Theme: Back to the 80s
Location: Estrel Berlin
Tabbie and Yamavu arrived at my place at around 10:00, we packed our stuff in the car and drove off at 11:00 after grabbing a quick breakfast at the bakery.
Before leaving Vienna, we filled the tank and I spilled Diesel all over my hand because some idiot left the little snap locked at the gas station, so as soon as I took the handle it started squirting out Diesel, ugh. We drove through Czech Republic and stopped at Excalibur City, a tacky medieval/airport-themed duty-free-shop/theme park mix, had some lunch there and in the attached tiny theme park we went on a ride where you had to shoot animatronic animals with laser guns. After getting a toll sticker, we continued. Traffic was pretty heavy, especially in Prague. Google tried to route us through a closed part of the highway even though it displayed it as closed, so we had to resort to *sigh* Apple maps to get us through there. Before the border, the Autobahn was closed so we had to drive through tiny Czech towns to continue. The same part was closed years ago, and they still made little progress of finally connecting the Highway to Germany.
Since we passed Dresden anyway, we parked the car in the inner city and went to the beautiful place around Frauenkirche and had dinner at a very nice Bavarian restaurant.
The waiters accent was so hard, I could barely understand what he said, it was great! I had some Weißwurst with sweet mustard. We drove off to Frauendorf, which was located about 40 minutes north of Dresden. I booked us an apartment via AirBnB for really cheap there. We arrived at 22:20, got a nice welcome by the family owning the giant house and spent the night chilling in front of the TV, watching Simpsonwave videos. Went to bed at 1:00.
We planned to get breakfast in the single bakery of Frauendorf, but oddly enough it was closed. So we drove off to the next town, Ortrand, where every single bakery was closed as well, including the bakery section of the local supermarket. We went on the highway, stopping at the next rest stop, which was the absolute shabbiest and most bland looking one I ever saw. I took a mediocre coffee and a packed chocolate bar while Yamavu was adventurous and bought the week-old-looking Mettbrötchen (Mett is a spread made of raw beef and spices).
We arrived at the hotel at around 13:00. Checking in was a bit if a hassle as our room requests were mixed up, but eventually we managed to get all or rooms close to each other. We ran into Mag, Sweek, Ekorren, Henrieke and Yotie right away and proceeded to unload our car which was mostly occupied by massive amounts of stuff I brought for charity as well as 4 fursuits. Henrieke lied down a bit as she barely had any sleep, I got some Currywurst at the hotel bar and then went to the steam sauna with Mag, Ekorren and Yamavu.
At 19:00 I, Henrieke and Tabbie went to park the car in a nearby Garage since we figured it would be better than parking on the street, however the Garage looked like a great place to get mugged and the stench of piss in the staircase was very intense, so we might skip that next year. We met up with the others at the Chinese restaurant we've been to last year, sadly we didn't realize that Monday is the Chinese day of rest. Yamavu looked up alternatives and we ended up at Shaan, a very nice Indian restaurant near to the train station. Henrieke, Yamavu, Tabbie, Mag, Sweek, Ekorren and I had some tasty Indian food and I worked a bit in a commission on Henrieke's fancy new iPad Pro.
Back at the hotel, we hung out a bit in Ekorren's room and played a round of Quiplash, Fibbage and Drawful with Yotie, Birone, Kenjus, Sweek, Mag, Ekorren and Henrieke.
Went to bed at 2:00.
Henrieke and I had breakfast at 10:15 with Mag, Sweek, Yamavu and Shorty. After breakfast we sat around in the area a bit longer with Mag and Sweek while I worked a bit on the poster for my aerobics workshop.
At 12:00, I went to the room to get the supplies for setup of the charity booth. We had quite some volunteers so I was able to spread all the work evenly, with Ekorren painting the EF logo on the collection bags, Yotie finishing the money funnels he designed and 3d-printed before the con, Birone, Kenjus and Yamavu sawing wood, Itchigo managing the materials, Henrieke, Sweek and Mag assembling the roof and all of us assembling the whole aluminium frame and pulling the tent over. It took a while but everything looked nice in the end and worked out just as planned.
