One of the biggest moments in every Jamboree is surely the opening ceremony. This is where the magic happens, where the participants, IST, JPT and everyone else to actually open the Jamboree.
I must admit that I had low hopes for this one. Not because of the organisation, but rather because of the weather. It rained a lot before hand.
However, for some divine reason it stopped shortly before the start.
The ceremony opened with a minute of silence for the events in Norway. To my big surprise that worked very well, nearly 40’000 people were completly silence. I thank them very much for that. But it took only seconds after that silence to pick up the great atmosphere and cheering they had before.
The rain and bad weather could do nothing to demotivate them. Ten thousands of people singing, cheering and celebrating. I thought first we will stay a bit in the background, but as the stewards tried to get people to move towards the stage we also followed. Hanna, Pernilla and me ended up between Swedish, Brazilian and Austrian people.
The ceremony was very funny, not too long and very very entertaining. There were the usual speeches (which were fortunately very good and short) and the history of Sweden was presented. We had a blast and judging from what we see, the participants even more.
Only the ending was a tiny little bit surpring…it just said “the end” and the expected big bang was not really there. Also there were no information for the troops to return to their subcamps.
Other than that…great show! Had my fair share of goose bumps