Fanfest 2017 Diary/AAR

[Kyle Hargrove]

By request of some WHC member, and because "why the hell not", here with my personal Fanfest 2017 diary. Every attendee and non-attendee... Feel free to contribute your perspectives!

April 1st 2017 (sorry, few pics today)

I wake up at my family's house in Venice at 10AM. I haven't been there since almost three months, and it's been a hell of a week. I slept 11 straight hours and I yet don't feel rested, nor I feel like I'm on holiday.

It's probably been the toughest week in these 23 years in which I walked this Earth. This week, I delivered many things. I proved I'm able to push above my weight, but yet... I also fell short on some of my other duties.

I'm uneasy to say the least. After a Friday that was packed with spiralling negative thoughts and tiredness, this Saturday still feels tense, even though it's definitely not as bad as yesterday.

Two songs still ring in my head. Sigur Rós. Gobbledigook and Olsen Olsen. Ironically enough, I'm also carrying a paper by Johan Olsen in my bag.

Vindur í hárinu...

I take a shower, dry my hair, go through all my luggage again. Do I have appropriate clothes? Did I bring my 3DS to let Titus stomp me at Pokèmon? Did I grab my camera? What about my audio gear? All seems to be there.

At 11:40 I leave home to go to the Marco Polo airport. It's a beautiful spring day in Venice, and I try to catch every breath of my hometown while I walk to the airport bus. My mom decided to walk to the bus with me. I appreciate the kindness. I wave goodbye, and I hop on the bus.

Marco Polo is busy as usual. I go through security, familiar faces. I sit in the waiting lounge, reading Herbert Simon. I'm on holiday, but I can't ignore my studies. I already procrastinated too much. They read beautifully. So sophisticated, yet so clear. It's all ingrained in our minds, our culture, our collective consciousness.

I wave goodbye to Venice as my flight leaves to Amsterdam. You can't see the decadence of the ol' Venice from above, yet you can see the imposing beauty of the lagoon. I contemplate for a while how tourists must see my hometown, and then I think that it's quite the same for me when I visit Iceland.

On the plane, I finish reading Simon, then Olsen and March. The paper has an appendix with some code in Fortran. Who even codes in Fortran? Guess many people did in 1972. The paper talks about universities. Can't escape. I smile at destiny's irony, and read on. My mind starts drifting at next Saturday's Alliance Debate. Again, universities.

I finish my read, take a few minutes to eat the KLM mini-lunch, then go full "screw it" mode and I start playing some Zelda. The flight is shorter than I remember, though, and I land even before I'm able to find that last damn shrine.

Schiphol is my comfort airport. If I had to be stuck in an airport, I'd choose Schiphol. And that's what I did. 5 hours transfer. I can't move swiftly with my two luggages, so I ask Tylenos, with which I had arranged to meet, to catch me up there. As I walk in the airport's plaza, I'm overwhelmed by feelings. I'm in Amsterdam. I'm on holiday, maybe. Or not.

I meet with Tylenos for a beer. An hour and a half flies by. We talk life, we talk science, we talk internet spaceships. I start to feel a bit more like I'm on holiday at last. During our conversation, I ask him to sign my EVE notebook, and I tell him that I'll ask everybody to do the same. He signs. We talk a bit more, then he has to leave. I start feeling more at ease, worries being put aside, but I still have more than two hours before boarding.

I sit on the departure hall waiting for check-in to open. As soon as it does, I drop my clothes luggage and win 40€ extra fare because my smaller luggage doesn't fit in the box. Meh, whatever. Looks like I have some recursive packing ahead of me on the way back. I get some food at the Albert Heijn supermarket, and wonder why we don't have that goodness in Italy. Security is slow, and my camera is too druggy for Dutch standard, so it gets checked. I navigate through the Schiphol halls for 15 minutes, then finally find my gate. I sit and eat some surprisingly decent bread stuffed with surprisingly decent cheese and surprisingly bad salami.

I get on the flight. Sitting aside me, two beautiful asian ladies that unfortunately fall asleep within one minute of sitting. There goes my chance for conversation. I resolve to imitate them, and fall asleep for an hour-ish, then wake up, play some more Zelda. I can't resist waking the sleeping beauties, so I kindly ask to go to the toilet. They grumpily wake up, let me go through, fall asleep again, thus leading to me waking them up once more on my way back from the lavatory. That's what you get for not wanting to talk.

