Wolf's Bane 2 - "Pre-Con"
Oh damn it, I’m way too excited. Still. *lol* I wanted to start my “report” tomorrow, but I kinda can’t wait and so I decided to just start… =)
You all know that my journey already started on 9th of July when I left home for Vienna in the evening where I met with a friend and had dinner and something to drink and around 8 my train to Cologne left. It was already there like 30 minutes earlier, so I could get in and get settled.
It wasn’t exactly a “relaxing” night and I didn’t get much sleep because until like 1 in the morning people were still getting into the cabin I was in and then around 5.30 people started to “get out” again. And I mean, about 30 minutes before everyone had to get off the train one of the employees came to wake them and bring them some coffee, which yeah, was kind of nice, but I would have found it even nicer to get “paired up” with people leaving the train the same station I did, and so it was more like an “on-off” thing to get some sleep.
And of COURSE I was pretty damn tired and exhausted when I got off the train in Cologne.
But it wasn’t THAT bad.
I met up with Isabel (who stayed at my place during Alpha Con) - we found each other pretty easily - and we ended up eating something at McDonalds before we looked which train etc. we had to get to get from the train station to the airport.
Didn’t take us long and it was actually fairly easy to get around.
And it was only like 15 minutes to get to the airport.
It took us a while longer to find our Terminal and then we had to wait until around 11 for it to open. I have no idea why, but “flybe” (the company we flew with) didn’t have one of those “self-check-in” thingies in Cologne, and so we had to queue to get our boarding passes.
We looked around a bit afterwards and then sat down to drink something and talked a bit before we had to get to our gate and shortly afterwards a bus brought us to the plane.
A pretty small plane I wanna mention.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a small plane.
Usually they push those stairs against the planes to get in and usually there are at least 2 entrances, but this time there was only 1 and like 5 stairs and I think the stairs were basically the door. And the plane was pretty damn tight too. But somehow we managed.
We landed in Birmingham around 3 Birmingham time and there we waited for our roommate Fiona, who would come by train to the airport so we could meet up with her. We didn’t have to wait for very long, though and when she was finally there we wanted to take a bus to our hotel since we heard it was pretty easy. Well… Probably for the people from around there. We didn’t find a plan or anything like that and ended up taking the taxi.
But it was “only” 10 £ and we were 3 people, so it’s not THAT bad (and the bus would have cost 2,10 too, so not THAT much of a difference).
We checked into the hotel - paid the hotel - and then went to our room, and DAMN, that room was GORGEOUS. I should have made a picture. Like seriously. I don’t know why I didn’t (because last time when I was in London, I did), but it was MUCH bigger than I expected. Especially for that price. There was this huge double bed and then there was like a metre in between and a single bed and it was just so spacious. I was seriously surprised.
I mean, our room when I was at “Asylum 9” con in London was MUCH smaller and even more expensive than that one and for only 46 pounds for 4 (!!!) nights it was money well spent.
Me and Isabel decided after a while to get something to eat and such and since Fiona was tired she stayed in the room while we went to check out the supermarket. The lady at the reception said something about a 10 minutes walk, but damn, that was MUCH further - or maybe we just went to the wrong supermarket, I don’t know - but it took us at least 30 minutes to get there. But well… We still went by foot and got some things to eat and drink (like pot noodles and something for breakfast) and then we went back to the Hotel.
Fiona said we must have been gone around 90 minutes, maybe a little more… well, definitely felt like a long walk :D
We didn’t do much more this evening besides eating our food and talking a lot and decided to not stay up all too late, even though we could sleep in the next day.
Which we kinda did.
We didn’t get up until around 10.30 and it was really, really nice. And I was even able to sleep, which kinda surprised me to be honest, since I usually don’t sleep that well when I’m not in my own bed and those UK beds are quite high… I’m really not used to that…
Not that much to do for that day except registration and party later and so we stayed in our hotel room until around 2.30 and then checked out busses and went to the main train station and from there to the airport to get a bit of dinner.
