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EIL 2001
One of the best Atari coding parties that I personally had ever
been to (and I think CiH will agree with this, along with other
Atari sceners from around the scene) was the original Error In
Line party, held during the Easter of 1999. Good memories have
remained with me of that particular party ever since, with some
quite memorable incidents still being recalled even to this day.
I was pleased to hear about the second EIL, which was to run
during Easter 2001 (this year, at the time of writing this
article). The sense of excitement began to grow once the initial
announcement was made, a little while before Christmas 2000 and
the STNICCC party, which was held in the Netherlands as many
people will know.
The build-up and organisation of our travel plans started towards
the middle of February, with the booking of the now familiar
ferry that would take us from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. I
recall that we even got a discount on the trip cost this time due
to having been before, which was helpful as we had also got
booked up before the end of March, when the offer was due to
expire. We (CiH and I) had decided to go out in my Corsa again,
as it proved to be very reliable and quite comfortable during the
STNICCC visit. John Hayward, unfortunately, couldn't get as much
time off work as Chris and I had, so he ended up flying to
Dresden instead.
The weeks started to turn into days, with more organisation
falling into place. This was helped a great deal by Havoc, who
offered us the chance to sleep at his flat once again in
Enschede, as we had done during Easter 2000's trip to
SillyVenture in Poland.
This was going to be a legendary party, I thought - knowing that
I would be proved right whatever happened there. Easter also
started good for me in other ways as well, one of these reasons
was getting close to a member of the opposite sex at my church,
another was that Crash Test Dummies released a very unexpected (a
nd welcome!) new album! Listening to this at home and taping the
previous one for playing in the car on the journey across was
cool.
On the day we were due to sail out, I packed the car very tightly
with a lot of stuff, as well as both of our Falcons and monitors,
I also took my 2 RGB monitors with me, along with my SM124, which
was originally to be used in conjunction with Chris's STE, that
he also brought along with him for the realtime article. It
turned out in the end that the mono screen wasn't needed, so it
got left at Havoc's place until we were due to come back home
again after the party. I also took along my Playstation as well,
this was used a little during the party, for playing the Atari
Games compendium CD that I had picked up a while beforehand. I
also packed my new amplifier and speakers, along with my little
radio from work. This proved to be very useful, along with the
food we also brought along with us. Not forgetting the video
recorder and the choice of movies and other stuff I brought :)
Chris arrived in good time, parking his car in what is normally
my side of parking at home. We got his stuff loaded into the car,
after checking that we had everything we needed. Getting to
Harwich was no problem, apart from one dozy old fellow on a
roundabout close to Harwich, not indicating where the hell he was
intending on going and also driving very slowly at the same time.
He finally moved out of the way in the end and we were able to
get past him, but he seemed to be either half asleep or drunk the
way he was driving. We finally got to Harwich, getting a drink
at the bar there. After a little panic (where the ferry tickets
had for some reason got wound slightly around the glove box
and shelf underneath) we waited in the queue for getting onto the
jetty. Due to the foot-and-mouth crisis in the UK that had hit
the country since about February, we had to drive through a
disinfected mat - over this with no major problems and we got
onto the ferry itself a bit later on, after waiting in the main
waiting area for a bit.
Chris got into a panic here when he realised he hadn't brought
any multiplug adaptors with him. Fortunately I had packed a few
along with some UK to Euro plug adaptors, so we were sorted for
those. We got a nice hot drink here, pretty reasonably priced as
well and also changed our money here from pounds into guilders
and deutschmarks. During the course of the trip itself I didn't
spend much in Germany, so I ended up converting these into
guilders for the trip to Amsterdam, more of that towards the end
of this article :-)
As I say, we got onto the ferry in a little while, Chris got
himself some food from the McDonalds on board, while I decided to
go for the pizza-bar next door, which I think is extremely good
value for money. We got a good table in the main bar area and sat
watching the video wall play it's stuff, much like the average
output from MTV or VH1, but some good music videos were played,
which was a help here. The crossing itself was a little bit
rougher this time than previously - one thing we noticed when
trying to walk around on the ferry in the duty-free shop a little
later on, despite only having had a couple of cokes each, we both
felt slightly pissed while wandering around ! This wasn't long,
and we eventually got back to our seats and watched some more of
the music videos, getting drinks from the bar occasionally.
