Theme: Rise of the Cults
Location: Arcotel Wimberger
This convention has been a bit hard to get into the mood for. The weekend before I had food poisoning, which threw me off entirely. I was also hosting Shorty and Skippy, but was barely ready for that. In the end it all worked out though.
We went to see Demolition Man in the cinema ronight with Yamavu, Atura, 3 of their friends, Skippy, Goddy, Toumal and Shorty. I was a bit anxious whether people would like the movie since I talked everyone into going, and I haven't seen this movie since the 90s. Turns out it was actually even better than I remembered, perfectly satirical. Shorty, Skippy and I walked past the con hotel to see if any furries were already there, but all we found were the remnants of a scouting convention.
Shorty and Skippy went to Stephansdom in the morning. Henrieke and I used the time to do laundry and clean up the house. We then went to Ebi, a great asian restaurant, for lunch. Tifou and Oddity were also in the area and joined us.
It turns out that Tifou went to school with Dav, a friend of Henrieke and a great artist, small world. We stayed 2 hours and then went to Haus des Meeres and looked at lots of sea life and some lemurs. Then we had coffee and Sachertorte on the cafe on top of the tower and enjoyed a nice view of Vienna. I scribbled a bit on my reMarkable 2. The others stayed a bit longer and I made my way back home with Henrieke. We grabbed some ice cream and dropped by Runch, a local comic shop. Henrieke preordered some Uncle Scrooge comics. On the way home I ran into Shorty again, who helped me carry some groceries.
Finished commission. Had some curry for lunch, then walked to hotel with shorty. Martin and Goddy were already at I finished a badge commission for the con in the morning and has some curry for lunch with Shorty. Martin and Goddy were already at the entrance. Martin brought some flyers for Vienna Comix as I suggested that I could put some out at the con. The lobby was complete chaos, with lines for registration, hotel check in and the opening ceremony intersecting.
Registration went fairly fast though and we got our badges from Chaga. I said hi to Runo and quickly gave up trying to get into the main stage due to the massive queue there. Goddy, Skippy and I went to the overflow opening ceremony screening and we watched the delayed opening ceremony there. Despite some technical difficulties, we got to see the whole thing.
Skippy left early to get some food. I met Bronko and CuteFluff at the hotel entrance.
Goddy and Shorty got some food at the Döner store across the street, I joined them.
I didn't stay too long anymore after and went home again, having some leftover curry for dinner.
We got up at 9:00 and I packed my stuff and took a citybike. We were trying to get a table in the Artist Alley, and I was just in time to snatch one of the 4 available tables.
Henrieke arrived a bit later with a suitcase full of merch to sell. We weren't allowed to do anything before 12:00, so it was about 2 hours of sitting around and doing nothing. We also got in trouble due to our tablecloth not having the right fireproofing certificate.
Once we got started, we had lots of people coming by. Pocket (originally from Mexico, now living in Spain) dropped by, Purple as well. I went to buy lunch with Shorty and got a Leberkäsesemmel. Artec came by with his Windows CE Handheld PC and asked me to draw him something on there, which I happily did.
I checked out the Dealers Den too and met Wolfy and Rotarr there. I also bought a Sticker from Vader-San. I also met a fellow furry from the beautiful city of Graz, Bready.
Sadly I didn't sell too well and only got a single commission, which was really fun to draw! When we packed up, I checked out the snack exchange, which was mostly Austrian food. Coora also dropped by.
Around 18:00 we went to the hotel and checked into our room, which I booked for 2 nights. We brought our stuff to the room and Goddy and Coora joined us. We picked up some food at Billa and ate on the room, then met up in the courtyard with Sertro, Yamavu, Atura and Cyrilius. Goddy, Henrieke and Coora also joined a but later. We discovered that there were adorable pigeon fledglings under a bush!