Lights off, we start our landing in Keflavik. The sky looks oddly bright, and I realize that's the Northern Lights. I mentally "wow". We go through a snowstorm while we're approaching the ground, and within one minute we're out of it. Yup: Iceland. We touch ground, and the stewards announce "Welcome to Iceland". My heart sinks. I'm indeed in Iceland.

I get off the plane and outside the airport. I catch a deep lungful of air and tears get to my eyes, and not because of the cold. Iceland will always feel like kind of my promised land. I climb on the Flybus to Reykjavik, and I can't help but be amazed at how tourism is organised in Iceland: it will always surprise me. I switch from the bus to the minivan at the Reykjavik bus terminal, and I start getting Slack messages from Titus. Apparently it's 2AM our local time, and it's quite late. Ultimately, the bus, driven by an amazing middle-aged Icelander, drops me in Hotel Klöpp. I walk up to my shared room, where Titus doesn't look as tired as he was depicting, and chatty as usual. Room's definitely a "premium single room" which has been retrofitted as a double. I contemplate complaining tomorrow morning.

I wish good night to Titus and finish today's writeup. 3:30 AM CET. Yup. Sounds like I'm on holiday.

[Titus Tallang]

I sit at breakfast with orange juice and tea while cursing eating too much yesterday. Kyle is still asleep. I didn't get much uninterrupted sleep last night, and I'm also still figuring out how to find a balance between the radiator scorching our room and the icelandic cold outside. Yet still, I somehow feel awake and ready for more. Iceland does that to me. The weather out the window is rainy and windy. I might get up and grab some actual food in a bit. Once I'm done typing here.

PS: Room is really a bit small for a double. My singles the last two years were about this size. I'll let Kyle complain, he seems to have more experience with that. (Ha, ha.)

PPS: Why do Icelanders serve all drinks iced?

PPPS: The bedsprings are so incredibly bouncy they'll take some getting used to.

[Raido Kudonen]

PPPS: The bedsprings are so incredibly bouncy they'll take some getting used to.

Now wondering what people in the next room think you're up to...

[Titus Tallang]

Nah, but we have a single large mattress, so every time one guy moves the other side gets a small jolt. (Ha, ha.) Hotel staff promised we're getting separate single mattresses tomorrow. Yay.

Also, I'm developing a cold. Blegh.

[Kyle Hargrove]

April 2nd 2017 (shorter today)

Today is my mom's birthday. She was kind of annoyed that I would spend that day in Iceland rather than home, but alas. My otherwise non-negotiable 8 hours of sleep get interrupted numerous times by the room's temperature. Apparently, we can't shut down the radiator in the room, which forces us to open the window to cool the room down. To be fair, up to now it's forcing Titus to do it, since he spent the night going back and forth in the vain attempt to adjust the room's temperature.

At 8:45 Titus leads Anducio to our room. I very sleepily say hi and point out to the fact that it is not 9 yet, and thus I still need at least 15 minutes before my 8 hours are over. Anducio drops his bags in our room and goes to have breakfast with Titus. I make the two gentlemen wait for some more minutes, then join them. Plans for today are apparently cancelled because of a severe weather warning, and a glance out of Hotel Klöpp's windows seems to confirm it.

We resolve to show Anducio around a bit. Dunar joins in, then we head to Harpa, where we get almost knocked off by the wind. Vindur ì hàrinu indeed. I can't help but think that it's a thing of beauty. In my mind, cold is always associated to things being still, and heat with stuff moving fast. Reminiscing basic thermodynamics too much? Not sure, yet that's how it is for me. Iceland, though, has a strange feel to it: all is so cold, and yet moves so fast.

We spend some time in the beautiful glass building, then head down the old harbour to Bryggjan Brugghus, aka "The bar underneath CCP", where we spend some time recovering from the wind and rain and snow having a beer. Bryggjan has a great atmosphere, and we resolve to wait there for Bates and Laura to show up. The brits appear, we get another drink and talk some more, then head out again in the bright Reykjavik cold to find a place to eat. Finally, we find the MAR restaurant and stay there for lunch. We have some good fish and good banter, then head back to our respective places. We're all dead tired for a reason or another, so we don't mind spending the afternoon relaxing while the elements rage out in the streets.

