Finally I managed to finish this, I started writing this weeks ago right after the meeting had ended, but for some reason it turned out to be really hard to write. It’s far from an accurate depiction of the meeting. There is so much stuff missing, and there is no way to truly capture all the funny moments in some short text.

Thursday the 20th \DC started his bus ride from Skien down to Oslo, and we agreed that I’d meet him down at the bus terminal at 13:30. I finished packing my bag with the last remaining items, then headed down to meet him at 13:00 or so. His bus arrived pretty much exactly when it was supposed to, though I had some trouble finding out where the fuck he was, but managed to locate him eventually with the help of some mobile phone detective skills. Strolled down to the subway station and headed back to my apartment where we just played some Elma, ate some hot dogs and chilled out until 18:00 when we decided to leave in order to catch our boat without having to worry about being late and stuff like that. Two subway stops and about 1km of walking later, we arrived at Stena Line’s building and we proceeded to check in.

It was something like an hour before the boat was leaving, so we had plenty of time to kill in the waiting hall. After some time our eyes caught a glimpse of the cutest girl ever, this totally illegal girl that was sitting with her family in a short skirt with a pair of sexy stockings on, damn she was hot. Looking at her, the rest of the time flew by quite quickly. Boat arrived eventually and the boarding began, though we waited a while before we started boarding because of the thick crowd and long queue, it was better to just sit down and relax while everybody else slowly crawled their way inside. Found our way to our cabin, got our stuff settled down then roamed around the ship checking out the shops and restaurants available. They always have the suckiest eating places on board ships, there’s always just some crappy buffet place, but we just wanted something easy like hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries or whatever. The closest we came was a place selling some hot dogs and pizza slices, both which sucked ass, but at least it was food of some kind. After that I think we popped into the perfume store, as I needed to buy some new deoderants. Of course I managed to get sprayed with some god awful perfume by one of those ladies, \DC graciously dodged her.

Later on we went to one of the bars and got our drink on. Started with some standard Ringnes beer, that was quickly dismissed for the rest of the night with the superior Heineken. \DC also did some Jägermeister shots with his beer, god rest his soul. Nothing too exciting happened during our stay in the bar, got pretty drunk after a while and just went back to our cabin and feel asleep. That night sucked ass, as it was impossible to stay asleep for more than 30 minutes at a time, I kept waking up several times during the night, as did \DC I think. Got up around 6:45 or so, contemplated going to the tax free shop to buy something, but everything is so fucking cheap in Denmark anyway, so there really wasn’t any need to do so. Not to mention that staying in bed was more appealing at the time.

The boat arrived in Fredrikshavn 7:30, though we waited a while for all the other people to stampede out before us. Luther’s boat was due to arrive 2 hours later, so we walked around Fredrikshavn a bit, trying to find a McDonalds or something so we could eat. Apparently they don’t have such luxury in Fredrikshavn, at least not without a mile of walking, so instead we targeted the train station which was only 10 minutes away from the harbor instead of the 30-40 minute walk we ended up doing. The train station had a waiting room of some sort, along with a basic shop, so we opted to wait for Luther there for the remaining ~1.5 hours. He arrived eventually, pretty much on time, and we walked down to meet him and hurried back as fast as we could, as there was a train we could take that was leaving right away. Ran into some Swedish woman that joined us on our journey with the train.

We took the train for about 1 hour and arrived in Lindholm/Nørresundby, where we were supposed to meet Thanatos, as he was taking another boat that went from Bergen to Hanstholm. From there he would drive and meet us halfway between Hanstholm and Fredrikshavn, in the place we just arrived to. So we try to call Thanatos to check what’s up, but no answer. Luther the hero tries again and he finally answers. Apparently his car got some engine problems and he got stuck somewhere a few kilometers into nowhere. Our initial thought is like “fuck!”. We figured we’d go eat something at some local grill place until we heard back from Thanatos about the car issues. After a bit of waiting the verdict is out: Thanatos’ car engine is fucked beyond recovery, and he actually has to scrap his car completely. That kinda dampened our mood quite a bit, but after some consideration we figured that we’ll just have to get our ass down at far south we can by train and hope that somebody already at the meeting could come and pick us up. I can only imagine how fucking pissed off Thanatos must have been, he was way worse off than we were, after all, not only did he have his bags and stuff with him, but also his computer with the monitor and everything. And he’s stuck way out in nowhere with no immediate transportation available. We kinda felt sorry for him, but at this point there really wasn’t anything we could do to help him, so we just had to make our way down ourselves and wish him the best of luck with his own adventure.