The ferry crossing itself wasn't too long, shortly after midnight
Dutch time (Continental time) we were disembarking off the ferry,
to be met by a number of Customs officers, who were in the
process of confiscating any/all food they could find from all
Brits who had come over. We gave up a couple of packets of
biscuits here, which they seemed happy with. For those of you who
weren't aware, this was because of the foot-and-mouth crisis in
England as I wrote earlier on. (We did hear, at EIL, how the
mighty Reservoir Gods managed to avoid having any food taken off
them though!)
Out on the road, heading towards Rotterdam (no storm this time!)
we made our way towards the city of Enschede, where, in the year
since we had been to Poland, had had a nasty occurence there back
in May of 2000, in the form of a big fireworks factory explosion.
We were pleased to see that most of the city itself was still
standing, but the area around (close to Havoc's flat) where the
explosion had been was looking * very * sorry for itself. Ringed
by what looked similar to the old Berlin Wall, the houses inside
looked very scorched, giving us some indication of just how
powerful that explosion had been. I recall the initial panic
amongst the Atari scene when the news of this flashed around the
world - we were all wondering where the hell Havoc was, was he
alive or worse ? - fortunately, he was out of town at the time.
After a bit of confusion in the dark, and after a little chat
with a friendly policeman & woman (who were wondering where we
were going too!) we located the road leading up to Havoc's place
and got parked on the side of a road nearby. Making sure the car
was locked securely (this was 3am in the morning, but Havoc was
expecting us) we got into his familiar flat. After a few words,
we got our beds sorted out and collapsed into them, sleeping in
till just before 11am that morning.
We relaxed with Havoc on the Thursday, at about 3pm we had a
wander into Enschede itself and had a walk around the shopping
area, visiting a well-stocked and large movie and games store,
walking past one or two coffee-shops (with the famous hash-smell
wafting out as we wandered past), a newsagents which opened out
into an infamous Dutch porno-store. After that, we decided to
make our way back to Havoc's place. We chilled out there for a
while with him, ordering a pizza about 9pm or so. A few phone
calls were made and received from other FUN members, including
Nut, who decided to get one of the early trains the next morning
to join us at Enschede and travel down to the party with us.
Havoc's plans were to travel down overnight on the Friday evening
with D-Force and TheMatch, as they were both working till about 6
or so. Upon loading up the car and sorting out some of the
luggage on the Friday, we noticed a small problem with one of the
tyres - it was as flat as a pancake. Luckily for us though, a
garage was just over the street which was open, so that got
sorted out fairly quickly.
Shortly after that was sorted out, Chris, Nut and myself started
to make our way across to Dresden, picking up a German guy called
CreatureXL at Hannover. This was straightforward as we met him at
a prearranged petrol station, where we got filled up and also had
something to eat as it was getting on for lunchtime.
The autobahn between Enschede and the turning off to Dresden via
another city called Halle was very busy. We managed, however, to
avoid being tailgated too much this time - but we were amazed at
how quiet the road was once we turned south, heading towards
Dresden. The weather also decided to do its entirely weird thing
here - it threw the elements at us, including snow and
hailstones. The snow was to make an appearance again during the
party itself - but more on that later on.
Getting into Dresden itself wasn't too difficult - hitting the
infamous old-style East German roads was realised as soon as this
happened ! Put it this way, driving fast on these is impossible,
and I'm also pretty sure it doesn't do your car tyres much good
driving on them ! We soon found and followed directions to the
centre of Dresden itself, travelling under the main railway
station bridge and - We're here ! - as we saw the famous club,
GAG 18 (where EIL was being held at) along with lots of
roadworks.
Negotiating our way round the works, we soon found the back
street which was the parking area. Arriving at the same time as
us were ST Survivor and some other guys, whose names I forget
right now. We parked the cars and walked over to the partyplace,
meeting up with John Hayward, MSG, Mr Pink and sh3 first off,
along with Grey, Sqward and Saulot (these latter two got rather
confused together as they both looked alike!). John and
other guys gave us a hand to unload the car, which was a big help
(cheers guys, for doing that). Chris and I got set up quite close
to the Reservoir Gods' grotto (the same one they had before,
incidentally) and switched on, then the party was started for us!
