### Magic Moments - Memories from Sillyventure 2000! We're going back a lot of years, all the way back to the change of millennium, when we were young(er) and anything was possible. We were brighter, funnier, and able to constantly laugh in the teeth of misfortune. One of the things we did, whilst under the influence of all that positivity, was to make a complete road trip, all the way from the UK, to Gdansk, and back, for the very first Sillyventure party. As I was young(er), with typing fingers made out of chromium steel, I typed up a massive report for the (then) premier disk magazine, 'Maggie'. There was also a real time article, which a number of people added to throughout the party. Now many years later, with the 2014 edition of Sillyventure about to break on to an all too suspecting world, maybe it is time to take a warm nostalgic look again at that very first trip? So in summary, this is a lame attempt to break down the very prolonged party report for the extremely epic Sillyventure 2000 road trip into some bite sized quotes from both that and the realtime text, to recycle it in a condensed fashion, for a less inspired publication. A practice known as 'padding in journalistic circles. This is quite possibly also a mistaken attempt to make them seem more 'funny' when plucked out from the massive bulk of the main article text. And at this point, I'll gently coast to a stop and let the golden olden text take over. This is arranged in a chronological order, from the start to finish of the trip. The car is fully loaded, but what about room for people? It is getting perilously close to the nominal 8am setting off time by the time I pull up at Felice's place. The scene that greets me is not totally surprising, based on previous misgivings. A Vauxhall (Opel to you Europeans!) Cavalier stands, the rear tailgate is gaping open, way too much stuff is already in there with more still to go in. I pull up and park, unload, impressing the massed travellers with my packing everything I need into a single bag acumen! Felice is persuaded to leave behind his Philips RGB monitor, which magically adds just enough room to finally get everything in, the tailgate closes after a little extra persuasion from Matt Smith. We are ready to go! This was taken when starting back, but is a pretty good picture of how full it was! 8.07. In the front seat and good job too, Matt is being gaseous in the back. Quote of the party from Felice in the realtime article. We'd barely set off and all! 10.25. Conversational exchange. Felice - "Have you seen any of those swingers websites?" Matt - "I don't generally make a habit of doing that!" They really hate bell-ringers in the Netherlands! Dutch motorways are easy and logical to follow, so we make good progress, past frequent anti-alcohol posters, the confused mixed- media design interpreted as 'Death to Bell-Ringers' by Matt, really a stylised skull and crossbones or skull and booze bottles motif, open to sardonic reinterpretation by journey befuddled Maggie people! Culinary highlights en-route. Our first overnight stop after a long day on the road, And an obvious observation from me about humorous food packaging. A quick trip to a nearby supermarket follows, to stock up on joke-food, that is, perfectly normal junk food given names that make perfect sense in Dutch, but translate into feebly hilarious innuendo in over-here speak. Matt pounces eagerly on a packet of 'Mini-Dickmans', which turn out to be some kind of marshmallow. No 'Wank biscuits' were found, fortunately... Fresh provisions were narrowly averted, the following morning. Matt thoughtfully eyes up a couple of pigeons who stay just out of reach, his suggestion that we take a couple along for 'lunch' remains unfulfilled. Driving hints for SV2000 (Germany). The perils of driving in a car set up for the 'wrong' side of the road, and with no rear visibility. The person who is in the front passenger seat is dropping friendly casual hints to the driver along the lines of "It's safe to overtake", or, "Don't go yet", or even "There's an impatient tailgating bastard who wants our bit of road. He's so close, when he laughs out loud, I can count the number of teeth he's got!" No tape player, no Kraftwerk... Damn!! Autobahn service stations are stereotypically useful though. Along the way, we stopped at numerous German petrol stations, these places always have plentiful supplies of spicy sausages and low shelf hard core porn magazines! - Asteroid Comfort break? As we are near the German border, the toilet is of the classic 'Poo-Stopper Shelf' design (see Error in Line report, last issue). It also has a lethal 'Krakatoa East of Java' flushing action, which sort of suggests that you should be in an adjacent building before doing anything hasty with it! We were coming, they were warned? "Remember men, these English people are highly bullshitty and dangerous, they speak in strange accents even their own countrymen cannot understand... Shoot them on sight, they don't like it up 'em! (etc..)" Also worth a quick note.. Phone call to Grey.. "We've just crossed the border, we're stopping here for the night!" Grey - "Where are you in Gdansk?!?" We told him not to have nightmares in Polish.. Okay, someone else take over, please!! Matt and Franky like Poland, a lot! Matt taking over for a short while... from what I've seen so