Lisbon

I can remember it very well. We were watching Holland compete against Sweden in the quarter finals of the EC 2004 in Portugal. A penalty shootout would decide this game's winner. Almost everyone knows Holland's history with penalty shootouts.. bad, very bad. So when it came to these penaltys, my mother said: "Dan, we're going to Portugal if we win this game." The unthinkable happend, Holland won! My mother held her word and we booked a last minute flight including a ticket to Lisbon.

It was part of a so called one-day-return. Our flight left in the middle of the night, at about 04:30 AM. I tried to sleep the night before, but that was almost impossible because I was really nervous. When we arrived at Schipol Airport, the whole place was coloured orange. It looked like everybody was heading for Portugal. I wasn't able to sleep in the plane too so it would be a tough day.

We arrived in the Lisbon city centre at 07:00 AM (one hour time difference). This was perfect. I'd never been to Lisbon before, so we could check out the city the whole day long. After some cultural sight-seeing, it was time to party. One of the main squares in Lisbon was sort of captured by all the Dutch fans. We had a lot of fun, before going to the big José Alvalade stadium. The atmosphere was really impressive. There were about 15,000 Dutch fans. We lost the game 2-1. We didn't had much chances. Nevertheless, it was a great experience!