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This summary was originally written by Nicklas, with some comments from lots of people (given in "[ ]").
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, perhaps leaving something behind or even pick up a souvenir once in a while. The souvenir fall out of its bag and is soon lost, and even later the souvenir is long forgotten when the Age returns once more. When one Age was passing by, an Age called Y2K-1 by some, a wind rose from the sea and blew in over Gothenburg on the fifth of January. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
A train pulled in to the station, two of the darkfriends had arrived. This was me, Nicklas Andersson, and Karl-Johan Norén. We where early. Despite this we walked out to place where we would meet, but as we suspected no one else had arrived yet. We watched our clocks and then someone, I think it was Karl-Johan, got a bright idea. We would go to meet the Stockholmians train. They didn't come, perhaps because we where a bit naive and didn't think that they would take the bus. Which they did. Instead we met Siv Johansson when we departed towards the decided gathering place, and in the middle of the crosswalk we teamed up with Patrik Montgomery and Carin Wesslau, who had mysteriously walked right past us without notice.
We were now five people. During a short period of time CD Skogsberg, who had a cola-shortage and thus disabled his gray man-abilities, showed up. Helena Zeegers and David Tingström came from Stockholm with a five(?) hour bus trip, this was probably David's idea since he don't have to pay for bus tickets.
[Carin: That could be the reason, but my best guess is 6-7 hours last
time I went to Gothenburg that way.]
[David: Seven hours.]
Soon thereafter Samuel Kleiner made his appearance. Mattias Wadenstein and Jimmy Mårdell, both from Umeå, a place far away, approached us slowly like most new DFS-participants tend to do. Johan Klockars was the last person, as per usual, and we all left Träffpunkten to find something to eat.
[Karl-Johan about CD's visability: Or it was the missing head-piece.]
[Carin: Mattias and Jimmy where there before CD. How was it I
described you CD? Tall guy with a big smile that you should see who
drink Coca-cola?]
[Nicklas: Probably, I didn't pay much attention to the order which
people arrived.]
[Patrik: Tidpunkten. Although the other one was probably better.]
The restaurant we had chosen was named Bangkok, even though it's written in the DFS-charter "thou shall not eat food at the same sorts of restaurant twice", but nothing happened to our dismay. While we waited for the food, we just had to criticize the Kareoke-videos they showed on a TV in the corner. We got our food which left everyone at least somewhat pleased (I hope), most of us couldn't finish the plates, especially Johan since he got a full meal for two people. And afterwards we got these cute tiny weenie cutlery.
[Carin: To be nasty... I HAVE tasted better, but it went by with "Acceptable".]
[Karl-Johan about who choose the restaurant: YM Patrik]
[Nicklas: No, I think it was Samuel's choice.]
"Either nude women or a story, never both."
"Leave my prejudices alone"
"These are at least better than the butt ugly horses we got last year"
"- If you put the seat down after you have used the toilet, no one
will know that you have been there.
- Unless someone already sits there.
- And you try to put up the seat."
We said "thank you", paid for the food, managed to give a 100kr tip and left the restaurant. After some discussion we ended up at the theater and saw Enemy of the state. A movie which had more technical errors than anyone I've ever seen before, but besides that it was nothing special. It was about two hours and at the end only me and Johan had the balls to walk out through the main exit, all the other sneaked out through the back door.
[Jimmy: "The Net" has many more technical errors...] [Nicklas: Okay, but the fact still stands. Do they keep script writers locked away from reality by using a wooden box in Hollywood?]
[Carin: Do you think it is ever physically possible to hide us??!! If this where Randland I'd say we would have been exposed years ago and killed. I thought we had fun looking for a cash dispenser!]
"Aha, that's also a way to make her keep quiet."
"It's a conspiracy by FBI, NSA and CSN!"
[Karl-Johan: For our foreign watchers, CSN is the central Swedish
agency for student stipends and support.]
By a stroke of luck, or was it just that we where all a year older than the last Gothenburg-DFS, everyone was above 18 and thus we went to a pub. Where we drank, beer and cola (not mixed together, I'm not doing that mistake again). We all talked about a lot of thing, but some talked more than others, namely Karl-Johan, Patrik, Carin, David and Helena. But instead of spelling it out for you, I'd rather toss these quotes at you and let you try to figure it out by yourselves. But after we where done and over with the pub, we had a small "midnight" snack at McDonalds before we got our gear from the train station and split up for the day.
[Carin: Ha ha ha! You'll never GUESS what WE did.....]
"Cybersex is the new version of having sex with a bag over your head."
"That must be a new perversion, looking through other peoples wallets."
"It's fine to sleep with you. No wait, it's not fine at all!"
"I'm totally bribable."
"I fear for the day someone makes a neo technical interface to the
brain: Microsoft Cerebral Cortex has made an illegal operation..."
[Patrik: That one was even better in translation!]
"I have hands all over."
"Anywhere but the nose!"
"I'm a biologist, I've done almost everything."
"I have become... I haven't become anything, thank God."
"My knee too! My knee too!"
"Look! Now it's David who squeezes."
"Sex isn't everything in a relationship, it's just half."
[Karl-Johan: You forgot the "brother-husband" issue!]
[Nicklas: I don't remember that one, nothing about it is written
in my notebook.]