At 18:00 Henrieke and me had dinner at Portofino with Sniffer, Ray, Itchigo, Pinky, Chiros and Titash. After that I brought drinks, my Ghettoblaster and my C64 to Yotie's room for an 80s-themed room party. Apart from the usual people, Yotie also invited a couple of Malaysians, including Silverfox, Hiro and Alexia. We had a Cola tasting and I made everyone watch Coma Light 13 on real hardware, trying to get the point across of how amazing this demo is.
After the room party Henrieke and me went to Mag's room where he presented us a video of Eurofurence 19 and the trip to the Netherlands afterwards, bringing back many good memories. In the meanwhile Sweek passed out so we left the room, strolled around in the lobby a bit, ran into Djem, Sambers and Layown and went to bed at 2:30.
We had breakfast at 10 and met Zot there, who came all the way from California! After breakfast ended, I finished up the "Furry Computer Club Newsletter", a little side project I've been working on. It was a newsletter of a fictional computer club with the latest news from 1989! I also finished up my aerobics workshop poster and went to meet Luxen in the Daily Eurofurence office. Having dumped the files, I had to search a bit for the paper I ordered for the FCC newsletter, which was a bit hard to find. After that I worked a bit at the lottery booth, setting up things there. I took my 1984 video camera out a bit for filming, then continued my quest for paper and at least found one pack of light-yellow colored printer paper.
At 14:00 we had a Charity team meeting, talking through the last things before the con started and Pinky resigning as director of the team. We also demonstrated the new Charity collection bags that Yotie and I built. After that we went to the staff buffet to get a deserved late lunch and were surprised by how tasty the food was there! A very nice service for hard-working staffers! At 16:00 I started setting up the computer system, sadly the bar-code scanner didn't work so for this day, ticket numbers had to be typed in manually. That wasn't a problem since it was mostly charity concert ticket sales that day. Thanks to the opening ceremonies being delayed we just made it in time to see a Freddy Mercury impersonator pumping up the crowd for a very 80s opening ceremony which I captured on my very 80s camera! After that I went back to the charity booth, making sure the lottery system worked and also set up the TV that would play and endless playlist of random 80s videos and the charity promo video. We went to Mag's room for a bit and decided to order pizza to the hotel. I sadly developed a nasty allergy headache, so as soon as we ordered, I took a 15-minute break in the steam sauna which helped a bit. We had some tasty pizza and played the guessing game, with Henrieke being Mac Tonite, Mag being Fido Dido and me being Cleopatra, it was pretty fun!
We also had a blind tasting of Crystal Pepsi and Coca Cola and came to the conclusion that despite earlier tasting results, Crystal Pepsi does indeed taste just like regular Pepsi and that the mind is influenced by the clear color, expecting non-Cola taste. We went down again to close up the booth and I suited a bit with Baseball and my giant plush Dynatac 8000x.
Later, we met up in Yotie's room again to play some Quiplash while Henrieke worked on fixing up the Painted Dog Fursuit head that Lance sent for the charity auction.
Went to bed at 3:00.
Had breakfast at 10 with Mag, Ekorren, etc. and got the FCC newsletter which came out nicely on the colored paper. At 11:15 Mag, Henrieke and I went to the charity team photo shoot and got some fun pictures taken.
Since the booth opened at 12, I quickly went to set up the booth and fixed the system so the bar-code scanner would work which made things much easier, with Mag also helping a bit with booth setup. Snack exchange already started by then, so I went there and ate all kinds of weird stuff, including really gross anis candy from the UK. I also dumped some Austrian snacks at the dedicated Austrian table that @{Mr. Who} set up.
Needing a break from all the junk food, we went to the steam sauna to take a break.
I remembered that the fursuit parade was about to start, so I quickly went and got Baseball out. Since the parade was really long, being late wasn't too much of a problem as not everyone was even out of the fursuit lounge yet. Baseball jogged the whole route in his 80s fitness gear, powered by nothing less than Crystal Pepsi. Henrieke helped me out with filming using my 80s camera.
Back on the room with Henrieke, I finished up a Polaroid badge commission and delivered it in the Dealers Den.
I looked around a bit but was soon called to fix things at the charity booth. Being done with that, I went to ConOps to ask for a time slot for my 80s aerobics panel the next day.