I chatted a but with Purple while Henrieke went back to the room. Since there was not much going on I went to the office to pick up some sticker for Henrieke, then home to get a pyjama and some fun retro tech like my Mavica and my Motorola GSM phone from 1991. Back at the hotel, the phone was a real conversation starter. I let some people make calls with it and took some Mavica photos.
Other than that there wasn't really much going on. I chatted a bit with Artec, Shorty and Tay, then Shorty and I took citybikes back to my place around midnight. Henrieke stayed at the hotel tonight.
I got up at 8:30 and went straight to the hotel. Sadly it was raining very hard, so I got very soaked. I put my raincoat on the room and hard breakfast with Henrieke. Tabbie and Nico joined later as well.
We went back to the room and slept until 13:00, then we just hung around in the hotel a bit. We checked out the Dealers Den and I went to a nearby Austrian restaurant with Goddy to make a dinner reservation. Back at the hotel, I met Spikie and Yoru. We went to the supermarket and I got some bananas. In front of the supermarket there was a huge flock of pigeons. Yoru bought some dried corn kernels and we fed the adorable pigeons for a while. We also spread some proper pigeon food near the fledglings in the hotel courtyard, hoping to help out the parents a bit.
I went to the Artist Alley and met Henrieke, Skippy and Goddy there. We decided to check out the maid cafe, which had a 15 minute wait to get in. We were given a 30 minute time slot, but due to them forgetting about our order, it took over 30 minutes just to get our coffee and cake.
About an hour later we were finally done, and I dashed back to our room to get Baseball for the most important event - the pooltoy panel!
Sadly no sea dragons in sight, but a very cute Chinese dragon!
Afterwards Baseball went to the ballpit with Skippy.
For dinner we went to a nice Austrian place we discovered last year with a big group. We ordered giant Schnitzel and had a good time.
Baseball was still out a bit after dinner and checked out the dances.
We didn't really do much the rest of the evening as everyone was at roomparties and the lobby was pretty deserted.
We got up at 9:30 and went straight to breakfast. We met Tifou there and said bye to him as he was about to leave. I chatted a bit with Chaga and recommended the Haus des Meeres to him. Tabbie and Nico also arrived shortly before we left. We packed our stuff, I dumped Baseball and Kiki in the fursuit lounge and we took the tram home with the rest of our luggage.
A while later Coorandilla joined us as well. We went to pick up some kabep, Coora picked up some Kaiserschmarrn and Goddy joined as well. We went back to our place and watched the closing ceremonies while having lunch.
We went back to the hotel then and sat around in the lobby a bit.
I said ho to Cheetah, whom I didn't see all con. Yamavu, Atura, Casi, Cyrilius and others were sitting at the vegan place next door, so we joined them and had some tasty vegan cake (though one of the cake's bases tasted like those grass pellets in rodent food). We chatted a while and drew Avali fursuit concepts. Fraxinas, Uvok and 2 other people sat at a table nearby, so I went over and chatted for a bit with them. We went back to the hotel and sat in the lobby with Goddy, Coora and Artec. After a bit we moved to the bar where Tabbie, Spikie and Yoru were sitting. Tabbie soon left, and we artjammed a bit with Spikie, both Henrieke and I did a trade. I also nerded out about Spyro with Yoru.
Shorty joined our table as well. I suited up and let Baseball check out the dance. Music wasn't his cup of tea, so he roamed around the lobby for a bit and harassed Shorty in the bar. Baseball also met Fizz, Nico, Brainfreeze and Cee. I stopped suiting soon after and went back to our art jam table, where Spikie finished an adorable sketch in my book.
We packed out things, said bye to Runo, Kirei and Cheetah as well as all the others in front of the hotel, then made our way back to our place with Shorty at around midnight.
Sadly, due to various reasons, this con was quite less enjoyable than most cons. Artist Alley was not a success for me, and hanging out with friends did not really work out either. I got a room mostly because it was so incredibly hot last year, but this year that was very much not necessary, and we also didn't really get to use the room for our usual Jackbox games. I'm curious about the new location though, since I'm local I'll be there again next year for sure.