We catch up again with Bates and Laura for dinner, and this time we're also joined by Neonen, while Anducio and Dunar are out for a fancy dinner at a place I'd never be able to afford. Titus proposes to go to this nice Italian restaurant we found last year, and I'm happy to comply. Surprisingly enough, it's easier to get a very good Italian meal in Reykjavik than it is to get it in other places in Italy. Yes, you pay for it, but it's proper food. We spend some more time together, with me bantering in Italian with the restaurant's staff.

See, there's a level at which all Italians that engage in international contexts feels somewhat uneasy about being Italian. It's not that we're ashamed of our origins, but more that we know we're the mockingbirds of the rest of the world. That restaurant in Reykjavik is a strange leveling ground, though: me and the staff relish in our common origin and in being in such a beautiful place. We talk a bit about life, and the waitress sneaks me a note with two names for a couple of extra restaurant recommendations, which I surely don't mind. In this crazy year, I learned to be proud of being Italian. Might sound silly, but situations such as these are a good example of our national camaraderie.

Back at our hotel room, we call it a day. Maybe not the most eventful, I reckon, but one in which all the fuzz of the days before is just... gone, and I start to feel relaxed.

[Kyle Hargrove]

April 3rd 2017

To start from the beginning: Titus has a terrible alarm. No wonders he always seems to be in a bad mood: that thing is a good mood killer, trust me. We apparently figured out a way to balance heat and cold in our room, so we get a great night of plentiful sleep. What does not change, however, is the Icelandic weather. It's a mix of wind and rain, and Titus is out to fetch our rental car. Bold move. I take some time to have a shower, dry my hair, and eventually join Anducio at breakfast.

Me and Anducio chitchat a bit, until eventually a gentleman sitting aside us speaks up and turns out to be the good Knicpaw, who had just flown in from Canada. The brave man had not sleep for some 30 hours, and still had to wait until 14:00. Neonen and his mother join us shortly thereafter and eventually, Titus is back and we leave for our trip.

Shouldn't it have been obvious enough: Iceland has weird weather. We leave a windy, rainy Reykjavik to head into windier, slightly snowy lowlands, and then progressively snowier highlands. After missing our destination because (self-quote) "we can't miss it: there literally are two huge pylons on the side of the road going off the main one" (turns out I was thinking about another landmark), we eventually turn on our tracks and find our way to the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant.

Jefferson's car is already there, and the snow is getting stronger and stronger. I hug Jeff (missed the guy), greet Laura, Bates, Dunar and Jan and we get into the power plant, where we're asked for a hefty entrance fee. I tell myself it's for the greater good and comply, and the tour starts shortly thereafter. The guide is a tall, blonde and of course beautiful Icelandic girl around my age. I have to warn you though that, however, I shouldn't be commenting about the beauty of the lady, because that's very inappropriate and such an Italian thing to do, but I don't see the harm in stating the truth.

Anyway. Our guide starts the tour telling us that she's new, and our group (15 people) is the largest she ever had. I tell her that it's fine, and we're all energy engineers anyway. We all have a good laugh, and our guide probably does not realise how close to truth my statement is. We go for a quick tour of the exhibition area of the power plant, where the Germans get to complain about there not being enough technical stuff, and the rest of the crowd just listens in. We hang in the power plant for a while, and eventually leave for our next waypoint.

It's still snowing badly at this stage, but we're determined to move on. We advance to a hot springs area, not without several breaks for pictures on the way. Our world turns black and white, and it definitely smells like Iceland (read: sulfur). Snow starts getting less intense, and eventually we leave for another waypoint, which is another hot springs area. Weather starts getting nice for a change, and we get to see some sun. I realise sky can be blue in Iceland too, and resolve to enjoy a natural site without being blown off by wind and/or snow for a change.

That doesn't last for long, though, and we're soon back to horizontal snow, and in a strong blizzard form. We retreat to our cars, and go for the last waypoint: a bridge across tectonic plates. Surprisingly enough, we get some sunshine again once there, and I also happen to lose my camera's eyepiece. We spend some time there, then resolve to go back to Reykjavik.