Outside I found Mag at the bouncy castle went do do wild stuff on there! After burning roughly a thousand kilocalories doing flips, I had to stop to preserve some energy for the rest of the day. I met up with my friends in the lobby and cleaned up the booth a bit as it was closing time already. Henrieke, Chiros, Yotie and I went to the staff buffet to have a quick bite while the others went to have sushi. Anja, a resident artist from Berlin who was there with her boyfriend filming with a 16mm camera wrote me on WhatsApp that she was at the convention now, so I met up with her at the "Paws on Fire" event and talked for a little bit. After that I went to meet Icky, Flint, Levi, Dave and Cal in the smokers lounge, which luckily was devoid of any smokers. I relaxed a bit and Icky showed me all the cool things he could do with his OP-1, we also discussed noisy German electro house and other musical things. We went to the game room after a while, and on the hallway I bumped into Max and Tobi, 2 people I didn't see in about 8 years, blowing my mind completely. We chatted a bit and I continued to the game room with the Brits. On the way we saw the inflatable panel, which is of course a must-see at any Eurofurence (especially the adorable Sea Dragon). Finally making it to the game room, I played some Jetpac with Icky and drooled over all the nice old consoles and monitors.
We also got to watch Mag play in the video game tournament, getting brutally wrecked in Mario Kart. We all went up to Yotie's room where Henrieke, Mag and Chiros were still busy watching the latest Steven Universe Episode. Mag and me did some parkour on the hallway in the meanwhile. We played some Drawful and Fibbage, watched some YouTube videos and went to bed at 1:30 (with a dumb allergy headache).
Had breakfast at.. some point I guess. Set up the lottery like every day, but the internet didn't work. 300ms ping and 20% packet loss, Google Docs not loading. I spent all morning trying to fix the issue which is really hard to track down. Shit. Hurga did some QoS to give our router priority, which seemed to work at first, but it still broke down very often all day. We end up using USB tethering via Sniffers phone which is awfully slow thanks to 3G being very overcrowded, but better than nothing. I hung up my Aerobics workshop posters and ran into a cute ruffed lemur!
After the system kind of worked, I took some time to peek into the Dealers Den. Then I went to the video game room with Mag and filmed a bit. Anja wrote me again, so I told her to come over. She wanted an interview, so I and Mag went to my room and answered questions about the fandom and suiting. Henrieke sadly had a headache and was lying down in Ekorren's room in the meanwhile. Being done with the interview, I had to put on my dad's old 80s clothes and rush to the ECC Hall 3 to hold my aerobics workshop. A whopping ~10 people attended, making it my most successful (and only) aerobics workshop so far. We did some aerobics, but the funnier part was the shitty dance battle afterwards.
I met Max again outside and then met up with the others in Eko's room. After a well-needed shower, Henrieke and I had dinner at Portofino with Mag, Sweek, Birone, Ekorren and Chiros. Afterwards, I hung out in the Lobby a bit, chatting with Duco, Timduru, Mag and Birone. I went to the video game room with Mag, on the way I passed out some FCC newsletters. I had my Coma Light 13 floppys with me so I put he demo on the SX-64 and we watched it on the tiny, but really crisp and vibrant screen. After some more hanging out in the room with Ekorren, Titash, Birone and Henrieke we went to the Artist Lounge for a bit. I ran into Max once again, had a little chat and said hi to Atimos, hoping to do an art trade later. Mag and Sweek were outside, and since I never actually went outside during the whole time that Eurofurence was being held in the Estrel, I finally did it. I noticed some bats flying around over the canal and it turned out there were loads of bats, so we spent quite a while watching cute bats flying really close by. Since I didn't suit much yet, I got Baseball out and Mag took Dog out. Baseball and Dog went to the excellent 80s dance and had some fun there, they also met Titash and Davuu there and got some fun glowy LED sticks from Cheetah. They made good use of the fursuit lounge where they had the equivalents of airplane propellers set up.
