Grubby's Family's Arrival in Cologne
The 3rd and 4th day of WCG Grubby's Mom, Brother - Arthur and his girlfriend - Miranda came Cologne to support Grubby in his quest for gold.

This famous poster - which had been on the LIVE stream many times - is made by Miranda.

They came at the right time as 3rd and 4th day are for the players who passed through the group stage. 3rd day starts the single elimination for the 16 players, they played everything including the semi-finals, except for the Grand Finals. The Grand Finals are played on the last day. When Grubby's family arrived, I met them at the event at the reception at around 11am, they left Netherlands at 8am that morning and drove for 2.5 hours to Cologne. They had not even checked in to their hotel yet, they came to the event straight away because they were anxious to cheer for Grubby. I took them around, and introduced them to everyone at the event, especially MYM. It was also great that Mercy and the new CEO was around. They get to rest in the press room in between the matches and socialise with new found friends. Grubby's family finally get to see in real life all the famous faces that they had seen so often on the websites and in my blogs.

From Round 1 to the Semi-finals
Round 1 Grubby has to play against Nicker59, a good Russian Nightelf who came in first in his group. Grubby won 2-0 and it was nice to watch for all of us. When Grubby played against ToD, he lost the first map.. and the whole family was feeling so tense and worried. Mom couldn't watch anymore because she couldn't take the tension, so she had to walk away for abit. :p Grubby made a comeback in the second game, so it was less worrying for us, but third map was very hard too. Overall it was a very close match, and Grubby was so close to getting eliminated. We were so happy after he prevailed, because he just entered the semi-finals!

Next Grubby plays HoT on stage. There was some free time in between so we all went outside for some fresh air. I had a walk with him, and we kinda talked about what Nightelf can do in each potential map, and also get mentally prepared for the match ahead. When the match is about to start, we all sat in the audience. It was the first time for Grubby's family to watch a stage match, so it was really exciting for them to catch the whole action on the big screen!

Grubby's games against HoT was really intense as well, as HoT was a very tough opponent. When Grubby won HoT 2-0, we were so thrilled that we jumped up and down in excitement! This means he gets into the Grand Finals against Moon! Wow... ! That also meant more excitement for the next day! xD MYM was already very happy that both Moon and Grubby got into the Grand Finals, and Losemann said he don't care who wins, because we already secured both the Gold and Silver medal. It's also the first time in WCG history that two players from the same team meet each other in the Grand Finals. It's a dream finals - Grubby vs Moon!

Grand Finals - Grubby vs Moon
We wake up feeling still quite tired. Grubby insisted on waking up early to watch replays. We had breakfast early, and then walk to the event together. When we got there, the event didn't open yet, there was a big crowd just waiting to get in. We waited for just awhile before the gates opened.

Grubby's family was among the crowd, somewhat middle-front. They told me that once the gates opened and they got in, they had to run, because they saw a lot of people running to the stage area. "Wow.. what an experienced crowd", I thought. Even after running to the stage area, they still weren't able to sit in the first few rows. They found seats in the middle of the audience, still pretty good seats. Firstly, the stage showed some performance, and then Starcraft Grand Finals, then Warcraft III finals.

When the Warcraft III Grand Finals were about to start, I took the reserved seat next to Grubby's mom. There were like.. 3000 people watching the Grand Finals, and I had never been with a crowd this nice before. The crowd was full of energy, excitement and cheering for both Grubby and Moon. The feeling and experience was great.. in fact it was the best I ever had so far. Throughout the 3 exciting matches, I screamed spontaneously with the crowd during the exciting moments such as when a hero got killed and so on.. it felt great!

Me, Mom and Arthur at the event.

The finals was a very close, especially the first two matches.. it was insane. Even the third map was quite close in the beginning, it was so fun to watch. Grubby's family was overwhelmed with happiness when Grubby won, there were tears in their eyes.. and me too. We hugged each other, and watched Grubby swing The Netherlands flag proudly, he too was overwhelmed. He said his facial muscles was tense, and he had to try to relax himself.

Grubby's family had a very very great weekend in Cologne, and experienced the best parts of the event. They love all the people they meet, and the fact that the event had a happy ending makes it all the more special for them. Arthur and Miranda got interviewed by SK-Gaming.

After the Grand Finals, Grubby and Moon went straight to the press conference. After that, Grubby had never ending interviews with different media, and then the closing ceremony where they award all the players who finished top 3 in each game. It was around 9am, when the place was finally closing that we too started to pack up and go. At first we thought we should go eat and celebrate some, but Grubby's family had to wake up early the next day for work, so we decided to go straight home.. meaning drive back to The Netherlands.

We ate in a very nice pizzeria the night after the semi-finals.

We had a great time in Arthur's car, we chatted about everything from the event during the 2.5 hours drive, it was "gezellig"! We reached home at nearly 12 midnight. Grubby and I stayed in our new home. We received a letter from our internet provider, and found that our internet had been connected while we were in Cologne. I fell asleep on the couch while Grubby tried to connect the router and so on.. he wanted to go surf the gaming websites, read news and so on because he didn't want the night to end yet. When he also got the wireless working, he woke me up and said that we could bring the laptop to the bed and surf the net together. We watched some video interviews together, watched some replays released by WCG, and at 2am, I was so tired that I had to sleep. He continued till 5am in the morning!

Post-WCG
The next day, our doorbell went, and at the door stands Arthur and Miranda! They live very near to us, probably 5 - 10 mins walk the most. It was sooo sweet, they already framed up the "Go Grubby" poster, and they gave it to us as a present. We had tea together, and watched more interviews together and so on. This day is Grubby's rest day, no gaming today (But instead he watched lots of replays.. he can't help it, still very much attached to the game). At night we had a nice visit from Grubby's Dad and Sjan. We had a good time talking about the event. Grubby's dad had been following WCG from home, and he was also very nervous while watching the LIVE stream during the Grand Finals. xD

For the whole of today, we had been writing blogs, doing our laundry, packing up and getting ready to leave for the ESL event in Korea. Grubby had been practising again. Our flight is early in the morning tomorrow at 8.45am 13th Nov. This means we have to leave the house at 5 plus in the morning! t.t

I'll stop here, and I'll blog more when I reach Korea! Weee..!! Stay tuned!

More pictures from WCG 2008:

WhO didn't manage to come out of the group stage. BoneCracker once again performed very well!

Moon

HoT

Kowi from New Zealand

Aca from Serbia

Sokol from Germany

ToD looking friendly

HoT in semi-finals

Grubby sometimes make funny faces for variations while taking pictures with fans.

Moon looked disappointed at the press conference. Too bad there could only be 1 winner. They both played great! Moon cheered up some awhile later. :)

Reporters at the press conference

Me and Nefanda from goodgame.ru

Handewasser won two times in a row for Project Gotham 4, a racing game. 2 gold medals already at such a young age!

The top three Warcraft III players comes out during the closing ceremony.

Happy:"Are we supposed to pose here?"

"Alright I'm pretty good at that."

Moon holding flowers.

"Oh.. I get flowers too?"

Grubby with a big smile after being awarded the gold medal.

A laptop to all the champions.

Happy(middle) with his Russian Team players.