[Warning, pictures are made with a Nexus 4 phone, so photo quality isn't the greatest.]
I started going to the event Friday morning. We (Me and my father, who would accompany me in Sweden, not the venue itself) went to Malmö and then Saturday morning drove up to Jönkoping, where the actual event would be!
We ALMOST missed the ferry though. Glad we didn't:
The weather was nice, the sight was awesome and I basically spent 6 hours (the length of the ferry) on the deck, laying down.
At Malmö, we spoke to an employee who was going to watch the entirety of the Dota tournament, so I had a little chat with him. We were also there to see the Dutch score 5 - 1 against Spain, which was glorious might I add.
In Jönkoping, I put down my PC at my BYOC spot in the Elmia Hall C, and then went off to play. I competed in the ''open group stage #1'' as it's called and I got 2-0'd by SolO after being beaten 2-0 by SortOf. I was in a Z-only group, which is kind of sad considering my ZvZ is my weakest matchup. Oh well! Still was an experience of it's own and very fun to participate in.
A picture of me in between games is mandatory I suppose:
Oohh, the amazing 120hz monitors. Really really want one now. Sadly it didn't help me win, but playing was very fun and a good experience already!
After this and inbetween my games, I managed to go to the ''Fan-zone'' because at 14:00, the casters would go there and shake hands with us, and at 15:00, the players of Liquid would too! I got this picture with Nathanias:
I've gotten a picture with more of the casters/players, but this is the one where I look the least terrible and also Nathanias is awesome.
After playing in Group stage 1, group stage 2 started, all still on day 1 and all of the awesome pro's were playing. I watched a bunch of games from people like Harstem, Jaedong, PiG, Scarlett, Dayshi, TLO, etc!
In a row from right to left: JD, San, Golden, Balloon
So, once I had grabbed some dinner it was time I sat down at my PC and start playing some games myself.
Hall C, really awesome:
One thing I'd really like to speak about is the night of Day 2 though. I just came back from eating pizza and was checking on twitter. I read about Richard Lewis being closeby and decided I'd 'drop him' a tweet asking if I could go and meet him. I've been a big fan of Unfiltered and really enjoyed reading his articles (about really terrible stuff that goes on in eSports unfortunately ) and he actually replied within 5 minutes, telling me to come to the Twitch player lounge. When I finally found it (wasn't on any maps) they told me he had just gone, and when I checked twitter he messaged that he'd be at the Scandic hotel 200 meter from the event. I went up there and I sat down and joined the discussion but mostly listened about political geography that was going on. Meeting and sitting at a table with him, Robert Ohlén, White-Ra and a couple of others was really neat and the conversation was unexpected but interesting, learned a lot about how dirty the UK has actually been in the past. Thanks, Richard. Unfortunately I've got no photos of this but it was certainly a highlight of the weekend!
On the third and last DH:Open day I managed to try out the Oculus Rift on one of Komplett.se's sick computers. Really awesome. I don't have any pictures unfortunately, but it was really good!
I do have a picture of the event right afterwards though. Jaedong was walking around while Taeja was playing vs ''challengers'' for gaming gear I believe, so I snapped a picture with him. I look a bit awkward, but come on, it's Jaedong (also look at the fitting shirt. )
He's really awesome and his english is good (as he is expressing more in interviews aswell now) and it was crushing to see him lose so hard to Taeja, who went on to go for a perfect streak during the entire tournament.
Some finals photos:
let's finish it off with some beautiful cosplay ladies and landscape from my journey back through south-sweden:
Thanks for reading my trip to Sweden, DreamHack. It's my first but will very hopefully not be my last. I hope to come back next year and atleast get to stage 2 or something. It's an unforgettable experience and the openness and nice, comfortable area make it an awesome place to be at for any enthousiastic gamer/eSports fan.