I fall asleep on the car (happens all the times), and we're soon enough back in the capital. We fill some car rental paperwork, go back to our rooms, sort our crap, and set a meetup to the Nora's bar. Myself, Titus and Dunar stay back to run our scheduled Game Mechanics Q&A to which nobody shows up. Oh, well. At least we got to eating one of those delicious burgers in the restaurant-behind-the-bar place.

We meet up at Nora's and the Uni table is bigger than I expected. We're joined there by Rose, Kaein and Victyrael, plus Bairfhionn, Morphoze, Mhzentul (+ wife). Table size approaches 20 people once we also get CCP Logibro and Demitri Slavic of EVE_NT London joining us. I ask everyone to sign my EVE notebook, and I also get a bonus letter from a moderately drunk Victyrael. At 10PM, according to Titus "it's getting late", so we resolve to go back to Klöpp, where we'll meet for our next day of adventures tomorrow morning. Good news is that my alarm is supposed to go off two minutes before Titus'.

Oh, and we have pictures from today onwards. This is a public folder that all Fanfest attendees are free to contribute to (and they should!). Rules are simple: no personally-identifying pictures, and post in your own folder.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B028q ... EhDY0tWejg

[Croixant]

Keep it Going!

I'm vicariously enjoying the festivities thanks to the diary!

Have a nice beer for me (I know you can't find Dos Equis in Iceland)

Croix

[White 0rchid]

At least we got to eating one of those delicious burgers in the restaurant-behind-the-bar place.

This place is the best. See you tomorrow.

[Leela Cesaille]

Really enjoying hearing about your trip!

[Kermit Pental]

WTB drunken photos of Isu. I promise not to repost them in SSC slack. Honest...

[Djavin Novienta]

Please remember to describe in exacting detail the look on Titus' face when the election results come in.

[Kyle Hargrove]

April 4th 2017

I'm being told by the Germans that I'm always late, but after managing to dodge Titus' atrocious alarm through liberal application of "The Cloud" by Jim Guthrie, I'm breakfast'd and ready at the lobby of Hotel Klöpp way before the Germans show up, which they do with a three minutes delay (!!!). Dunar doesn't take the remark nicely and feels the need to slap me with a bag containing basic medical supplies. Cars are quickly sorted out, and our groups sets off with 13 people in total.

Plan of the day is to make use of the good weather by taking an extended "Golden Circle" tour, for which the first stop would be the Thingvellir National Park. We hop on the car, and I immediately realise the first mistake we made: we're doing the tour in the same direction as the Reykjavik Excursions buses. I tell myself that can't possibly end well, but I avoid commenting in public. One would hope that living in a touristic city would give me some insight on how touristic flows usually go, but of course you only realise that you can make use of your tourist-dodging superpowers after seeing the third RE bus.

I've always wondered why Icelanders felt the need to have a "Golden Circle" tour when the Thingvellir park would be already a great place to stop for one day, or possibly multiple days. We had been there last year, and caught a glimpse of a green Thingvellir, but today's vista was really something else. Yesterday's snowstorms have left space to an almost overcast sky, so we get to enjoy the National Park being buffeted by incredibly cold wind, but without horizontal snow/rain.

If someone asked me to draw a picture of England in the middle ages, and if I were able to draw, I'd probably draw the lowlands of Thingvellir. The church and monastery in the middle are what make the area even more beautiful to me, and I always wondered how it'd be to live there. We walk the three kilometers to Oxararfoss, then back to our cars with more than a handful of fingers (see what I did there?) coming off our collective hands for the cold. Next stop: Geysir.

The RE buses have just arrived, and apparently they're going straight for the visit, so we resolve to get some lunch while the masses are queuing up to see some pretty explosions. We take a long lunch break, where we also stumble upon the good Lotanis, together with his girlfriend. We keep bantering for a while, while Bates is providing commentary to a strange Icelandic wrestling sport where each fighter grabs his opponents by handles which are put on oversized underwear and tries to topple each other to the ground. I'm sure he'll be able to provide more information with excruciatingly high detail if you wish to know more.

