Dreamhack '98
                                    -
              Party of the Year (no thanks to organizers)


Pre-words?

        I just had to write this party report. You know (I truly
wish you know), there are parties and parties but sometimes a
party remains in your memories as something special. I'm keen to
believe that I will remember Dreamhack '98 after a long time very
well - in a positive way. This report is only my point of view
and I've surely already forgotten something because so many
things happened during the party. But let's get now into the
business...


Going to the party:

        I started my party trip early in the thursdaymorning. I
had to drive all across Finland 'cause I live quite near Russia
in Eastern Finland (and Sweden, where Dreamhack was held is west
from Finland - in case you didn't know). My first stop was at
Kouvola after 350 km of driving where I was supposed to fetch
Virne / COMA. When I arrived there he was still compiling his
intro for the party and I was a bit worried about being late for
our schedule. After hitting the road again the weather started to
get ugly and near Helsinki (the capital of Finland, you
uncivilized morons! :) it was raining so hard that we had to
drive almost crawling speed in the motorway.

        In Helsinki we were still late and had some fearsome
minutes in the railwaystation where we had to catch Duet /
Embassy but didn't see the man anywhere. Luckily we found him. We
also fetched SolarC / Refinition in western part of Helsinki.
After that we drove to Turku and got there actually half an hour
before our ferry (m/s Isabella) left the harbour. Lemming /
Orange who was the last man coming to our car had already come
there by train.

        In the ferry we did the most reasonable thing that one
could do by going to the Tax-Free shop. But at the pay-desk the
terrible truth stroke us. One had to be over 20 years old to buy
beer! Oh, we were disappointed and angry. I think Virne was not
satisfied as well because he was the only one in our car being
over 20 and that fact lead to another one: He had to buy
everything to us others. Sometimes it's just too mean to be so
young.

        The others stayed in the cabin when I, Virne and Lemming
decided to go to the bar. After drinking a beer or two and
watching awful Irish dancers (no offence, you Irish ones) Virne
left to cabin as well. One funny thing in that was that I and
Lemming were the only one having a driving license and also the
only one deciding to continue partying... But after three 58
years old women sit into our table and tried to seduce us we
considered leaving the bar as a very good option. :) We headed
upstairs into disco inferno. There were loads of under 18 years
old sweet teens and some older guys trying to ruin their night.
In some point the organizers drove all the people away because
there was so many under-aged, I think. A rather good gesture,
which got us to go into cabin before we were too drunk (to drive
next day).

        In the morning we had to wake up definitely too early.
The ferry arrived 6.45 am. at Stockholm and we had still 250 km
left to drive to Borl„nge, where the party was held. You know,
Stockholm is quite a big city and I've had my driving license
just a year so it wasn't too comfortable to drive there for the
first time. We got lost at first and wandered at the wrong
direction. After finding the right path and heading back to the
centrum it was already rush hour and I think we could have
travelled faster by walking through the city than we did in the
endless line of cars.

        Our next stop was at Uppsala, which is Sweden's most
popular student city, I think. It was still quite early and
finding a decent place where we could eat wasn't an easy job.
(Actually only place opening at 9 am. was McDonalds :) We ended
up going to a grocery store and buying some breakfast there.
After a rather messy moment with our cheese, pastes and crispy
breads we cleared our minds in a local cathedral which is
more or less indescribable in many ways. You have to experience
it yourself. (Like trying to translate our party slogan into
English: It was cool - and we dig everything which is cool).


The very first day:

        We arrived Borl„nge early in the afternoon. The other
Finnish sceners were already there waiting for us. We listened to
some 70's porno funk and disco (Saturday Night Fever and Bee
Gees) and had our own little party outside the party hall.
Nothing special happened but as it was getting darker the
temperature of the air lowered quite rapidly. But getting in
wasn't an easy job anymore while we all were more or less under
influence of alcohol. The organizers weren't too friendly as
well, they throwed eg. Duet out to the cold with only t-shirt on.
But for some reason they also thought that I was sober and let me
in. We did some research with Virne and some secret back door
passages and elevators which were not locked. It wasn't too hard
to find a way to one of the back doors and open it for all the
others. It was just too bad that the alarm went on while our
little rescue trip. :) The guys had found some key which perhaps
something to do with the alarm, I don't know how we had activated
it actually. The last room before the party hall was sleeping
hall but just when we came to there a door opened and an
organizer also walked in sleeping room. Others pretended
sleeping, I just escaped to the party hall and crawled under a
table for watching some demos on the screen.

        In some point I saw Thor / TPOLM and joined his company
but soon the organizers found me and took me to the separate
space where almost all the other Finns were already. We were told
that we couldn't leave this place until tomorrow or all of us
would have been kicked out. Okay, we stayed in our little
Funky-Jail for that night and continued partying there. Damaq /
Doomsday was throwing up blood but explained that there was
nothing to worry about...


