Easter Open Football Tournament, Boxmeer, Holland.

A time of joy was had by all in the sunny flats of Holland this weekend, with the sun rolling over the hills and the grass bright green we were ready to take some serious photos.

Hit the jump for some more, and take a look at the Flickr Set with some highlights in…

We left England at 6AM and got to our hotel in Boxmeer at about 5PM. A very long journey, including a 4 hour trip on a Lithuanian ferry to Antwerp. There wasn’t even a gift shop on board.

Mind you, at least the town we were in was nice. I didn’t really believe people when they said Holland was very flat. They were being very literal, the horizon is dead level everywhere you go.

Here’s a little view of my hotel room:

We had a good first night, just got a bite to eat and went to the bar really, it was nice as there were 2 other franchisees there to chat with, as well as their employed photographers, which made for interesting company.

So, Saturday rolled round quick, up at the crack of dawn to go and set up for the start of the footie tournament.

Despite not speaking a word of Dutch, we got on quite well with the locals and there were nearly no problems selling photos to customers. Most people spoke pretty good English, and those who didn’t it was just a matter of pointing and grunting at the sample pictures.

We in particular were photographing the Under 9’s, Under 16’s, Under 15 Girls, Under 10’s and Under 11’s. This proved to be an interesting mix, and where usually our customer base is the younger kid’s parents, this time it was the older one’s who were buying.

Maybe it’s a Dutch thing.

Just above you can see the winning Under 15’s girls team. They won a pretty massive trophy, as you can see. Biggest I’ve seen for a kid’s tournament at least, and they had one for every age group.

Now, the weekend wasn’t all good. More precisely, my hangover on the Sunday morning wasn’t good. We spent a little too much time in the hotel bar and ended up going to bed at about 2AM, having to get up just 4 hours later to go back to the tournament.

I couldn’t even keep breakfast down that day. What made it worse was having to go straight back to England at the end of the day, a 3 hour drive, 2 hour wait at the port and 4 hours on the ferry.

Not the nicest thing when you’re hungover.

It may not be obvious by the way, but that guy was heading a ball.

So it was a good weekend, we all made good money and had a great time. Especially on the Saturday night.

Here’s one last pic to see you off, but you can see the rest at the Flickr Gallery

Filed under: DEPhoto, Football, Sport by Manticorp