We started from the Lofoten Islands on Saturday 11th in the evening. The boat we travelled with to Trondheim was one of the oldest Coastliners, and the cabins were as small as Erik Solheim's brain (applies only to Norwegians). There were 2 showers for us to use - unfortunately they were both dirty and clogged. After almost two days of us having to withstand Brainbug's puke and noTch11's immense boozing, we finally arrived at Trondheim harbour. With our greasy hair and the intense smell in the stuffed car, we moved on. There were only some 500 kilometres left. Our first pit stop was at a Shell station, then we moved on to a Motel close to the partyplace. The Motel rooms were kind of crazy-built; probably adapted to Japanese people. We arrived there mid-day on Monday, and had almost two days to kill before the party. We didn't meet any other freaks the days before the party, but we met a lot of cute girls in Oslo - and two confuzed danes asked where they could buy champagne and wine... Hehehe... in Norway all booze-shops close early due to the SSM (Socialist State Monopoly)! On the first day of the party, we got up some time between 06:00 and 15:00 and travelled a few kilometres on the icy roads. (Who said Southern Norway is any warmer than the beautiful North? ... Ok, the roads weren't icy at all.) There was a tremendous queue at the partyplace, and after waiting for approx. 10 cans of coke, we finally could enter our handles etc. into the sophisticated database (3 computers had been set up for this particular event). The hall itself was - shall we say huge - and there was a Coke stand at the entrance. In the main entrance there was a cafeteria. Crusaders/Deadline said in the invitations that you could get everything here, including a decent breakfast. Well, we could have pizza, small breads with ham and cheese, pizza, beverages (coke) and of course also pizza. The toilets... were o.k. - although they were out of paper at the end of the party... I wouldn't say they gave a new meaning to the word "disgusting" (like the Amega party in Porsgrunn last summer), but a cleaner could have been hired. When it comes to the showers, I would have appreciated some hot water... It was o.k. in the beginning - but after 2-3 days, one could ice-bath in the showers. There were however a lot of showers, and no one had to walk around smelling like a horse for five days. (Like the invitation said!) ... That is for those who enjoy the cold water... The first day of the party, many so-called "local lamers" showed up - but as time passed, more and more people from the scene arrived. We chatted, and did all the things one normally does at a party. The diskthrowing competition was crazy! People threw disks and pizza cartons etc. around the whole place. On the 4th day of the party, everybody (well, almost everybody) were waiting for the main event... The competitions! We were supposed to begin voting at 1400 hours on Saturday, but the deadline was moved and moved... And playing the music, showing the pictures and the demos took quite a while, so we didn't vote until early Sunday. The voting system was kind of weird; you could only vote for one in each category. I can understand this when it comes to the music competition, because there were only a few tunes of the "top ten" that deserved a vote. I don't know how the jury was put together, maybe the drunken girls at the party had picked half of the tunes in the "top ten". Tunes from Heatbeat/Carillion, Anders Hamre, Brainbug/Alcatraz, Mr. Man, Headx or Lord Interface - all three members of Andromeda - were not played. Instead the "jury" had picked some techno-crap, and a few nice tunes - from i.e. Jester/Sanity and Lizardking/Strange. The funny thing is that the techno tune "Gin" won the whole competition! I'm looking forward to get an explaination from Crusaders and Deadline about the jury system - they did not want to give one at the party! As for the gfx competition, we didn't get to see the different pictures on a decent screen (like the invitation said) - so we had to vote without having seen the pictures clearly. However, the winning picture "Beauty and the Beast" from Equinox was very nice. Demos! There were a lot of them, and the DOS demo from Andromeda had quite a lot of new ideas in it, but Spaceballs had created a quite cool demo which won. Andromeda's demo ended on 2nd place. There were many cool demos, but these two were the better ones. After the voting, people started to pack their stuff. It took hours before the organizers announced the winners. We had left before the winners were announced... But all in all this was a great party - and Crusaders/Deadline did a quite nice job. Some things could've been handled in another way, but then: Nobody is perfect! Our voyage home was terribly boring; after only about 10 hours of sleep during the five days, we were dead tired...