The Gathering Trip

Written by Ghandy

After being asked by Rokdazone if I could write something interesting from the Deep past of my sceneish life because of the anniversary of Generation [ed: The Amiga diskmag in which this article was first published], I first thought of writing about my experience with blue-boxing. I also contemplated talking about my attempts to be a leader of an illegal group or 2CV-duckjetter "flying" to the next software company and delivering the latest Amiga, PC and Nintendo games to the illegal Amiga scene. Attempts? Well... for a while we were really successful, but as usual in the illegal scene, what we finally earned was a hell of a lot of enemies, envious people, and costs to be paid. I guess things like that would not really be interesting to you, or am I wrong?

But there was something else... something I will never forget. And this is where my story starts. Hey, it's time to zap to the next article! Still here? Cool! Anyway, this is not a fairy tale with no substance such as a sceneish fantasy. Can we call it that way? I don't know... But what's coming right now really took place. To my own surprise it's not another anti-Mop article... hehe!

It was spring in the year of 1993 when Runt of Wizzcat asked me to drive to The Gathering. My first party experience was the Cebit-party in 1992, and it had been mostly boring. I regarded it as a badly organized party held in a youth center, where it was raining through the roof. And it was deadly cold. Maybe the halls were still under construction or perhaps they were just about to be repaired. Not only the temperature icy, but the atmosphere between the visitors can only be called "cold"... or may we say cool? Many people were even too cool to open their mouths...

So Gathering... another country, another try. Why not, I thought? The German illegal scene didn't have anything attractive, why not focus on the other side. After some preparations, Runt, Star of Absolute (both left the scene a long time ago), and I jumped in my white and 27 PS "strong" Citroen 2CV "duck" and rushed through the night. Target: "Sketsmorehallen", 50 kilometres outside of Oslo, let us better say 50 miles outside of nowhere...

Why do I always make the same mistakes, I asked myself (and I did that very often the following years)... All the time, Party3, Sun 'n Fun Conference II, Party4, I traveled with younger fellows who didn't own a drivers-licence. It was my dirty job to bring them to the northern border of Denmark alone. We had to arrive sharply on time to catch the ferry to Norway. After sleeping the whole way in the ferry, I often had that deadlock, the feeling that I didn't want to drive one single minute. My body had one big wish - sleep! I want to sleep...

Against all odds, after 23 hours, we found that nasty small basketball hall in "Sketsmorehallen". There were as usual no signs, no people we could have asked for directions. The only house near the party place was a closed armycamp, a military airport. We rushed in, paid our fee and quickly found the tables of the leading groups of the demoscene. That was what we were searching for: Spaceballs were there... Andromeda was present, also Dual Crew Shining and a lot other sceners and groups we never heard of. The atmosphere was quite friendly... the only thing I disliked was, that with us, there were only nine German people. So we talked a lot with the Sanity guys hanging around there...

The second day after we had to sleep under our table (as usual there was no sleeping room offered as written in the invitation) we installed the Amiga 2000 and began to play "Desert Strike", a real nice helicopter game which had been released just a few minutes before we left for Norway. It was the first major release of the re-found crew Paradox... and at the Gathering NOBODY had it... so after starting to play it... every five minutes someone else disturbed us while fighting and asked "H›lle Sm"lle berg"??"... or "Smoerebroed hansen brede?"... erm, or it was something which can be compared to this... naturally we didn't understand anything. No visitor expected we would NOT speak the Norwegian or Swedish language as 99% of all visitors came from Scandinavia. Too bad... so every single time we first had to explain they should speak in nothing else than the English language! The fourth or fifth time they asked us for the game we were really forced to shout "TRY IT IN ENGLISH!!" It's not fun to start a game for some minutes when being paused by someone who wants to have it. But since I'm friendly we made them a copy of it. But shouting was really necessary - this Scandinavian language-mixture was really getting on our nerves. And with only a few people speaking German you began to feel quite lonesome... Can you understand that? Hope so...

A copyparty? A partycopy?

Only two hours later nearly everybody was gambling around with the crack we had brought with us. Hehe! Maybe we should have included a crack intro from my former crew, Decade... none of them would have noticed the difference. Yeah, it would have been a fine way to grab a lot of fame... in fact we would have cheated Paradox in a very unfair and cheap way, but who cares... fame is fame! But as decent sceners we dropped our plans. Decent and well amused about a complete hall of demosceners playing the same game. Nice feeling!

On the third day we went to Oslo. We had already invested most of our money for Buying cold Cola and hot Pizza. What I didn't know at the time was that my bank in Germany had canceled their contract with me. So as I tried to get money from the EC-automat something strange happened. We heard a deep noise, like something was falling down, and the only reaction the computer was willing to make, was to print out a sheet with a note "Your card has been captured".

Uahhhhh!! A horrible situation! Neither Runt nor Star had an eurocheque-valid bank account or any money with them... As it was Eastern, all banks and shops had closed. No chance to get the card again or to discuss this topic with anyone. Bad luck with us! What to do? We went to the next hotel and exchanged my last 100 German marks into kronas. What could we do? We didn't know anybody who could lend us something... we could not wait until Eastern would be over, either... As well, a 2CV duck needs some gas for the long, long way home, and we would need to eat something in the time in between. And I wasn't sure if I would succeed in convincing the employers to give me my card back. I knew something went wrong with my bank account, but what? That all didn't help us...

How to react? We were severely disappointed. Runt, Star and I went back to The Gathering to enjoy our "last" pizza at the partyplace. Prisoners who are waiting to be executed also have the right to get a final great meal before they lose their life... that's how we were feeling.

48 hours later with the help of my last 10 Pfenning we approached my former hometown in Wuppertal/Germany. So no mindblasting demo releases, no great competition to watch! We leeched all the great stuff later from the boards, but that's really not the same... And after being responsible for the steering wheel for so long, and returning just two days after, I got a bad cold with a high temperature. The next two weeks I was forced to stay in bed... ;-(

Mop is doing the right stuff! If you never visit a party, you never risk anything either... no risk, no fun? No! The Gathering in 1993 was nothing else than just a dash to the ground for the three of us... And because of the vast distance and the great Symposium party series in the following years, which were held during the same time, I never tried my luck again. Humble greetings to the Gathering organizers by the way... you are really doing a great job! And unless I'm mistaken, you have been doing it for the longest time... even with changing the team and some canceled happenings in between.

Give me a time machine!

I would like to have a time machine to enter this partyplace again. Not only to take a "bit" more money with me, but also to talk to all Norwegian GODly friends of mine who were present there. I'm sure me and my closest friends like Zerox, Sixpack, Joint and the other GODS members crossed our ways a couple of times.

But it was the wrong time... It was 1993. I was "only" GANDALF of DECADE. A modemtrader, a sysop, an original supplier... any cheap arexx-door for Amiexpress was more common to me than the European demoscene. I want to go back there to the past with my knowledge of today... Please! So if anyone knows how to invent this machine... just send an email to me. You would really do me a favor...

And don't forget to do something for the outstanding diskmag you are currently reading. Maybe in this way we'll probably be able to see dozens more issues. I would enjoy it!

- Ghandy of Darkage, Faith, Gods & Chemical Reaction