far, Poland is a great place..one of the border guards was more than a match for Lara Croft... Ohhhh!! I'm gonna like Poland. Franky taking over for just a minute ;) Hmmm...well ah think it's a canny place like, ah divint nah aboot the roads though :/ CRAP ROADS, BONNY LASSES :)) Matt again... Poland is just FANTASTIC.. what more can I say... Szampanskie flavoured Delicje rule.... the television sucks, hey you can't have everything !! Some bum notes, part 1. Well, first good nights sleep so far in Poland. One or two odd bum burps during the first part, now we are dressed and will go for some breakfast soon. BTW, do the Poles like us that much to show stuff like Eastenders on TV? Maybe perestroika has been to blame for that :) (Felice) Next day, the journey resumes, we meet a star in a very cheaply priced car. CiH on here.. Talking about Fiat 126's, we clocked one going at a world record speed (for a Fiat 126). 74 mph, sorry, don't have the figures for km/h. How do we know this? Simple, we were right behind it on the Gdansk 'main' road. It was giving all it got to give, judging by the noises coming from the engine. We waited behind it for a while, just to see which part of their engine would melt first! Comfort break part 2 - This one comes at a price! I noticed that when using the public toilets you have to pay a small fee. Interesting enough in the Gents, prices vary according what sort of jobbie you are doing; using the urinal is 50 Grozny and sitting down for a dump is 1 Zloty (about 15 UK pence) :o) (Asteroid) We could have planned the trip better to leave some room in the car? We pass through a place which we only remember calling 'Babe-Town', as the streets seem to be filled with attractive young females. Also reflected on the wisdom of going with no room to spare in the car, as we passed by a couple of very attractive female hitch-hikers dressed in light summer clothes! For a little while afterwards, we wondered if we could have left the non-driving people behind? (Sorry John and Franky!) We've now finally arrived at the party. There's a bit of foreshadowing going on at the end of this lump of text, just wait until the journey home! Felice fiddles with the projector unit which is coupled to both a VCR and a Falcon whilst Asteroid has an overwhelming temptation to do childish animal hand-shapes in front of the projector screen. :o))) Not our gear, this lot was set up upstairs We set up the rest of our gear in close proximity to the video projector, that is, Felice's Falcon and PC, John H's laptop, and Matt Smith's Falcon. Also, Felice's VCR is soon running, with a blueish tint at first when the video beamer slips into SECAM mode, but that is soon sorted out. In a bizarre 'what might have been' rerun of our trip over, we are treated to highlights of Felice's "Police, Camera, Carnage!" videos WITH THE POLICE CAR IN HOT PURSUIT! The real party is outside?? An alternative favourite locale for many people, particularly the more committed smokers and drinkers, was the front door area, where Matt and Franky were often to be found with Havoc, and whichever spare Swedes and Poles were in the area at the time. There were plenty of opportunities to practice their 'opening beer bottles without a beer bottle opener' skills, Baggio producing the most gut-wrenching display when, in a supreme fit of dental self-confidence, he uses his (back) teeth! Matt Smith, Franky and 505.Friendlier than it looks! How the British cope with almost any situation! 00.55.. Now it comes to this, making tea in a disused Polish classroom! I can just smell the atmosphere of compulsory rote-style learning (looks like a primary classroom), or is that just the smell of cheap disinfectant? Okay, now drinking tea in a disused Polish classroom, time for night- night CiH.. Some more bum notes, part 2. 10.27am Well, once the storm died down a bit, sleep came pretty easily, punctuated by the odd burp and fart from various people here in the sleeping room. (Captain Felice) 10:29 After Felice leaves the room, he lets a discreet one slip. :o) - Asteroid Culinary highlights at the local shop the next morning.. Meanwhile, back to the shop/food scenario, and time is wearing on fast, so it is, that John H, Felice and I head back to the local shop for local people. Confronting the shop assistant 'problem' head on, we are remarkably successful, I even got as far as an experimental purchase of Polski style Pot Noodle! John H takes a long time, and has about half this suburb waiting behind him in an ever-growing queue. For his trouble, he comes away with lots of biscuits, and something that looks like a failed chemical warfare experiment wrapped in a swiss roll! 10.35hrs. I have eaten the Polish pot noodle, and lived!!! ....AAaagghhhKK!!! CiH They were warned, part deux! Where our brave visitors contemplate the Baltic vastness at Westerplatte, some people of a Swedish ilk contemplate things a bit too closely! We walk past some historic rubble, strewn on the water's edge to make a breakwater. We get to a less historic beach, which looks like it has had its sand freshly laid. We then go down to the water's edge. The Baltic at this time of year looks very blue, but also very cold. Some braver party members roll up their trouser legs and take off their shoes to indulge in a fit of paddling in the sea, ignoring the chronic pollution