Before anyone says I should be enjoyng the con I should first point out I've had a very long day and will be going to sleep shortly after writing this. As I've mentioned previously, I woke up at 3:30am before setting of around 4:30am. I was panicing cos we should leave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport and I didn't want any complications. I needn't have worried, despite some issues with the long term parking closing the zone they directed us to we got to the airport with plenty of time, the check in lines for Air Berlin were non-existant and the lines for security were really short.
The flight itself was on time and had no problems other than with a baby who wouldn't shut up in the row in front. Needless to say that was rectified with the use of noise cancelling headphones as soon as we were high enough to use electronic devices. Was very pleased with the service considering we had no lines as mentoned previously, and the food and drinks on the flight were free. On the other side, we grouped up with the other furs who were getting the train and hung around the main train station before our flight, passing the time with Currywurst and gummi sweets and making use of the "McClean" toilets :P
I'd like to say the train journey was uneventful but after making the first connection to what should have been our second and final train, we ended up in a place called Bad Kissingen, the end of the line. What happened was that we were on the wrong half of the train and it split at some point with us in the wrong section resulting in us ending up in the wrong place. Fortunately, there was someone at the station who could speak english and he gave us instructions on how to get back to Suhl but it did mean we had to wait around for a further 40 mins before getting the train to Elfershausen which was a totally deserted station before waiting a further 40 minutes before getting the Erfurt train to Suhl. By an amazing stroke of luck, we ended up in the same carriage as Furble, Thalyi and co so we spent the rest of the journey with them.
On arrival to Suhl, the first thing I realised was how picturesque the place was. The taxi drive up the hotel gave us a good view of the scenery and the heavily forrested area. Got registered and checked in pretty easily before dumping our gear in the hotel and heading for the BBQ, which was in summary, awesome. Absolutely delicious sausages, burgers and other great stuff including endless free beer, certainly worth the €12 we paid for it. It was also a great place to bump into furs and socialise with folks I havn't seen in ages. Took a lot of photos over the course of the evening before my crappy batteries gave up (really need to get some working rechargables).
At around 10pm we were informed of some "news" by Uncle Kage of a zombie breakout (keeping in with the horror theme of the con) before a bunch of people dressed in halloween attire broke out and started turning people into zombies by handing out zombie tags. I got tagged twice but ended up without a tag as mine were nicked :P Those who were tagged were asked to walk around pretending to be zombies and if they were given extra cards they could infect others. The outcome of this is yet to be exlained but from what happened at EF12, there will be similar story theming throughout until something on the last day. While all this was going on, Arakin was practising for his skit with Colifox and others so once he was done, we decided to call it a night and write up the day on LJ.
I'd love to use the photos I took to accompany our journey but I didn't bring the Fuji cable needed (not a generic mini-USB annoyingly) nor an XD card reader so those will have to wait until I get back to the UK. Tomorrow we'll be taking advantage of an early breakfast before maybe hitting the pool and heading into town for some supplies. Anyway, bed now... bye!
The flight itself was on time and had no problems other than with a baby who wouldn't shut up in the row in front. Needless to say that was rectified with the use of noise cancelling headphones as soon as we were high enough to use electronic devices. Was very pleased with the service considering we had no lines as mentoned previously, and the food and drinks on the flight were free. On the other side, we grouped up with the other furs who were getting the train and hung around the main train station before our flight, passing the time with Currywurst and gummi sweets and making use of the "McClean" toilets :P
I'd like to say the train journey was uneventful but after making the first connection to what should have been our second and final train, we ended up in a place called Bad Kissingen, the end of the line. What happened was that we were on the wrong half of the train and it split at some point with us in the wrong section resulting in us ending up in the wrong place. Fortunately, there was someone at the station who could speak english and he gave us instructions on how to get back to Suhl but it did mean we had to wait around for a further 40 mins before getting the train to Elfershausen which was a totally deserted station before waiting a further 40 minutes before getting the Erfurt train to Suhl. By an amazing stroke of luck, we ended up in the same carriage as Furble, Thalyi and co so we spent the rest of the journey with them.
On arrival to Suhl, the first thing I realised was how picturesque the place was. The taxi drive up the hotel gave us a good view of the scenery and the heavily forrested area. Got registered and checked in pretty easily before dumping our gear in the hotel and heading for the BBQ, which was in summary, awesome. Absolutely delicious sausages, burgers and other great stuff including endless free beer, certainly worth the €12 we paid for it. It was also a great place to bump into furs and socialise with folks I havn't seen in ages. Took a lot of photos over the course of the evening before my crappy batteries gave up (really need to get some working rechargables).
At around 10pm we were informed of some "news" by Uncle Kage of a zombie breakout (keeping in with the horror theme of the con) before a bunch of people dressed in halloween attire broke out and started turning people into zombies by handing out zombie tags. I got tagged twice but ended up without a tag as mine were nicked :P Those who were tagged were asked to walk around pretending to be zombies and if they were given extra cards they could infect others. The outcome of this is yet to be exlained but from what happened at EF12, there will be similar story theming throughout until something on the last day. While all this was going on, Arakin was practising for his skit with Colifox and others so once he was done, we decided to call it a night and write up the day on LJ.
I'd love to use the photos I took to accompany our journey but I didn't bring the Fuji cable needed (not a generic mini-USB annoyingly) nor an XD card reader so those will have to wait until I get back to the UK. Tomorrow we'll be taking advantage of an early breakfast before maybe hitting the pool and heading into town for some supplies. Anyway, bed now... bye!