Fortunately we didn’t have to wait too long for a train to come, there was one going to København that would get us pretty far south without having to change trains for a while. 3 or 4 hours later we were in Fredericia, and with some instructions from petsen by phone, we continued further down south with train from Fredericia to Rødekro, where he would be able to pick us up and drive us to Ã…benrÃ¥ where the meeting had already started some hours ago. After maybe an hour or so of waiting petsen finally cruised infront of the train station, and we were on our way. With petsen’s friend’s quick driving it didn’t take us long before we arrived at the bingo hall, maybe at around 19:00. After all the train rides, I think we were all pretty tired when we arrived at the meeting, but it was a nice feeling to finally get there and be able to relax a bit.

enil, petsen and Vandmand did some short introductionary speech/presentation, telling about the program and what was going to happen these next three days. Eventually we settled in, \DC got to use an extra laptop that Kopaka brought along, and Luther tried in vain to get one of petsen’s extra computers working. I wasn’t too keen on a computer myself, I figured I should try a more social approach to this meeting - although I’m not sure how successful that was, so I settled myself behind \DC. After some hours there was a mass gathering towards the pizza place next door, we got some 10% off deal there and I guess most of us ordered something. I split an extra large pizza with \DC, but we had no idea just how large that was going to be, we barely managed to finish half of it. Later in the night I was standing in the hallway when insane guy and Moises were on their way out to smoke some marijuana and asked if I wanted to join in. I’ve wanted to try it out for quite some time, so I gladly accepted. I think Luther joined in on it as well. I didn’t notice any effect at all and was sort of disappointed, but then again it was just a small joint shared between four people, and apparently you might not notice anything the first time you try it out. I can’t really remember much else happening the rest of Friday, I think it was a bit uneventful, at least it was for me. Got a call from Thanatos, he was on his way down with the train, and we managed to sort of some transportation for him. I’m not sure about all the details, but if I remember right he was picked up by Spetzler and they somehow ended up at a club or something. Went to bed at around 03:00, was pretty tired that day from everything that had happened earlier and fell asleep rather quickly.

Woke up 11:00-12:00 I think on Saturday, aching just about everywhere from sleeping on the stone floor in the hallway with only my sleeping bag acting as some sort of matress. Apart from that, I generally felt a bit more fresh and primed for action this day. Thanatos had arrived during the night, so nice to meet him finally. People went out to play soccer, which I didn’t have too much interest in participating in, seeing as there were no showers available and I didn’t feel like going around sweaty all the weekend. I think this was more or less the only time I played any Elma during the meeting, I sat down at enil’s computer and played around a bit on the DEM Cup levels that were released on Friday for an hour or two. After that, the 1 hour totaltime battle started when everybody got back from the soccer game. After pretty much giving up on breathing life into the two computers petsen brought along, Luther managed to borrow MonzterMan’s computer while he went home to sleep. I sat down besides him and watched him play the 1 hour totaltime battle, until he gave up halfway or something and started höyling Uphill Battle. I think I watched him play that for several hours all together, going down from 20.6x to 20.2x or something I believe.

Beer was consumed, and after a while the beer battle was about to start. Although I salute petsen for trying something new with beer battle, it was a really horrible concept which I still don’t quite understand. Instead of the “normal” FEM standard where you play 20 minutes, and have 10 minutes or whatever to drink up before the next battle starts, you had six attempts to finish a level, and if you died you had to take a sip or something. Then if you get beaten later on by somebody else you had to drink as well I think, I can’t really remember any details. Either way, I wasn’t participating so I couldn’t care less. After a while I guess I started to get pretty drunk, as there is a sudden lapse of time half way into the beer battle, where I went out and smoked some hashish, which I’ve also wanted to try out, together with insane guy, Luther and Moises (I guess). I can’t actually remember doing it, but seeing as my next memory is standing behind petsen together with Luther and laughing hysterically at his playing, I guess I did. I remember having a laughter attack, looking at Luther who also started laughing, hence making me laugh even more. Apparently I was a bit rude with my comments to someone, sorry for that, whoever I said it too :P. Later on in the night, the power suddenly went off and they didn’t have the key to the room with the fuse box, so no more Elma that Saturday. I think it helped a bit with the socializing, the next memory I have is sitting in a circle with the other guys in the hallway and talking shit, then eventually standing up and going straight to sleep all of a sudden.