Saturday Night Fever:

        I woke up in a terrible nausea, I just wonder why. Well,
the others left to the city at the morning and continued against
my headache and throwing reactions. In some point I met Beathawk
and we basicly hang around all the day together. At 9 am. the 4ch
music competition started. It was nothing else but crap.
Beathawk's song was played, SolarC's not. He went to the
organizers to complain about it directly and I went to bathroom
because of my nausea. When coming back I heard that the
multichannel music compo had started and they were playing my
module. Cool! But what the fuck? Wasn't it playing all wrong?
What was that shit coming out of the loudspeakers?!? Then I
knew the reason: They were playing the modules with Gravis
Ultrasound with hardware mixing. Fucking idiots! They had 2Mb
size limit in the compo and they were playing the modules only
with 1Mb of RAM. I complained about it and the organizers just
said: "Oh, we didn't realize that, we're sorry." Well, my only
consolation was that there were some about five other modules
which were fucked up as well. :)

        Being a bit upset because of the lame music compos we
just sat in the cafeteria and waited for the intro compo which
started at 1 pm. The competition was late but it finally started
- with Bel Wazoo which Psychic Symphony had given to me for to
deliver to the party. The intro was accidentally shown under the
name of Acid Rain, I hope PS wont kill me because of that.. The
second intro was something cool, Bird-cage by Jamm R. But the
organizers had fucked up again and the projector had so slim
contrast and blurry picture that one couldn't see the intro well.
In overall there were only five intros and only Jamm's intro was
decent. A really lame compo, again.

        Then after a couple of hours it was time for the demo
compos. The organizers tried to fix the problem with big screen
but the picture didn't get any better. Only three Amiga demos
were shown, nothing special in that compo, in PC demo compo the
first entry was Keskeytetty Yhdynta by Damones and it was
actually quite funny. Then a couple of crap demos and Doomsday's
Off. I really liked Doomsday's demo though Damaq didn't like it
at all.. A very good fairwell demo at least, it's just a shame
they are quitting now the scene.

        After the compos we started to get quite wild again spent
some time in our funky jail (voluntarily!). There were some
swedish girls having Helloween party. Real cute ones actually..
There were some Jussi Bj”rling show (striptease dancing) in the
city, I don't know if someone went there or not, 'cause I got
quite tired in some point and had got cold last night. We made
few little notes reading "HiRMU will get you!" and "Vote for us or
we will kill you!" and wandered in the party hall spreading these
notes and trying to make people understand which contributions
were worth of voting. It didn't work well, most of the people
didn't even have a votekey. Heck, what you can expect from a 1800
people party where 20% tops is going to vote? Well, I got really
tired and went to a real sleeping hall this time to get some
rest.


Sunday, heading back to home:

        In the morning all the people were lost. Some of them
were in the funky jail and nothing happened. McGurk / COMA had
made several paper birds and had gave some of them to the female
organizers. I tried to make one of those myself and succeeded
after 20 minutes of hard wrestling with my fingers and brains. I
just wonder how boring McGurk and others must have had, if they
made tiny paper birds all night long. :)

        When the prize ceremony finally began (late as usual) we
had gathered all our noisy people near to the stage having all
kind of wicked plans. Damaq wasn't feeling very well and had one
McDonalds bag in his hands ready to puke in it, but in the plan
we thought how neat it would've been if he had puked in the stage
while picking the prize. (Well, he didn't puke at all, if I
remember right...) It went actually quite well with us. Both
Beathawk's tunes weren't in top three, but I got second prize.
When Virne left to pick Jamm's prize we all followed him dancing
and playing 70's disco funk as loud as we could with our little
casette player. When Embassy won the Amiga demo competition, we
did the same again. And when Doomsday won the PC demo competition
we all jumped to the stage and started to.. striptease! Well, we
throwed only our t-shirts off, but the feeling was wild and the
audience liked our little show, I think. A rather decent feeling,
yes. :)

        Damaq was a bit disappointed. He didn't got any money but
a P2 computer. So right after the prize ceremonies we got back on
the stage and had our own auction. We borrowed organizers
microphone so we could play our funk from the big loudspekers and
attract people better (Lemming has a real talent as a salesman).
Some guys who had won some network stuff sponsored by Cisco
Systems tried to get rid of them as well.

        Finally the party was over and we were ready to head back
Stockholm. Nothing special happened during the trip back there,
we got lost only four times if I recall right. :) When we had got
inside the ferry we all were tired, shitty and had our own kind
of after-party feelings. We (I, Lemming, Virne and Razorback /
Doomsday) decided to go sauna. And what a brilliant choice:
Hardly no one else was in the sauna (there's always someone if
there are Finns on board), warm bubble bath was there just for us
and when we had bought cold ciders and sat in the bath feeling
heavenly relaxed and good, I think there couldn't be any better
way to be. Afterward, feeling faint and still good, we considered
having something to eat a necessity that we couldn't miss. We ate
in a Bar-B-Que restaurant chicken and beefs, drank some wine and
ordered some cappucino afterwards feeling very different from
what we had been a couple of last days. And then there's five
guys sitting next to us and talking about Quake!

        I was once again too tired and next morning my cold had
gotten just worse. Driving back to home through the Finland
wasn't an easy job. Especially the last 350 kilometers without
any company, feeling tired again, driving in the dark and so on..
Just imagine. But at last, late in the monday evening I was home,
having probably the best party of the year behind.

melwyn/acid rain