queue again to change my insulin pump. Just as last year at the Twenty One Pilots concert, I had to change my insulin pump, oh the diabetes memories. The friend I went to TØP with last year couldn't stop laughing when I told her, mostly because for some reason every time I plan to do something with her my insulin pump gets jealous and decides it needs attention. 
Anyway, even though getting in line pretty late, we still found some really good spots. In all honesty I did prefer the small venue they played last year, but even in a bigger venue like the Heineken Music Hall, they did not disappoint. Where last year it was still quite small and cosy, as far as it can get cosy at a TØP concert, this year they had a massive light show and just a show around it. The songs were mostly the same as last years as there hadn't been a new album in the main time but that made it very sing-a-longable. 

 This concert was the first where I felt like I could completely let go of whatever was holding me back. I jumped to the music, sang a long as loud as I could, and I even cried when they started playing the Pantaloon. My favourite TØP song ever!!!! Let's be a little more honest, I just cried throughout the mashup they played of their first album.

To make the night just perfect, their opening show was Bry, a pretty well known youtuber. His jokes, sense of humour and amazing music was a great opener. And maybe he doesn't fit the TØP perfectly, who cares. His music is amazing, he's a great person and I loved every song he played. So to me he was the best opening for TØP I could have whished for! During the show, their USA opening act came on stage as well. And it was flipping CHEFSPECIAL one of my favourite Dutch bands. Although they didn't preform, I cried then too. Josh from the Cheffies went into the hamsterball and went crowdsurfing. It was amazing.

TØP what a show, amazing guys, amazing songs, amazing show. I definitely don't regret going to see them a second time and when they come back next year I might even go for a third time!

Yes these two concerts absolutely made my year, they made up for a lot of the bad things that happened in 2016 and gave me new energy to survive the rest of 2016 as well. Panic! at the Disco, and Twenty One Pilots, thank you for coming to Holland and giving such amazing shows! You made my year and allowed me to make some new amazing memories with some of my friends! Bry and Tigertown, thank you for being to amazing opening acts and I wish you all the best in the future, may they be very bright!

That's it for now.
Lots of love,
ThatDutchGirl96
  

Space Expo.

Hello, fellow inhabitants of spaceship earth.

To give you some more information on space, my obsession with it, and some random anecdotes on one of the best days of 2016, I decided to take you along on my day at the Space Expo and ESA ESTEC terrain in Noordwijk.

A very quick review of how I walked around there, and these are the exact words my friend used: "You literally jumped around the expo, there wasn't even one moment where you were just walking normally, like a properly functioning human being." To help all the non-visual thinkers out there, this is what I was like that day:

But who cares, I just get really excited about space and space travelling. So we arrived there pretty early, which meant we were there before there were a shiston of people to judge our behaviour. Besides the exposition you can also go to the ESA Estec terrain, which is basically where astronauts learn how to practise the experiments they have to do in space and where a lot of developments and tests are ran. This tour was what we decided to do first, and we had a really awesome tour guide who functioned on the same meme-level as my friend and I. Which is a very high level of meme. On this tour we saw a lot of super interesting things, anddddd we got to touch an actual rocket! Now because I went to the lecture on space travel by André Kuipers I knew a lot of the things our tour guide told us, but that just made me feel smart. Plus it allowed me to walk and look around me more as I didn't have to pay that much attention to what our guide was telling us. However it was very interesting and I would go on that tour again any day. Plussss we got badges, like official guest on the ESA Estec terrain badges, how awesome is that?!!!!!

After the tour we attended every presentation, and experiment there was at the expo. These were all given by the same woman and all of them were very very interesting. The last one we attended was by and about the Soyuz capsule with which André Kuipers went to actual space and landed back on earth. At one point the woman asked at what speed the ISS (international space station) moves through space, it got very silent and no one answered so I did (28000 km/h). The woman looked at me and went like: "Very good! I've seen you at other demonstrations and presentations as well haven't I?! You're completely ready to become an astronaut." This obviously made me blush as I'm not too good with compliments and as the entire crowd turned to look at me. My friend just laughed. Thanks bro!

Then the exposition in general, it contained a lot of information on space travel, especially focused on the space travel and times André Kuipers went to space. At the ceiling hung real life satellites, a small model of the ISS and we got to take a look at a (real life size) replica of a part of the ISS including the glass cabin from which the amazing pictures of space are taken!!! I also skidded around the Soyuz capsule of André Kuipers, we saw a space capsule that looked like BB8 from Star Wars andddd the LEM capsule. At the LEM capsule I got into astronaut mode and felt the gravity fall away from underneath me, leaving me flying around weightless (in my mind of course). In reality it looked more like: 

In the end, we went back home. A two hour trip ahead of us, filled with discussing our day at space expo, our common interest in space and how it had only grown today, some new facts we learned that day and a lot of karaoke to our favourite songs! Yeah the day at the space expo was super awesome! Despite knowing some things already thanks to the astronaut André Kuipers, I still learned a lot of things and the entire expo and how it was set up just blew me away. I was in total awe and I still am. 