We buzz around the Geysir park and let Jeff take pretty pictures of pretty explosions, and eventually fall back to the visitor centre once we're feeling too cold, where we stumble upon Mhzentul and his wife. We linger there a bit longer, then head off to Gullfoss. If that wasn't clear enough: I really don't understand why there is the need for Geysir and Gullfoss after Thingvellir. I mean, it's a geyser (arguably, "the" geyser) and a huge-arse waterfall, I get it, but... The three things are not even comparable, especially since there is just so much people in proportion with the site size in Geysir and Gullfoss.

We linger around Gullfoss for a while, and we're starting to feel pretty darn tired, but we have no less than two more stops on our way back. And this is when things get interesting. The first stop is an anonymous waterfall which, thanks to its anonymity, has zero other people aside from us on site. Plus, we also get to be able to walk really close to the waterfall proper, unlike Gullfoss, which had all scaffolding under restoration. I claim the picture tax, find the "interesting thingamajig of the day" to document (feel free to guess what it was, and what yesterday's was), and we leave for the last stop.

Sadly our last stop, the Kerid caldera, is not as empty as the waterfall we visited just before, and we're even required to pay an admission fee. This does not, however, subtract to the beauty of the place. The lake inside the caldera also looked particularly good with the balance between a side which was still snow-covered and a side in which the snow was melting, in favour of the classic Icelandic moss+grass combination. The wind starts blowing particularly strong when we're about to leave, and I can't help but stand in the windiest spot. I may have caught a cold, but that wind had something majestic to it, and it just "felt right".

We start to be really tired at this point, and we head back to Reykjavik. Titus and Jeff need to do some car delivery and reshuffling, and we are reached by Arimos and Falck, who join me, Titus, Anducio, Knic and Morphoze for dinner. We manage to find a table at a soup place which... I'll leave to the others to describe. Amazing. At roughly 23:00 local time, we start heading back with the plan of having a short walk, but end up ditching it when we realise it's just too damn cold for a change.

Also, usual folder is being updated :)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B028q ... EhDY0tWejg

[Kyle Hargrove]

April 5th 2017

Today shall be short.

We wake up reasonably late after yesterday's tour, except for Titus, who had to drop the car off. I catch up on some personal commitments, and at 9:30, Anducio correctly points out that the breakfast won't stay there forever. I rush out of my room and head to the breakfast hall, where I spot Defiler. The guy is here for his 10th (and probably last) Fanfest, despite not really playing EVE for the last three years, and is an awesome fella all in all. Mike Eventide joins shortly thereafter.

We gather up at the lobby and set of for a quick tour of the city. Everyone leaves, while I stay behind to book tomorrow's dinner. I catch up at Reykjavik's cathedral, where we take an elevator to the top of the bell tower and get almost literally blown off the tower due to the wind's strength. We head back to Klöpp's lobby while Arimos fetches his passport and then head off to Harpa to register for Fanfest. The amount of spaceship nerds around Reykjavik is increasing drastically, and we really start to feel the Fanfest hype. We hop at the monument, quick drink at Bryggjan, then off for a nice lunch together, where we fill a 16-seat table, and we're still missing some. Numbers are increasing.

The group dissolves a bit, with me, Anducio, Morphoze, Knicpaw, Arimos and Falck heading to the Pearl to check out the landmark. We walk a good half-hour and find the Pearl to be... under renovations. On our way back, we get to experience a new Icelandic weather type: vertical rain. I mean, exactly the kind of heavy rain you would expect. Which gets us soaked. Not too big of a deal, I reckon. A good shower, clothes swapping, and we're back on track. We start forming up for dinner, and we get Cristopher Nolm, White and Razorien also joining in.

Our first Uni dinner was great. Unfortunately, our German friends weren't able to join in, but we still got a great group around. Knicpaw, Morphoze, Anducio, Arimos, Mike, White, Lotanis, his girlfriend, myself, Falck, Titus, Razorien, Christopher, Mhezentul and his wife are all there, and we enjoy a good meal. We split up and set off for drinks, with myself, Raz, Titus, Chris, Arimos and Neonen going to the nice and cozy micro bar, where we'll also be joined by Lillik, and the rest of the group splitting up between Nora's (too loud for our taste) and the Tweetfleet gathering (WAY too loud for our taste). Drinks were had in a nice and cozy place, and ultimately we set back to go to sleep.

