Theme: Black Magic
Location: Congress Center Hamburg
This was a very unusual Eurofurence. Due to the surprising switch to a new location and the massive price increase, most of my friends decided not to attend. I managed to get a more or less reasonably priced room and Chiros joined me for the con. Henrieke stayed back in Amsterdam. Due to the high price, we only went for 3 nights. Chiros came the day before and we had some pancakes together, then we went to bed early to catch a very early IC from Amsterdam Centraal.
We got up at 6 to head to Amsterdam Centraal, caught our train and arrived on time in Hamburg. The ICE was nice and comfy, and not too full.
Since we were starving, we went to McDonald's at Hamburg Dammtor right away for lunch. The food there was.. very mediocre. The handy thing was that our ICE went directly to Hamburg Dammtor, which is literally next to the Radisson and the CCH where the con was held. So after our lunch we walked across the street, and the receptionist was nice enough to let us check in 2 hours early. I met Gwyndolium and Skittles at the elevators. We unpacked our things and went to get our badges. Due to some mistake we weren't marked as staff, fixing that took about half an hour of waiting. We also tried getting fursuit badges, but the desk wasn't open until 16:00.
We went to the charity booth which was already set up, but undecorated due to strict fire safety guidelines of the CCH. We met Sniffer there. The three of us went to the art show to check out the charity area there. I met Thabo there, who was running the charity part of the art show. I also checked out the Dealers Den a bit, which was in the same big hall. Outside the convention center I met Luno, Hiero, Noweti, Jipho and Hai suiting.
I decided to go to Rewe and pick up some food, also some COVID tests at the pharmacy. It was quite a walk to get there. I got back to the room a while later and stocked our luckily empty fridge. I took a quick shower and Chiros came. We went down to get our fursuit badges. I paid extra to get a Tyler badge since I forgot Baseball in Vienna, oops. I also brought some Coke Zero for Thabo and then strolled around a bit.
In the Artist lounge I ran into NikRaccoon, who I last chatted with at EF20. He couldn't remember that though so that was a bit awkward. I saw Purple sitting in the lobby so we chatted a bit and she gave me another stack of stickers for my collection.
Later I did the pub quiz with Aqui, KBK, Kalaallit, Chiros and Gao. We didn't do too well, sadly it wasn't as fun at the one at NFC.
Of course I couldn't miss the inflatables panel. I was way too tired though and didn't stay too long.
I didn't do much after that and went to bed at 23:00.
I got up at 11:00, sure is nice to sleep in for once. I had some Knäckebrot and Nutella for breakfast, then suited up and did the fursuit parade as Tyler with Chiros. Sadly Tyler is in dire need of repairs, turns out foam gets a bit brittle after 14 years. Tyler met Shorty and Zed in the parade. It was really hot outside, and sadly the ground was also a bit more rocky than anticipated, so Tyler took some shortcuts to get to the end faster. I got out of suit very quickly after that, took a shower and wrote with Henrieke a bit on Telegram.
I had some instant ramen for lunch and watched EF Prime on our TV. Then I went downstairs to meet Shorty, who showed me the staff lounge, which was a little room filled mostly with instant ramen, coffee and slushie machines.
Later I helped Luno with his Fursuit Repair Cafe event, where he spends 3 hours helping people fix their suits. Having a lot of experience building suit, I could lend a hand, showing people how to sew and explaining fursuit building techniques.
After fixing suits for quite a while, Shorty showed me his new kangaroo suit that Luno made. I then chatted with Kalaallit a bit and later gave Henrieke a tour of the Dealers Den via Telegram video call.
I went outside a bit and met FlintGlomcat there, first time we met in real life! I went back to my room and Shorty dropped by. We planned to go to the steam sauna, sadly when we wanted to meet up Shorty wasn't there, and the sauna was almost closing. I went up to the room and met Chiros there, so we decided to check out the sauna, even if it was just for a few minutes. It was very nice, too bad it closes already at 21:00. We managed to lock ourselves out on the balcony - which happened to have a very nice view on the CCH and the plaza in front of it. Eventually hotel personnel saved us and we went back to our room. We watched some Casiopea and Synthwave videos, then Chiros suited up and we went to the art show, where Chiros and Thabo were collecting stickers for the charity sticker wall, which would be auctioned off later.