And since I'm not quite able to describe my day at the spac expo in words, I'll leave a little photo impression because nothing says it like a picture!

Lots of love,

ThatDutchGirl96

(AHHHH)

(This is one futuristic touring train)

(My actual moonjump)

(science b*atch)

(We are hot af)

(We met André Kuipers, well board of)

(Replica of Rosetta.
And not replica of my friend)

(in the look out pod)

  

(Inside the Soyuz capsule)

  

Intergalactic adventures.

Hey everyone1!

Sometimes the world lets you down, it makes you feel  terrible, closed in, and you feel like there is no way out. Slowly, the sun starts setting, the moon comes out and as the clouds start fading a mesmerising view appears. Little dots of light, millions of them, some in recognisable structures appear in the dark, lighting the world up together with the moon. As you lie there, looking up at the universe, the dots of lights that are somewhere a thousand light years away or just outside our atmosphere, you notice one that's moving. Maybe it's an airplane, however the lights of an airplane normally flicker. With your eyes you keep following the moving star until it disappears out of your sight. After it's gone you decide to google 'moving star' and somewhere in the thousand results it tells you that it might have been ISS (the International Space Station) with a link to a website that shows you the route of the ISS, and guess what....

This is kind of what happened to me not too long ago, although not quite in that order. First I went to a lecture on space and astronautics by André Kuipers (famous Dutch astronaut), where I learned that on Wednesday the 2nd of November ISS could bee seen flying over Holland. Then on the 29th of October I visited the SpaceExpo and ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk where I learned a lot more about the history of space travel, the latest developments, the part Holland plays in international space travel and a lot of interesting general facts on space and the life of an astronaut. The lecture, SpaceExpo and ESA ESTEC were all very interesting but my intergalactic adventure reached it's climax when on the 2nd of November I looked up to the sky and noticed this moving star. At that point I realised how tiny yet powerful we humans are as a species and how big, vast, and complicated the universe actually is. It left me breathless, to know that we are busy conquering the universe and that I could sort of see six humans working on all sorts of experiments at a height of approximately 350 km, from were I was standing, bound to the earth by gravity. For me that experience gave me the cosmic feeling André Kuipers told us a lot about in his lecture. 

He told us a lot about how he managed to become an astronaut, including all his previous professions and the job application he replied to that eventually led to him going to space. A journey that took much longer than I originally expected, for some reason I still believed there was a college course called "how to become an astronaut" instead of gaining a masters or PhD degree and so many years of experience in certain fields of work before you can even apply for the job. Then there are the physical and mental tests you need to pass and then, when you've been selected as an astronaut to be, you're still not certain of going to space anytime soon, or anytime at all. André Kuipers was lucky enough to be sent to space TWICE! In his lecture he showed us some short videos he shot regarding showering in the ISS, sleeping, doing sports, the experiments he did there, the different areas of ISS and, and how you function and move without gravity. He also showed us the impact of energy on certain objects and how little energy you need to use when moving stuff around when there is no gravity to push them down. 

Oh and then there was the most beautiful thing of all, we were shown videos and pictures of the view from ISS. From outer space we truly are Spaceship Earth as André called it. A tiny planet on which we build our existence and how we are slowly destroying our little spaceship when we don't have anywhere else to go yet. But we are improving, we are learning, we are evolving and we are doing better for our planet. This might have been one of the most moving parts of the lecture. André was telling us some stuff about climate change and how we were destroying our own planet, but also how we were fixing what we had done. He showed us the gap in the atmosphere we created and how it had shrunk over the last couple of years. This restored my faith in humanity as the predator species on this planet when I was starting to lose it. Because even though we are can be very very stupid sometimes, we keep learning, we keep evolving in ways that help us fix the problems we created and I think that that is the most important lesson I learned that day. That even though we make mistakes, we learn from them and we also learn how to fix the things we broke and that that makes us human and it shows how we keep evolving.

André Kuijpers, thank you so so much for one of the most inspiring nights of my live! I will not forget any bit of it, you are an inspiration for so many and I hope that somewhere in the future my own great grand children will still be able to live on Spaceship Earth in a natural and safe way!

Lots of love,
ThatDutchgirl96

By the way for those of you who want to know what earth looks like from outerspace NASA is streaming live from ISS: https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ESRS/HDEV/
Also a little video about André Kuipers and the road that took him to becoming an astronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOY6EzuMP8