Since my trip to Split for Hivefest was a last minute thing (and I mean last minute) as you can read here, I didn't arrive till late afternoon.
Because of this, I missed the opening drinks, and the first day of the conference, which was a bummer because that day had the most of the speakers I wanted to see. But I guess that's what the
videos are good for!
In retrospect, it probably wasn't such a bad thing, because I was told that it was VERY hot, and coming from a very hot place, I could do with a little more cool temperatures.

┍━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━┑

The airport in Split seems brand new, so it probably is. My plane was supposed to arrive at 4pm, but was a little early, at 3.40pm. I only carried hand luggage, or better: a 'personal item' because this was the cheapest way for me to fly, since I was coming with three different airlines, and all of them want you to pay more for more luggage. Lucky for me, I'm quite used to travel with only a little bit of luggage, and since I've been doing it so often, I know how to pack everything without forgetting anything, or at least, mostly...
Split had promised to be quite warm still, so I only brought one hoodie which was tied around my waste, and two pairs of long pants. Everything else was easy and light to pack.
I'm quite happy I brought the hoodie though, because at night and even some days, the temperatures went below 20 degrees Celsius, and my tropical body just isn't used to that anymore.
It's quite weird to see how quickly I got the Irish and Dutch temperatures out of my system haha.
Probably because I never got used to the cold or rain...
I used to tell everyone I was born in the wrong country and that I was so tall (I was 60 cm at birth), that the stork dropped me too early. 😆

┍━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━┑

Arrival with some Delays

Once I got to the airport hall, I made a visit to the bathroom to get changed and cleaned myself up a bit. I didn't want to be that one smelly Hivean at the event after all...
Then I went to the only store that was still open (at 4pm, go figure) and got myself a new phone charger, because that was the one thing I didn't bring.
I grabbed a random USB-C cable, and a random charger plug, and paid the lady.
As soon as I unwrapped them both, I realized that I had grabbed the wrong plug or wrong cable, whichever way you want to see it. The charger was for a regular USB, while the cable had two USB-C endings...Since I had torn the box in pieces, I didn't think of bringing it, so I went back to the same store to buy another, more fitting one. When I showed the lady how dumb I had been, she grabbed both items from my hands, and made it quite clear that, in fact, I was quite dumb when she said in a stern voice: 'WELL, THESE don't fit!' followed by: 'Where is the box?'
So I went back to the trash can where I had just deposited said box to retrieve it. I showed her that I had torn up the box, but she was kind enough to take it back, give me the right charger, and only charged me for the difference between the two.

Once I found an electricity outlet, I realized that it would probably be handy to get a sim card as well, so I asked @roelandp if he knew a solution for this. He quickly replied to get an eSim, which I purchased. However, this didn't seem to be compatible with my Huawei phone, so I quickly did another trip to the same shop to ask if they carried sim cards. By then, the shop lady and I were best friends, and she greeted me as such. She handed me the sim card, even put it in my phone for me, I paid, and off I went again.

After about 20 minutes, I figured my phone had enough charge. Then there was an issue with the Uber app. Somehow, it just wouldn't connect...Ugh.
Of course, I didn't follow earlier advice to just get a bus into town. I started looking for the shuttle busses, but they didn't seem to move, nor was there a driver in sight. Later I discovered, that they only drive after a flight lands...Duh..

Anyway, after discussing with myself what I wanted to do, realizing that some time had past by then, and thinking the bus would take ages to get me into the city (which is not true by the way), I decided to ask a taxi driver how much it would be into the city.
He pointed at his meter, saying he has a meter. Well, that doesn't mean a thing to me, so I asked again, how much it would be approximately...
He told me around 50-60 Euro. I decided to bite the bullet and just go with it. Now, we did have to stop once at an ATM machine, which charged me 10 Euro to extract money from my European atm card...
But I'm pretty sure that those meters really don't mean a thing, because I ended up paying WAY more than the 50-60 Euro he had told me about...Almost one third of my budget for the week...
If I wouldn't have been so damn stubborn and eager to get to the venue, I would have saved myself a lot of money. But hey, I'll remember next time...

Just in time for Dinner on the First Conference Day!

Either way, I was quite happy to get to the place where I rolled in just in time for dinner.
I think the very first person to greet me was @roelandp, waving at me! Even though he was standing somewhere between the last two tables. He must have been watching the door. Or he has the all-seeing eye, one of the two, or both. There's something to be said about the efficiency of the Dutch. I'm Dutch, but I certainly don't have that trait, that's for sure! After he handed me my tag and goodie bag, I looked for an empty place at a table, but by then I was spotted by pretty much everyone else I knew, so there were many great hugs and warm welcomes. So amazing how this is the case every time at each Hivefest, but this time around it seemed extra special.

I finally found a place, had some amazing food, and the got to catch up with some of the people I'd seen at other Hivefests before this one.
After dinner, I was standing outside with @louis88 and @jeffjagoe when @starkerz remarked that every time at Hivefest he sees the three of us standing together, he usually ends up at some wild excursion into the deep, dark nights of oblivion till god knows when in the early hours...
I thought for a moment and realized he was probably right. And since I had had very little sleep in the days before and during my adventure, I did the smart thing and went with my roomie to catch some needed sleep...