We split up and I ran into Zed at the exit of the fursuit theater. I also chatted with Hurga for a while about CCCamp, an even I would sure love to visit sometime. I went outside a bit, the vibe was great. There was an impromptu DnB set, and people were hanging out around the 3 food trucks.
I went to bed eventually I guess.
I got up at 9:30 and went to the Radisson breakfast buffet. Shorty invited me because he felt bad for not showing up to the steam sauna.
I sat there with Shorty, Kairan and TODO. Breakfast buffet was delicious, hopefully it'll be included in the room price next time. I sketched a bit on my reMarkable, and eventually we went to the art show. There we split up and I met up with Steel, who gave me some of his fursuit sized crayons he made fully from scratch. Steel and I went to my room and we chatted for a while, and we agreed on doing a field test with the crayons.
Steel already went downstairs and I joined him a bit later in the fursuit lounge. I tried suiting as his red panda, but it turned out he forgot the body in his hotel, so he went to pick it up. I wandered around in the lobby in the meanwhile. He came back and it turnd out that the suit actually fit me! So I turned into a rad panda for a while, participating in the fursuit group photo and collecting for charity by doing sketches with crayons for people. I also met Garrodor in the fursuit lounge!
At 16:00, I was gone, got out of suit and made a steam sauna appointment with Shorty. I went to my room for a quick shower, had some instant yakisoba and took a nap. I figured it would be nice to get some fursuit photos with Tyler, so I suited up and Tyler went down to the photoshoot, which was walk-in rather than with appointments this time. Atkelar took some photos and Tyler roamed around for a little longer after that.
After unsuiting, I went to the closing ceremony where - among other things - the preliminary sum of 23.000€ for our charity, UAnimals, was announced. Of course this number would increase by a lot later.
It was also announced that Eurofurence will stay in Hamburg. I went back to the room with Chiros and I accompanied Chiros to the photoshoot. I helped a bit with packing up stuff, then Shorty and I went to the steam sauna and stayed until 21:00.
I went back to the room and watched a bit of PPS with Chiros, then both of us went to the staff buffet in the Radisson since the leftover food needed to go. In the lobby we met Steel. We sat at a table, later Neop also joined.
I sketched things for Steel and Chiros, and also Koidel, who we chatted with on Telegram. Later I went to the fursuit lounge with Steel, where he gave me even more crayons. We chatted a while about suiting, but I was beginning to get tired since it was 1:00.
I still checked out BBF's dance, but didn't have the energy for it anymore. Chiros was already sleeping, so I quietly went to bed at 1:30.
We got up at 9:30 and quickly packed our few things and had some breakfast. We went down at 11:00, put our luggage in storage and teared down the booth, which wasn't too much work.
Then we spent 2 hours in the backstage area packing all the charity things with Sniffer, Gao, Indigo and Chiros. I said byeto Shorty, who was about to leave with a truckload of things. After packing was done, I sat with Shorty and Gao in the Radisson lobby until we had to leave to catch our train. Our train was delayed by half an hour, then we stood for another 45 minutes in Hamburg Hauptbahnhof because apparently they forgot to schedule a conductor. There was no way we'd ever make our connection in Osnabrück, dang.
We met a fellow furry on the train, Eva Keniva, who was taking the same route. She spent a while chatting with Chiros about DnD, something I know nothing about. In Osnabück, we went to McDonald's since we had 1.5 hours to kill.
The train after was naturally packed, it took a while finding a seat. Of course the air conditioning was also broken, so we spent the next 3 hours in a sauna after hauling our luggage through 7 traincars to find seats. Eventually we arrived in Amsterdam, said our good-byes and went back home. Chiros was picked up by his brother right away, and I flopped on my bed.