I also took the video recorder through to the main screening
room, and various tapes were played on it, starting off with the
favourite, Worst of Police Stop, which gained a fair audience.
The radio was turned on that this stage, with the song 'Wind of
Change' being played by the station that it was tuned into. The
events which this song described had partly happened in Dresden
itself, even though the main thing was happening in Berlin, when
the Wall came down. But enough of that, let's get onto the party.
We were feeling quite hungry by this time so, with the Polish
guys in tow, we took a wander into Dresden town, just as far as
the Burger King. There was a lot of major building work going on
here, but it was pretty safe to walk around. We chilled out for a
while at Burger King, before making our way back to the party.
Some hours after that, the Polish guys started to open their
bottles of the famous Polish vodka they had brought with them -
we shared some of this too. From what I understand, apparently ST
Survivor and Chris were rather rat-arsed after drinking all this,
but Grey was also pretty pissed as well - pissed as in happy and
singing. It was certainly a good first night, with plenty going
on until the early hours. I set up my bed and retired to it
shortly afterwards, in one of the sleeping rooms where there was
still some space. The sleeping room itself was not without
incident over the nights, with more than one or two people
snoring quite loudly, also someone with a bad case of the farts
one night (methinks that was probably John, but I'm not sure on
that!). There was also one night when someone's either alarm or
mobile phone went off at some unearthly time, ringing quite loud.
It wasn't playing a SID tune though as its ringer, that has only
come in recently.
Saturday morning came over bright and clear, so, after breakfast
and a wander about the partyplace, we went out, once again with
the Polish guys, for a wander around Dresden. It was quite warm
there to begin with for the early part of our walk. Some pictures
were taken of us with help from passers-by, some of which should
be floating around the 'net as I write. We walked up through the
shopping centre and up towards a ruin that was left to remind us
of just what Dresden itself had been like after the bombing
during World War 2. It was a poignant scene, with the building
itself hiding so much history. However, at the same time, the
weather decided to play little games with us, turning very cold
and wintry, with heavy snowfalls. These snowfalls occurred during
the whole of Saturday - at one stage, looking out from the front
entrance of GAG18, the area around was all white, giving rise to
thoughts of the fact that it may well be an interesting drive
back on the Monday. Fortunately it cleared a little while after
that. We got back to the partyplace and chilled out some more,
meeting up for many times with the other Atari sceners who were
there, notably Paranoid, Evl, Baggio, ZPQ, NoCrew dudes, St
Survivor, TSCC (esp MC Laser), Moondog (still frowning as ever! -
but cool to talk to), Zerkman, Nils, 505, Joe Cool, and whoever
else I forget at this moment. Mr XY and SWE were also there,
along with a few other guys who I didn't know. Also, in the main
video-projector room was a guy with an Archimedes for a few
hours.
The Swedish contingent had their full complement of hardware with
them, consisting of a mix of Atari and Sun hardware, a server
with lots of hard disks connected, plus whatever else was there !
ST Survivor was sharing another room with other French and German
people. In the room that Moondog and TSCC occupied, MC Laser was
putting the finishing touches to his new CD, which was on sale at
the party. It was very popular and is also worth buying if you
don't already have it.
New demos were being finished off at the party as well. Some of
these were shown in the competitions on the Sunday evening -
again, very good, with some excellent work done. The Falcon was
the strongest machine this particular time, with more demos being
released than was the case for a long while. You may well recall,
as I do, that the first EIL was the year of ST demo releases.
Dead Hackers were there with an entry, as were other groups also
represented. I'm afraid I don't have the list of winners to hand
here, these can be found on the Dead Hackers' site at www.dhs.nu.
EIL 2 basically started where the original had ceased, with a lot
of fun being had by all. One of the many highlights was a game
called 'Whip Pong' - coded by No of Escape using Whip!, the
popular utility. This involved having to yell, very loudly, into
an earpiece to get the bat to move ! It was hilarious - Tam (one
of the Swedish crew) won this, some said it was probably due to
his being able to imitate the sounds of certain, um, shall we
say, adult movies :) It was, however, advisable to have a strong
voice - which I don't have - nevertheless, I can still laugh
about the experience and it didn't make me mad at all.