Baseball and Dog went to the lobby after exhausting themselves at the dances and met our friends in the Lobby, also getting to meet Icky and Flint! Back on the room, Mag and I got out of suits and went to the lobby again. Henrieke went to bed already and I bumped into Kenai, who spontaneously decided to attend EF due to some free time. Mag, Kenai and I went to the game room as I had to show Kenai how great it was. I stayed a bit longer after Kenai and Mag left, chatting about old hardware with Hurga and watching C64 demos on the SX-64 together, always a joy!
Finally got to bed at 3:00.
Had breakfast at 10:00 with Sweek, Mag and Yamavu.
I set up the charty booth again and to my surprise everything worked fine! I bumped into Kenai and Sambers again, also Svix who attended my Aerobics panel and is a pretty nice guy! Henrieke, Sambers, Mag, Ekorren and I went to see the charity part of the auction, watching a T-Shirt with random autographs raising 200€ and a Toblerone bar raising 500€. Today we made use of the Artist Alley and snatched ourselves a nice spot. Yamavu, Mag, Henrieke and me set up our stuff there and we sold drawings, Stickers and patches.
I went to get Baseball a bit later to do some 5€ sketches, which also went well as people somehow like Baseball's crude drawings. Baseball also went to visit Titash in the Dealers Den and commissioned Dragibuz for a Chibi sketch, also he took some 80s video in the Den.
Before the closing ceremony started, we packed our stuff and went to the room, watching the closing ceremony with a somewhat-awkward speech by Ron from PDC. We also ordered some Asian food and moved to Yotie's room for more space, watching the PawPet Show while waiting for the food. Yotie and I went to the staff buffet for some drinking cups before the food arrived. Mag made some fun Vines during the PawPet Show. After the PawPet Show, Yamavu, Yotie, Chiros and I played the "Trump" board game which was confusing at first, but as soon as we somewhat interpreted the rules it was actually pretty fun.
Henrieke, Ekorren, Mag and Birone played the guessing game in the meanwhile. Later, we went to the Big Blue Dance, I took some more video until the battery way empty, resulting in some funky effects. Since the camera was empty, it was time to let Baseball have some fun at the dance with Icky and Flint. Baseball also met Chiros and Noire at the dance. The set was pretty much the best I've heard from BBF in recent years, lots of Hands-Up, reminding me of Furry Cons 5+ years ago. Cheetah was nice enough to pass out fun blinky LED sticks which lit up the dance floor, along with 17 RGB Lasers and lots of other lights. After exhausting himself at the dance, Baseball went to the artist and ran into Sambers and Cassy, playing Mitch Murder on a Ghettoblaster. Having good taste in music, Baseball very much approved of this music selection. Since it was getting late already, I got out of suit and went to the Artist Lounge where I hung out with Icky, Flint, Titash, Mag, Yamavu and others. I also met Atimos again, agreeing to a trade tomorrow.
We finally went to bed at 4:15.
We somehow still made it to breakfast and started tearing down the lottery booth right afterwards. What made things a bit harder were the many people standing around the booth with their luggage and us needing 8 people to disassemble the giant aluminium frame. It took us until 13:00, then I helped Ray and Sniffer to pack up all the stuff in the ConOps office. I cleaned up in my room a bit to have less work the next morning, then went downstairs and ran into Tirrel and Hazel. Henrieke and I had Lunch at Portofino with Titash and Timduru.
It was really great to see Tim again after such a long time, hopefully we'll meet again soon! After Lunch, I told CleanerWolf that he could pick up the Commodore 1082S monitor he lent us for charity and he told me I could keep it, which was super nice of him as it's one of the best Commodore monitors.
I helped Sniffer a bit with setting up the Charity Open Table, which was an officially announced event this year.
Kenai expressed interest in being a bat earlier, so while Henrieke was assisting Pucky and taking photos, I spotted Baseball who happened to have slightly bigger wings today. I filmed a bit with my Vidicon camera and took some Polaroids.
After that, I met up with friends in my room and we agreed to go to the steam sauna before dinner. Sadly it was full, so we made an appointment 50 minutes later, at 19:40. I went to the lobby with Chiros, Yotie and Icky in the meanwhile, having some currywurst. We all went to the steam sauna then, Mag joined as well. Yotie took his IP65 tablet into the steam sauna, taking some photos with the tablet magically not breaking.
