Pieter Dumon’s First Trip on My First Trip: A Review

Pieter Dumon focuses on infinity. Today: My first trip.

Pieter Dumon16 november 2023, 21:45

Would Kobe Ilsen have known in advance which famous Flemish people he could travel with in this new program? And what would they bring him to? It is a question that crossed our minds several times during the first episode of My first trip. In that first episode, Ilsen’s companion turned out to be Stan Van Samang. So far nothing wrong. But the travel destination, and especially what Van Samang wanted to do there, clearly did not completely match the way Ilsen normally spends his days off.

As a nineteen-year-old, Van Samang turned out to have walked the Wicklow Way, a 127-kilometer journey through Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains National Park. An experience that he wanted to share with Ilsen twenty-five years later. But in the camping shop where the duo quickly stocked up on some materials and supplies, it became clear that the enthusiasm about the coming expedition was rather one-sided. “We’re not going to leave civilization behind, are we?” Ilsen asked with a slight panic in his voice when his companion enthusiastically started taking bags of powdered meals from the shelves. “Why couldn’t nineteen-year-old Stan Van Samang have just gone to Lloret de Mar for a week, like his friends?” you heard him think.

Ilsen could also barely hide his disgust for the chosen travel formula in the voice-over. “A journey through largely uninhabited areas,” he said. “Hardly any restaurants or hotels along the way. So camping, with a capital A.” That uninhabited area certainly did not appear to be an exaggeration. There was indeed not much to do along the Wicklow Way. To make matters worse, Van Samang announced after just a few meters that he preferred to walk along that famous road on his own and in complete silence. Yet another downer for Ilsen, who had done his homework and said he had at least a hundred questions. “Why couldn’t we just go to Lloret de Mar?”, we heard him think a little louder.

To kill some time, the duo passed by a place where Van Samang had camped twenty-five years ago, but where that was no longer allowed. They passed a waterfall that Van Samang had also seen twenty-five years ago and took a photo at a bridge that had also been there twenty-five years ago. Undoubtedly all personal highlights for Van Samang, but for the less involved viewer mainly television moments that left you neither cold nor warm.

Although those photo opportunities did give Ilsen the opportunity to throw a few of his hundred questions at Van Samang. The one question everyone was waiting for was also asked. Although it had to wait until Ilsen was more or less on familiar territory. Only when it was possible to camp next to a pub, where there was a minimum of comfort in the form of freshly tapped pints, the nude images were discussed that first pushed Van Samang into and then irrevocably out of the spotlight. The conversation that followed, which was drawn out just a little too long, provided one of the few lasting moments of the episode. “This would have been so much easier in Lloret de Mar,” we heard Ilsen think one last time.

Every Thursday around 8:45 PM on VRT 1.

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2023-11-16 20:45:03
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