Sunday, woke up god knows when. People started leaving pretty early, and the power didn’t get back on until most of us had left. petsen tried to initiate some cleaning, which took some time to get into effect. After that I guess there was some Family Guy being watched on the big screen and some small talk until it was time to leave. It was quite a puzzle to fit petsen, \DC, Luther, Thanatos, me and petsen’s friend into his car, complete with baggage and computers, it ended up being somewhat crowded you can say. Luckily the trip wasn’t too long, it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable ride in my life. Stopped at some McDonalds half way to eat something, my stomach wasn’t in the best moods this day so I could barely get anything down at all. Then it was off to petsen’s apartment in Ã…rhus, where we were lucky enough to be able to sleep over one day. \DC and Luther were well on their way to getting wasted already, and eventually petsen’s room mate had to go to sleep and we had to be somewhat quiet, something that \DC and Luther had some trouble understanding. I think petsen got pretty frustrated after a while, having to say “shut the fuck up” every minute or so. I guess the night culminated when \DC was going to take a bath and Luther ended up joining him, it was quite a sight seeing them naked together in the bath tub with the rubber ducky.

Some time during the night we all went out to buy some food at a nearby gas station. Now, petsen lives in the most ghetto place I’ve ever seen, so it wasn’t really that much of a surprise that after just a few seconds of getting outside there were some people in a car that tried to start something with us. Luther was quite uncontrollable at this point, so he kind of took the bait when they started saying lots of shit to him, and did his whole want-a-piece-of-me? attitude, but we managed to get him to move along. It wasn’t much more of a surprise that they drove after us and stopped us at every junction they could, luckily nothing happened. The trip back from the gas station to the apartment was quite an adventure as well, it’s hard to put it into words, but to summarize: Luther, drunk, pants down, falling into a bush, ketchup everywhere. Back to the apartment, and petsen tried to get some sleep, with \DC and Luther still not being able to shut up. Eventually everybody went to sleep - or rather Luther finally passed out so it was possible to rest assured that nothing else would happen :P. I tried to sleep on the shorter sofa available, which turned out to be rather impossible, I would probably have woken up with a broken neck if I had fallen asleep there. Couldn’t help but laugh when Luther started snoring quite loudly, and \DC following in his foot steps when Luther inhaled, so they formed a sort of two-toned snoring choir. And that was it for Sunday.

Monday morning, woke up around 11:00. We had checked out some train schedules the night before, and we had a few options, but decided to leave fairly early in order to be sure we catched our boat home. petsen called us a cab, then left us with the key. We left right after him, for a 10-15 minute cab ride down to the train station. Ate some food at a restaurant in the station hall, we had about an hour before our train was leaving. There wasn’t much space on the train, and we ended up in the first class train car without realising it at first. Luckily we managed to hoax the conductor into letting us stay there, it really made the trip a lot better. Had to change trains in… god knows where, no first class car there but at least we found some space. Arrived safely back in Fredrikshavn around 17:30ish, with plenty of time to spare. Gathered some shopping carts that were left behind on the station, put our bagged into those and wheeled our way down to the harbor.

When we arrived to check in and get our tickets, we noticed that Luther’s boat was cancelled, so he got stuck there and had to wait a few more hours before he could get home. Kept him company as long as we could, then went on board and found our cabin. The first on our minds was probably a shower, and what an uplifting and cleansing shower it was. Four days without a shower is really stretching it. An hour or two later, we went to the bar and relaxed a bit with a few beers. After some 8 or 10 my memory is somewhat hazy, I’m not exactly too tolerant with alcohol. Discussed this and that, movies, life and whatnot. Then suddenly I have a memory of ordering some drinks in the bar and telling the bartender to surprise us and ending up pestering him to put more alcohol into them or something. Can’t really remember much more than that from the night. Woke up feeling fairly ok the next day, considering last night’s drinkage. We took a cab to the train station in Oslo where we said good bye to Thanatos, he still had about 7 hours worth of train ride back to Bergen, poor guy. Then followed \DC to the bus terminal and said good bye to him as well, then finally I was on my way home, at last. Right outside my apartment, the alcohol from last night somehow kicked back in and I felt really drunk again, even though that was not the case earlier when waking up. Ended up actually walking straight into a lamp post, which was a bit embarassing with lots of people around. The trip really drained me of energy, even after two days I was still completely exhausted.

That was it basically. It was a nice experience for sure, even considering everything that went wrong with the trip. Huge thanks to petsen for letting us stay at his place, and putting up with \DC and Luther’s mongoing that night. Also a big kiss to the train conductor that let us stay in first class.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 13:49 and is filed under Computers, Memorable, Social, Elma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.