Tomorrow: Fanfest actually begins.

[Kyle Hargrove]

April 6th 2017

So, today Fanfest actually began... Or did it?

Skipping the breakfast-y part, we show up at Harpa at around 10:30 to find a huge queue o' nerds lined up to get their Fanfest badges. We soon catch up with Arkady Orlenard and Dennie Fleetfoot who's rocking, of course, a pretty darn solid EVE outfit. We idle there a bit, and I get the phone number of a nice Icelandic girl (details left to the others, if they wish to comment). Titus registers us for the PvP tournament, where we get a spot due to a bunch of no-shows, and we get to wait until 12:15 to be able to actually enter the floors where the Fanfest stuff is except... There isn't much Fanfest stuff going on.

The Kyonoke Inquest ARG event is going on, and it's looking pretty interesting. Except I need to go to the PvP room, and the Kyonoke thing is actually not so easy to hop in and off of, so I soon lose track on it. We get to the PvP room where the 2v2 tournament has been set up, and we are told about the format: 2v2, Gnosis only, 2 minutes to fit the ship with whatever is in the hangars (some T2 and meta stuff), 5 minutes to fight in a 50km radius arena. Let me tell you: it's not as easy as it sounds. We're not the first in the line, so we get some time to theorycraft. Titus is super eager to do that, and we settle for going HML kitey bullshit except... we notice that there's no missile ammo in the hangars while the others are running the rounds before us. We settle to go for blasters instead, and our turn starts.

I make a... decently good use of my time, and end up having a full fit, except for rigs and a wrong blaster (I get a meta4 instead of a T2, so they don't group). We're warped to the fighting arena, and start shooting the other party. I get primaried, and we manage to kill the first guy while I'm still in half armour, with my triple-bulkhead hull fully okay. We start shooting the other guy, get him to 20% armour, then I eventually pop. After a minute or so, Titus also pops, with our second opponent still being at 20% armour. Apparently, he forgot Drones and non-hug-range ammo and got kited to death. Welp.

It's 14:30 at this point, and there's literally nothing going on until 17:00. We buzz around the Kyonoke events, and at 15:45 some of us resolve to head off for a walk around the harbour. We head back to Harpa in time for the ceremony and the EVE Keynote.

If you have watched the stream, you probably know better than us what we got. A bunch of CCP Guard banter, then Hilmar Petursson's amazing retrospective speech. Hilmar's speeches are not usually "content", but I just find the guy to be a calming, motivational and genuine presence on stage. He's one person which I genuinely look up to, and definitely one of the high moments of the Fanfest experience to me. The EVE keynote starts soon thereafter, and I only have one comment: It's a great day to be Razorien.

Prettier pictures, prettier effect, prettier stars, huge events featuring neat explosions and nicely-arranged ships on the battlefield. I'm seriously considering joining him in his adventures and I'm not even joking one single bloody bit. Ah, and Razorien's pictures also got showed on the big stage three times. Mad props to him :)

Things start getting a bit more juicy towards the end, and CCP Seagull starts building up to a big announcement for Winter expansion. "It's just a teaser", she says, "but the winter expansion is all about content. And we're delivering content to an area of space which we have long forgotten" the picture behind her switches to a Drifer Nexus room, and I finally stop holding my breath. Here we go, a new hope for WSpace. Then the picture filps, and we get a picture of highsec. "Empire space", CCP Seagull finishes. All my excitement vanishes, and I tell myself that, indeed, space photography is going to be a pretty darn solid option, especially this year. We also get a couple of incredibly cool videos, but the volume is really too loud in Harpa to enjoy them fully.

Keynote's over, and we head off to dinner. Contrary to heretic beliefs, I would say we have had an amazing Uni dinner at a great place... probably not despite but thanks to Italian organization. Yes, such a thing exists.

We head back to our respective hotels and head to sleep... Tomorrow, day 2 of Fanfest, and hopefully we actually get some nerdy spaceships content.



ps: Where are the comments from the other people attending here? There's plenty of stuff I'm leaving out and that you folks could be filling in!

[marlinspike von Crendraven]

nice. I hope to be able to go to fanfest next year.