GeekCamp IV - Back from the Dead

Written by T$ of Alcatraz

After 2 years of silence and a 10-month shift from the originally planned date the time was ripe for another higher experience: A bunch of sceners invading cozy Heidi-country, well-prepared to survive another 4 days of incredibly unique partying.

The first batch consisted of MBB and me, namely co-organizers of the event, and DFox, who unvoluntarily couldn´t help feeling like some sort of support organizer as well =)

Travelling to Fluelen went rather smooth, with a short touristlike sightseeing break at the Schaffhausen Rhine Falls where we

discovered true "Naturgewalten" (nature powers) by the help of some educational exhibit nearby. Having arrived in time at the cable car station and discovering that we succeeded in being first, our main organizer Topy44 also showed up with his slightly broken 601 Übermobile and a heavy load of stuff ready to be brought up to the party place.

The location itself was the same as for the second and third GeekCamp, thus getting in went rather smooth as well as bringing all that stuff up there despite the icy snow mud which tried to challenge us. Greeted by friendly sunlight and the incredible mountain view, the first day turned out as a rather relaxed event. Basically we were not doing that much after unpackaging besides giving the first arriving visitors like Yoda and Kalma (who made a long way from Hamburg and Helsinki respectively) a hearty welcome with a delicious hemp beer and their personal zombie entrance dogtag.

A couple of hours and the first batches of booze getting empty, GyrosGeier and Scythoior also dropped in, the latter one completing the organizing team. As you may notice, we had a pretty well overall orga care level throughout the entire event. =] Being lucky catching the last chance to get to the Eggberge, Fashion and Scamp also managed to get up here, thus enforcing the internet and gin tonic supply to start running so that he could properly apply his heavy workload procrastination skills.

Friday was petty recreational as well, starting with a yummy scrambled egg breakfeast and continued with working on getting the last touches on the compo prizes done. Not to forget an extensive talk about real men's toys - DIY tools is all you need,

boy.

The evening started with pasta and continued with poker, occasionally interrupted by air express intermissions and the following airwulf alerts which guaranteed proper oxygene supply especially for beginner players. Speaking about them, Scythoior managed to start as an absolutely beginner and proved his talents by ending up with a nicely sanitized personal party budget. Meanwhile, Kalma gave a nice little violin concert, and I was working on a small executable entry while Fashion was outside for not-so-ordinary Switzerland by night photography experiments.

Unlock and Zehbra joined us on Saturday for a short daily visit, thus we finally had Swiss visitors at a Swiss party! Since there was some time left before the official party features continued, one had the rare chance of seeing sceners exploring the countryside while the others went to the cable car station to pick up additional supplies for the evening. Sceners aren't sissies, so barbecue naturally had to take place outside. It turned out that Scamp has not just a talent for organizing Breakpoint but can please sceners with his noteworthy barbecue skills, too, and that preparing noodle salad can be almost as controversial as an OS flamewar. We also had fun with a local delight called "Poldis Kräuterbutter", spiced butter which not just was extraordinarily expensive but also failed to mimick the proper texture and taste you'd expect at all.

Compo time arrived - partly consisting of remote entries as well as compofiller entries, and being completed with wAMMA's violin wild and Topy's autoilluminated real surprise entry "spill my

tonic" blob, both of which can be seen on the pouet video.

Since there were only a few outstanding releases and given the overall visitor/entry relationship, we decided to give 3 overall prizes instead of compo specific ones by using the sophisticated "cheer or join" voting system: Which basically means that everyone could propose his winner ranking until we ended up with an order everyone was happy with. Luckily, we also found out that the internet tax counter stopped running, thus DFox's "Most money spent" award for preponsoring the party did not turn out as hillarious as expected. Killing the leftover beer and booze while chatting, playing or watching adult cartoons, the last night of the party ended successfully as well.

Finally, the day of departure dawned, delayed by happily transforming the viprinet router into a sculpturous nightmare for the apprentice guy who would be the lucky one to dismantle all the layers of gaffer and garbage which went into safely packaging it.

On the way back to the valley inside the cable car we learned that the local inhabitants not only were booth snoopy and trustful at the same time, but also had started busy rumours about the strange vehicles placed on the parking lot, donating some additional fun for the way back home. Overall, it was again a marvellous as well as holidayish event we'd like to take part in again. So think about joining such an event, since it's up to the visitors who actually end up being there whether we can afford to run the party next time again.

T$