I took my videocamera with me to the party itself and recorded
some good footage, no doubt someone will remind me to bring it to
future parties so we can watch it on the big screen.
Talking of the big screen, my video recorder was happy, playing
away with the tapes that were put into it. On the Sunday
afternoon, before the main democompetition we showed a couple of
good horror movies, Bride of Chucky and the new one, Carrie 2 -
the Revenge. Both films seemed to go down well with people, Bride
of Chucky especially with the Swedish guys - they laughed at the
line concerning the Swedish meatballs and could not stop laughing
when they saw the famous book on the screen used by Jennifer
Tilly to bring Chucky back to life, a book called "Voodoo for
Dummies" (!). I also showed an interesting little program that I
had recorded from television here in UK about the history of
videogames. This went down very well, gaining a lot of interest.
Also shown were the Symposium '96 video, The Net and Edge of
Honor.
A tape that Paranoid brought with him, containing recordings of
C64 demos, was also played at one time, this proved that the old
64 still has life in it ! Much like most old machines, in fact,
they have more life than current Wintel machines, but there you
go !
EIL ended on the Monday lunchtime, people slowly started to pack
their stuff up and get out on the long road home. We, along with
the Dutch, packed up after everyone else had just about gone,
just generally chilling out as well. We gave some of our excess
Coke and other bits of UK food to the Polish guys, luckily we
never heard of any foot-and-mouth cases in that part of the world
afterwards. For some reason Grey was a little reluctant to take
the drink and food, however, he was soon talked round.
We got out on the road back to Enschede around 12pm, making some
good time up. Just Chris, Nut and myself in the car this time,
Creature having decided to go back with someone else. We stopped
for a bite to eat again at a German waiting area, very good food
was on offer here again at reasonable prices. We had some nice
cheese salad rolls here, plus a long coke each. The journey back
was generally quite uneventful, except for a few queues we got
into. One was the result of a nasty multi-vehicle accident on the
autobahn, looked a bit similar to those I see regularly on the
A14 near Cambridge. Still, we got through this and got back to
Enschede about 11pm that evening, where we chilled out at Havoc's
place again.
We got to bed shortly after that, feeling very tired but happy.
The next day dawned and, as already planned, CiH and I made our
way over to the famous Dutch city of Amsterdam. Famous for its
tulips (although we didn't see any) we split up after having some
dinner at McDonalds for a couple of hours. My own feet lead me
across to the Red Light District in a comparatively short time,
toddling in and out of some of the stores in that part of town
and seeing some other quite gorgeous sights along the way as
well! The girls there certainly know how to look good, unlike
most of those I see in the area of UK where I live. I wasn't
tempted to go any deeper with them due to the rather short time
we had that day, suffice to say however I certainly saw some very
pretty ladies there. I also had a wander around the main shopping
area as well and into the music shop that we looked into when we
were with John at STNICCC.
We travelled back to Enschede on the train after getting one or
two things from the Central Station shops. Chilling out with
Havoc for the final night, talking generally about scene-related
stuff and also with Havoc about a possible job position in UK saw
us drift off to bed. The next day dawned bright and clear, so we
headed off to the ferry port at just after 12pm, catching the
3.30 pm ferry back to Harwich. This time, the ferry journey
itself was even rougher than on the way out. We bought some stuff
this time from the duty free shop and managed, with a lot of
wobbling around, to get a table in the middle of the bar area, so
the motion wouldn't affect us too much. Motion on ferries doesn't
normally affect me anyway, but this was rather rough to say the
least. Still, we got back to Harwich in one piece and drove back
home along the infamous A14, past Cambridge then back to my place
just outside the city. I helped Chris to pack his car up with his
stuff, then he went home.
We both definitely enjoyed EIL 2001 - it was certainly fantastic.
It was cool to see everyone again - and good to become closer
friends with others who had been fairly distant before. My
personal thanks go out to the organisers of EIl 2001, along with
Grey, Sqward and Saulot for taking us 'under their wing' and
getting us sorted out with stuff after we first arrived. We were
also very impressed with the Polish guys' command of the English
language, you are coming on guys, seriously, with that !
Greets once again to everyone who was there ..... EIL 2001 rocked
for sure !!!!
Felice.
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