We spent some time in the chill-area of the sauna, chatting a bit. I went to the room afterwards, getting my stuff and checking how the Charity Open Table was going. Yamavu was sitting there along with other artists, raising lots of money.
Mag, Henrieke, Birone and I went to the Artist Lounge. On the way, a film student who had been working on a documentary about Eurofurence since last year asked us to do some quick drawings on a flip-board, so we quickly did that. In the Artist Lounge, I met Atimos. We decided to all go to Yotie's room where I finally did my art trade with Atimos, while Yotie, Ekorren and a bunch of Malaysians played Werewolf.
I went down to the Artist Lounge again later with Mag, Henrieke, Birone and Chiros and did an early check-out on the way, standing in line for about 25 minutes and chatting with Ray in the meanwhile. In the Artist Lounge, Flint, Icky, Cal, Dave and Levi had to leave, so we spent a long time saying good-bye to them. Somehow Icky and the others appeared again, so Mag and I joined them to the Dead Dog Dance which was pretty fun. I also met CleanerWolf there, whom I thanked again for the nice monitor and fooled around with Mag and Emejn. Exhausted and back in the Artist Lounge, I said bye to Diti, Ottsel, Birone and Kaomoro. Back in the Lobby, I picked up the power strips from the Charity Open Table and chatted a bit with Pinky who informed me that all the hard-working artists raised a mind-blowing 2400€ just on this Sunday evening. We went to bed afterwards, getting a few hours of sleep before the packing madness would begin.
We had breakfast with Yotie, Mag and Sweek and then packed until 12:30.
Thankfully Ekorren helped us with carrying stuff downstairs and I managed to get an elevator on the first try! Mag, Sweek, Yotie, Ekorren, Henrieke, Diti, Yamavu and I were all in the downstairs area, waiting to depart. We said bye to everyone as they left, and Mag found out that their flight went in the morning, not in the evening as they thought. Everyone else left, and it was just me, Yamavu, Mag and Sweek left. Sweek booked a room for the night as their newly booked flight was next morning. Yamavu and I decided to stay after all, spending the day with Mag and Sweek rather than driving on the horribly congested roads and arriving in Vienna after midnight. We got rooms next to each other, unpacked a few things for the night from the car and met Shorty and Atkelar in the lobby after going to Edeka and the Currywurst stand to get some lunch and drinks.
Shorty told me about a new con at the Ringberg called EAST, I was very intrigued. We went to our rooms, dumped our things and decided to make use of the now empty steam sauna, relaxing a bit from all the stress. After that, we met Shorty again, who decided to join us to spend the day in the inner city of Berlin. Yamavu, Mag, Sweek, Shorty and I got day tickets and went to Alexanderplatz, Hauptbahnhof, Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate.
We had a coffee at Starbucks and to my delight they had the Double Chocolate Muffin which they discontinued in Austria. Shorty knew a good Bavarian restaurant nearby, sadly it was completely overcrowded so we went to a mostly vegan Mediterranean restaurant and had some Falafel and Fritz-Kola.
We went back to the hotel then where Furries (and even a few Fursuiters) were still roaming around, having tiny after-con parties. We chatted a bit with random people and declared Shorty to be the acting chairman of the convention as he was the highest-ranking staff member in the building.
Shorty left before midnight and we went to Mag's room. Mag and I went to Yotie's room and knocked, but somehow he wasn't there anymore. We spent the rest of the evening watching videos, I also got to try Sweek's Surface Pro 4.
Went to bed at 1:00.
We got up rather early and dumped Mag and Sweek at the airport, taking a detour to avoid the congested Autobahn, but arriving well in time. We said a quick bye, then had breakfast at the next rest stop. The drive was pretty boring and sadly I didn't feel too well, but apart from one construction site with an accident leaving only one lane free, there wasn't too much traffic and we arrived in Vienna when there was still light out. I also managed to get some more RC Cola on the way, horray!
When we arrived, Lisa and Wolfy came by and I gave both Yamavu and them a ride home. After that, I fell into a deep coma and began catching up all the sleep I missed during this amazing EF.
Thanks to all my friends and all the staffers for making this a very memorable and amazing convention!