[SKRIVA] Eurocon/Baltcon 2007

There are two ways to make a convention report. You could wrote a long, chronological one with all the detals you can remember. Or a short one, with just some notes. If I would aim for the former, I'm afraid it'd burden my time so much it'd never get written. So, just a few notes - where I on the other hand probably will forget a lot of stuff and a lot of people. (This report has been laying around *almost* ready for more than a week. But better late than never!) 

The Con
Was this year's Eurocon, Copenhagen, 21-23/9. Attendance probably 6-700, of something like 20-30 countries (however also single Americans and at least one nice Israeli femmefan and one or two Japanese). Aside from Danes, biggest group was from Finland (24); I struggled a lot with counting the Swedes present but never got that number higher than 22 (third biggest country present was probably the UK, with 15-20 or so). 

The trip
I arrived by car, with the Five Latvians - lead by Imants Belogrivs - arriving by two cars by ferry through Stockholm. That went OK, except I had absolutely no sleep the night before (too much to do) so I immediately begun accumulating a sleep deficit which would last the whole con. Thanks to Mårten for letting us stay in his place in Skåne, on the way to the con! It was my first trip by car over the Öresund bridge (Europe's longest, 16 km in all). The trip home became more difficult. The Latvians were returning through Germany and Poland, so the cheapest way was by bus. However, there was no bus on Monday, and the bus early Tuesday was delayed by a couple of hours. And when we came to Sweden, the Swedish customs officers decided to give our bus the thourough search and checks (they seemed to catch some with unclear papers and even brought forth a narcotics dog - without finding anything). So getting back became a looong trip. The bus was mostly filled with Germans, and I found that I basically understood 90% of what they said, but I was too tired to engage in any conversations. 

The con facility
It was a house in western Copenhagen called Valby Cultural House, perfectly adequate for the convention. A cafeteria/bar. A huckster room (and I did buy some books). Side program rooms. The main hall was possibly slightly too small for the bigger events, but that was no big deal. Otherwise the surroundings were a bit boring in the otherwise beautiful Copenhagen. 

The city
Since I couldn't leave until Tuesday I still had an extra day in Copenhagen, which I spent downtown, and it was very nice. The sun was shining. I went for hours on the main walking street district Ströget, getting a couple of Carlsbergs, looking into book and video/music shops, etc. You should watch the synchronised flying of the pigeons on the city hall square - it's fascinating. Places worth visiting are the big fun fair Tivoli, the harbour district Nyhavn and the Carlsberg breweries (however I didn't go there this time; I have been there before). I also visited the Fantask sf/fantasy bookshop, an special thanks to the girl of the staff there who helped me finding bus information on the Internet and getting in touch with my Danish contact Klaus Mogensen (thanks to him too, for letting me crash at his place waiting for the bus; otherwise I crashed in the convention halls, as the con had planned for - no "illegal" crashing about it). 

The program
I didn't see much of the main program, because I was busy organising the half a dozen side programs which was the program stream of the Baltcon part of the con. But I know that people generally liked it. My sidewhow program wasn't *always* too successful. Our writer's panel went very well, but I also had program items with one (1) attendant and one with to start with zero (0) attendants (which after starting increased to 4-5). This item with one attendant was my own speech about "The Unknown History of Swedish Fandom", which I had put in a lot of work in preparing (the speech dealt with obscure magazines from the 17th and 19th Century, a late near-miss sf club from the late 19th Century and two *actual* early Swedish sf clubs from 1945 and 1949). The Baltcon meeting also decided to revise the Baltcon constitution, as well as - unless other interested parties announce themselves; if so there'll will be a ballot - deciding that the next Baltcon is in Lithuania in May. Maybe it was a bit to much with up to ten parallel program tracks (half would be enough; but I've seen it before, when non-Worldcons plan Worldcon-size program-tracking). Bertil Falk talked about "The History of the Short Story" (in the Baltcon track), which went very well with perhaps 15 in the audience. Another item which went well was the writers' panel, which I think managed to come up with some original thoughs on the subject of writing, and the Finncon-presentation, which gave away some of the secrets behind this two-thirds size (or more) worldcon. I didn't go to the auction, but I heard they had a six issue set of Slant (of Irish Fandom) on sale, which finally went for ca 550 dollars. 