risk, I might add! A couple of the (NoCrew?) Swedes go further, taking off their trousers up to underpant level, attempting something called 'advanced' or 'nearly groin level' paddling! We watch intently, waiting for the first instance of 'wave damage' to those delicate dangly mid-regions. The Swedes come out, and before you can say "Hang on, I think they're taking everything off??" They strip completely and plunge back into the waves, naked as the day they were born! (With the addition of an extra 240-odd pounds of bodyweight, and a big red beard in one case!) Drinks were needed to recover from the trauma of the Naked Swedes! (Fourteen years later editor - A video camera recorded the whole thing!) A little bit later, laser-guided karma rode in on a bicycle. The coach later stopped near a pier which was quite busy with locals enjoying the nice weather and one of the Swedes collided with one of the locals on bikes, which annoyed him immensely and was highly amusing for the rest of us. (Asteroid) Went to the pier, witnessed the bicycle collision scene, the Polish woman cyclist knew a little bit of English ("f*ck You!") - (CiH) More food confusion, by Jon H. Most of us get conventional pizzas, which are fair to middling. John Hayward suffers from food confusion again, when his attempts to order a vegetarian pizza, mutates into something that looks like a giant pastry slug, with olives stuck on the side. A careful prodding examination reveals something not unlike a normal pizza, but definitely not anything vegetarian? Sunday morning bum notes.. 9:45 I seem to be the first person awake so I decided to keep this article fresh up to date, as far as early morning farting is concerned, some real beauties have been performed. :oP Room consists of me, CiH, Felice, Matt, Frankie and two of the French guys. - Asteroid Some people slept with their underpants on their head? 10.30 methinks ... The usual sounds of farting this morning were replaced this time by a gentle tapping of this very keyboard. Methinks that maybe the similarities between the first part of the South Park movie we saw last night had something to do with that ? Felice. Uncomfortable break? By Sunday, the toilets, at least those near to the main hall were like the toilets from the Amityville Horror movie. A very cursory examination reveals they are blocked up with almost every kind of material, including clothing, and possibly body-parts from one of the Amiga people, who proved to be just that bit more annoying than the rest? The 'little' Atari's strut their stuff! The major action is taking place downstairs in the 8-bitters pit. An Atari XL is hooked up to a hard disk hidden inside a cheap plastic videotape storage box! Which is about the last place I would choose to put a hard drive. (steel cases with proper LEDs and things rule!) It works though, and we are treated to a huge number of famous 8-Bit demos from recent years. Baggio joins us, then wishes he hadn't, as the sheer quality of the 8-bitters work becomes clear! By the end, he is almost mentally throwing his ST out of the window in sheer discomfort! Preserved on camera, an onion tasting belch of recollection! D-Force and Havoc are set up nearby, and they are amusing themselves by reviewing the best camcorder moments from recent parties, including this one. So it is, we get to witness the horrifying scenes of the Swedes on the beach once more! Applications for compensation for post- traumatic stress shoot through the high ceiling of the hall! There are also key scenes from last summers Pre-Millennium Party, including the original footage from what was to form the (rotten) core of the H Demo IV! This soon attracts an audience, even from people nearby who stop what they are doing, tripping over the piles of hastily stacked beer bottles to watch! Finally, Evil gets his ST-Sound out at a hefty volume to try to bring people to their senses. He fails! Compo calamities! Where things went horribly wrong, were with the various music competitions, which seemed to go on longer than forever. A typical session would go something like this.. Play first entry, a few minutes later, play the next entry, find out that player program not playing quite correctly (Digital Tracker modules always keep coming to mind at this point!) Rummage around desperately for compatible player/tracker program. Realise that sound system not outputting half of sound channels correctly, try again.... Repeat, until people are feeling suicidal! I guess we're still waiting for the final versions? (Author subsides in helpless giggling fit.) Deez is summoned from above. His Centurbo 2 Falcon is needed for the Mind Design "Swedish Hardcore" entry. This one is rather better than what came before, but it is clearly unfinished. The final production is still keenly awaited from this corner at time of writing! Eventually, the much hyped and long awaited Mystic Bytes demo is shown. This does turn out to be worth the effort of staying up, featuring a predominantly 3-D theme, with objects that are nearly up to the sort of thing that Tat was doing previously. (But with a wild and carefree Polski touch to the overall design!) There may even have been a touch of DSP code involved in the 3-D, let's hope so, as it augers well for future productions! Like the Mind Design demo, this is a little bit short, and still to be