Well, it was established that it would indeed be a second day, so we all agreed a meeting at the same place as the day before. This time we had to wait longer, or at least it seemed longer but this can have something to do with the fact that it rained. Samuel didn't show up, or did so after we had left. And Jimmy decided to sleep instead of going out in the rain, so now we where only ten darkfriends left. Not that we was sorry for that, we had plenty of fun just by ourselves.
In our wisdom we went to a nice cafe where we spent a great deal of the day. We sat down and talked even more than the day before and the subjects where even stranger, but I guess you should have been there to understand it all. There where a lot of throwing cocos at David, and Helena "played" with her food, there is no other word to describe it.
[Karl-Johan: For anyone's up for a little inventing, the Swedish Navy is _really_ interested in a stealthed windscreen viper. There's good money to be had.]
Karl-Johan was mostly quiet, but this was explained with the fact that he had spent the Christmas with a heavy cold and that he had read a half Tom Clancy-book before he managed to sleep. When Johan had to leave us, something he had to do IIRC, that was the beginning to the end. Karl-Johan managed to get back in the middle of the group, and then the cafe-staff drew the line, we had to leave.
[Patrik: Coincidence? Well...]
[Carin: Poor Karl-Johan.]
"Plants propagate in an outrageously obscene way."
"Since Ryan will die when Tom Clancy gets a divorce, what will happen if Jordan files in one as well?"
"Concrete is good for you."
"- Why are you a gray man?
- Because I'm made out of *concrete*."
"What did you say? I'm listening."
"The only thing I've ever got an A on was a psycho-analysis of Donald Duck and Huwie, Duwie and Louie."
"CD, I forgot your notebook."
[Karl-Johan: Which caused the half who got the joke to laugh
uprariously, and the other half to really wonder what was funny
about that.]
[Carin: How many years have we gone on about that?]
[Nicklas: Since before me, but can we have a DFS without this one?]
"In the movie they didn't just have a copy of Novak, they had a lousy copy of Novak."
"If you ain't nice the he-goat will come and get you."
"There you are, babysitting a couple of innocent children and suddenly you're tied, gagged and blindfolded."
"What are you looking at? What are you aiming at?"
"- She might know something about pawing guys after all.
- No she doesn't.
- Oh yes, I *know* she does."
"Ouch!"
"I don't know if I want to be in the safe-deposit-box-club."
"- We *must* have a web cam when we have that one-week-DFS in
Halmstad.
- What? Do we have to verify their prejudices about us?"
"Helena, why don't you draw a polar bear with a blond wig as a symbol of SweDFS?"
"I know! We make a 3D-rendation from a bag that isn't even visible in the original pictures from the surveillance camera."
"We are Graendal's twin sisters.. But Graendal is a bit faint-hearted"
"I don't want this one, it's been between your legs."
"He jumped when I did that, he never have done anything like that before.
"Damn! I've got two hands left."
"Now it's a snake pit down here."
"Damn, nothing's happening."
"- The other guests maybe gets the wrong impression about us.
- No, I think they get the *right* impression, the question is,
do we want them to?"
[Karl-Johan: Not that anything we do is really weird by DFS standards...]
We stood almost alone outside in the middle of the street, abandoned with the rain soaking both our hair and clothes, our minds where then for perhaps the first and last time linked together, we wanted to go *somewhere* dry. So we said, and so we did. Our feet took us away from the rain, and somehow we ended up outside a bookstore, only they where closed. We went to the next, not very far from the other one, but we though "Nah, they don't have the books we're looking for". The result? Tradition, a RPG-store which happened to be placed within the same building.
[Karl-Johan: For _very_ large values of building.]
We looked, we smelled the paper on the rule books and none of us bought anything. Well, almost, Karl-Johan bought three books with the excuse "just so I have a complete set at home". Now Patrik and Carin left us and soon CD departed as well, there was much hugging to be witnessed. The rest of us still talked a bit while I was being "escorted" to my train.
[Karl-Johan: Yeah, but it wasn't rule books. And when I came home I found out I had _all_ _three_ already. *sigh* It's 16, 28, 29 and 40 I need (I had the first and the last of those but my brother have managed to dispose it somewhere...)]
[Patrik: Carin got something as well, though I never found out what.]
[Carin: And you are...? NOW everyone wants to know don't they. Ha ha
ha ha. Well, nothing just a late X'mas present to a friend of mine.]
And some of us still wonders if Helena and David where caught for "indecent behavior in a public area"...
[Carin: I don't think so... You need to fly abroad to join the 10000 metres-club.]
We who still remained decided that We Were Hungry(tm) and set out for some decent food place in Nordstan (ie that big building we spent half the day in). After walking around a lot we discovered that the only places open were McDonald's and Pizza Hut. We chose the latter.
Bad Choice. It was a Pizza Hut which tried to emulate a fine french restaurant. Put succintly, it Just Did Not Work. At least Jimmy caught up with us and then in the very last instant managed to change his Pepsi to a Jaffa.
After that we went back to the train station and purchased a post card which we sent to Jordan c/o Tor Books. Including a question about "brother-husbands". But it didn't get posted in Gothenburg but in Stockholm. Not that I think he'll note the difference.
"You don't get any!"
[Carin: What?]
[Nicklas: Seems to some sort of a mantra for Helena... She said it at
least twice to David.]
And last, said to us by someone passing by:
"You look like a gang that has fallen out of that christmas tree."
END
Karl-Johan Norén,
kjnoren@hem3.passagen.se