GoHs
Among the GoHs we had Stephen Baxter, Anne McCaffrey, David Hardy, Zoran Zivkovic and Niels Dahlgaard; I also think Harry Harrison was some sort of "special guest". Of these I only spoke at more lenght to the latter two, but that was nice, particulary to chat away a bit with Mr Harrison, who seemed in reasonable health and in good spirits and sometimes tried out his Danish. 

Other people
Oh! There were so many. Jean-Pierre from France. Roelof, now moved to Belgium. Bridget, Martin, Jim, Dave and many others from Britain. An avalanche of Finns (hi Jukka, Ben, Irma and others!). Kirill from Russia. Boris from the Ukraine. Roberto of Italy. Frank from Belgium. Pascal from Switzerland. Erik of Germany. Elena of Lithuania. Bruce from the US (but now living in London, I believe). Piotr from Poland. Czechs, Bulgarians, Romanians, a Hungarian-Japanese (!), Spaniards, Norwegians of course, and so on. I shouldn't try to mention all names and nationalities, because I will miss some, many of you which I had very nice chats with, which I appreciate. 

The Parties
The first day they had a *wonderful* event in the Copenhagen City Hall, a beautiful building I had only seen from the outside before. I came there a bit late with Imants (you needed an invitation, and my other travel friends had missed to aquire on on the con homepage) and found the inside of the building at least as impressive as the otherwise world-famous Stockholm City Hall (famous for the Nobel banquets). And the city hall was big - it took us some time to find the right room. In there maybe 100 people from the con had arrived, and had began partying away on a buffet (very tasty one, Danish smörrebröd are almost as famous as the Swedish smörgåsbord) and some Carlsbergs and coffe. A very nice gesture of the city of Copenhagen to arrange an official welcome. For the convention nights, I at least partied in the convention halls (others went out on town or to their hotels - which were downtown, a bit away) and the last night Klaus M arranged a dead dog party in his flat. The partying was generally successful. The Finns had a wonderful party with Finnish booze, but only in *small* amounts at the time - while the Russians on their party was more generous with the amount of vodka. (No sweat, the Finns would give you 1-2 cl, the Russians 3-4 cl so you had to work hard if you wanted to get drunk.) 

Misc
The con had an offical Eurocon anthology, in which I took part with my shot story "Clues" (my third anthology appearance), BTW edited by Klaus M. People tended to hand me their own antologies or books, of which I brought home a bundle (say 4-5) and picking up stuff at the con (also fanzines, magazines etc) suddently made me realize I needed to conserve the weight of my luggage - but basically it was impossible. Someone handed out free issues of old Analog SF magazines in the bar (of which I grabbed maybe 10, issues with interesting science fact articles - I always liked Analog's science articles), on town I bought some DVDs (they seem cheaper in Denmark than Sweden) and I also bought six litres of Danish wine (much cheaper than in Sweden! - but some of it was immediatly consumed on the dead dog party). I after the banquet announced the winners of the Swedish short story competion (which I was grateful they let us do; this year it was better than ever, with 82 entries). I shouldn't perhaps mention the rather pointless, long walk with the Czech guy (whose name even now slips my mind) on Monday morning in the rain (later the sun turned up). Language was no problem. For me it was Scandinavian or English, and very few (a couple of the Russians) didn't speak English. I have always thought that Danish is easy to understand, so that was no problem for me (some Swedes insist Danish is dfficult - they are just lazy)
All in all, a very nice con, well organized, with lots of interesting people and perhaps the only slip-up having too many program lines. Next Eurocon will be in Moscow, I believe. And this was my fragmented not too detailed report. I have no been to Eurocons in Germany, Finland, Poland, Britain, Lithuania and Denmark. 

--Ahrvid

Ps. There are pictures from the con on e g:

http://egad.dyndns.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=eurocon2007
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8671998@N04/tags/eurocon/
http://picasaweb.google.dk/carsten.riis/Eurocon2007?authkey=DziXS17S4oA
http://www.convent.ru/photo/eurocon2007_m/

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