finished, but this is very likely to be the competition winner. Holy crapski, it's an after-party party! So we follow Grey to his parent's apartment on the edge of town, this is in, we guess, a more prosperous version of the identikit apartment blocks that make up the bulk of Gdansk's housing. Up on some higher floor, no lift!! We make it, go inside, meet Grey's parents, check out the lavish decor, and the table-full of food. We feel guilty that we have disturbed their traditional festive Easter lunch, but before we can say "Surely that tableful of food isn't meant for us?!?" We are motioned to sit down! This is us at Grey's parent's house, after the party! Things they never say in Poland, episode 4.. "You're guests?! Piss off, I'm not interested!" We'd not really missed having the TV on! No, not at all! Then we turn the telly on, that good old stand-by of random amusement, the Polish cable network, springs back to life... At first, nothing too estranged from reality, but as a Polish-dubbed version of the BBC produced WWII French resistance farce 'Allo Allo' comes on, we seriously wonder if the food we've just had, has been adulterated with magic mushrooms!? Serious checking that our hands aren't melting follows when the next programme comes on. I don't remember the title, which probably is something catchy in Polish, but it is a quiz show, with a father and son each guessing what the other would say in a given situation. I find my hands aren't actually blending into a limitless chequerboard horizon, but there is a giant purple hopping marsupial ushering people about onscreen instead! I am later told, this was part of the normal day to day reality, and nothing that my overstressed brain had conjured up! The most obviously geeky father and son combo win, the purple marsupial lurches off the screen for the last time, dinner is served. I shot past the sheriff? (But didn't crash into the deputy.) Skip forward to the journey home, and an interesting travellers tale! Heading off home, the continuing hot weather brings out the speed in people and tearing down the road at 100 mph we are horrified to find the police have caught us in a speed trap where we meant to be doing 50. Matt thinks he tried to flag us down but we continue on not sure what to do. Felice the Fugitive!!! All kinds of scary things were going through our minds, one of them not being in a high speed chase with a Polish Police FSO patrol car, but one of them *is* of being rumbled at the Polish/German border with a massive road block, and thoughts of what a Polish jail might be like sharing a cell with a lorry driver with a worrying grin on his face! Asteroid. We made it across the border - Handy Driving hints for SV2000 (Night).. Progress is straightforward for a time, it is getting very late, or early in the morning. Combine that, with the effects of only having a limited amount of sleep from the night before, and the strange tricks that the half-lighting can play on your mind are many. We are not in any rush, as we don't want to beat Havoc back, and wait around for him for too long. In any case, it takes about two or three goes before your tired brain can actually work out what is going on in front of it. So it is that you really have work hard to check to see which lane the ever-present lorries are actually in. Road conditions are busy, but not oppressively so. Typical service station menu around this time of day or night:- Coffee, black, very strong, Frankfurter with added Pro-Plus (joke?) We made it back to the Netherlands, we had a day to kill, time to indulge in some more stereotypical touristic pursuits then. Next, on to another Dutch institution, the bookshop with covered windows that greatly interests Franky and Felice! I take a look inside too, purely for thirst's sake, as they are selling cold drinks as well. In among the usual paper and video-based material, ("Hot Swedes on Gdansk Beach" - Out next week?!) they are selling something called a 'Ponytail'. This has nothing to do with any normal equestrian pursuits though, as the simple but explicit instruction sheet revealed! - (CiH) Franky is umming and ahhing atm over whether to buy some of those porno mags we saw in the shop earlier on .... we'll keep you posted on that :) - (Felice) Nearly back home now! Switch back to UK time, hear a gentle sighing sound as the purchasing power in our wallets slowly deflates, the nearer we get back home! Harwich beckons, we leave the ship, passing through customs, and driving on the CORRECT side of the road again! Dutch people huddle together for mutual protection in alien environment, we leave them for dead. Finally, to close this text down, the more some things seem to change, the more they stay the same! Take it away Mr Michalowski! Geesus Christ! I did it! :)) Oh man, being organizer suxx a lot ;)) I am feeling like a s*it now :)) Anyway I would like to say "thanx dudez!" to all of you who did their best to come over here! Welcome to Poland folx from Slovakia, Sweden, England, Holland, Germany, France and Poland of coz :)) Have fun at SV2k! stay cool, grey / mystic bytes (SV2k MQH) "I'm fine honestly! Not slept for four days, but it hardly Matterrrrrssurgh! Edited and strung together by CiH - Lots of original contributors, John H, Felice, Matt Smith, a little bit of Franky, a bit of Grey. - 2000 and 2014. Back to the Index.