And then the most crazy thing happened. We ran into a guy who looked EXACTLY like Mark Pellegrino, but wasn’t him. Especially from the side. Seriously. IT WAS FUCKING CRAZY. And we were watching him for a while like some crazy stalkers *lol* And then when we sat down to eat something he sat down the table right after ours and we had REAL difficulties not to stare at him ALL THE TIME *lol*
Isabel and me managed to kinda take a picture of him. Not sure if he noticed it, but it was kinda funny. Fiona called us both crazy, because she was too scared to take one herself, but seriously. How could I not? :P
(Mark Pellegrino Look-Alike)
We went back to the train station from where we could walk over to the NEC and from there to the “Hilton Metropole” hotel where the convention would take place - and therefore the registration - and when we walked in A LOT of people were there. So we sat down in the lounge waiting since registration for Upgrades was at 4.30 and for groups A to D should have started at 5.
I was group B (no idea how or why since Izzie was D and we booked and paid the same price) and in the beginning it ALL looked a bit chaotic. Especially when they started with registration and people were jumping upwards and running towards that room, so they had to kinda tell them to get in line and they would do it with groups.
It worked out better than I thought. I was almost expecting it to become a HUGE chaos, but it didn’t. Instead when my group was called I was able to get in, get my convention package and my wristband and walk out again and then I had to get into another room if I wanted to buy some photo ops. Okay… well… there were already A LOT of people in there and so that one didn’t go by all too quickly. I was in that room for maybe 45 minutes…
But Isabel came like 20 minutes after me and there were SO many people already so that I just winked her over to me, asking the girls behind me if it was okay for her to get in line next to me (or after me) and since no one had a problem with it, well…
It was pretty easy to get everything we wanted… I bought 2 pictures with Holland, 1 with Daniel, 1 with Ian, 1 with Stephen and 1 with Seth. And Daniel’s autograph. Unfortunately it wasn’t included in the ticket price since he was a sponsored guest, but I just HAD TO talk to him again and get his autograph, so yeah… that was also on my plan… which makes it a total of 6 pictures.
(Photo Coupons, Convention Package, Badge, Program and Booklet, and the list to check off the free autographs too :D So you see 7 autographs were included in the cheapest ticket already, not that bad, right? :D)
Isabel got her own pictures and the ones for Fiona (since she was group H and she would have never walked out of there again if she had to line up herself), and then we left to get something to eat.
And then the most funny thing ever happened.
We sat down in the lounge (that was the “restaurant” of the hotel) and ordered a portion of Potato Wedges deciding to share them - me and Isabel since Fiona was still registering - and then we waited for them and during that Fiona came back and then all of a sudden there was this waitress coming bringing us pizza and fries and a bottle of coke.
We were “WTF?” and told her “Sorry, we didn’t order that. We actually ordered Potato Wedges” and she was like “that’s a special offer” and we showed her our receipt asking her “Are you sure? Because we paid 4 £ and ONLY ordered potato wedges and she was like “yeah, special offer”… ehm… oooooookay. We didn’t think twice, although it was a LOT of food and so the THREE of us (me, Isabel and Fiona) had enough with what we got.
Thing is: When we had started eating there was another waiter coming over bringing potato wedges and we got quite confused.
In the beginning we thought they maybe had ran out of potato wedges and that’s why they kind of gave us the fries and pizza as some kind of compensation, even though it STILL wouldn’t have made sense, and when we were all pretty confused there was another waitress coming over telling us obviously some orders got mixed up and that those are our potato wedges.
Which yeah… we TRIED to clear up, but the other waitress was so persistent (I kid you not) telling us that’s what we get that we just started eating, and in the end we had 1 pizza, a bowl of fries AND potato wedges AND a whole bottle of coke (like 1,5 litre bottle) for fucking 4 £.
They didn’t even try to make us pay some more since OBVIOUSLY it wasn’t our fault and we would have NEVER started eating the pizza if that waitress hadn’t told us that’s ours…
So in the end it was quite funny… So much food for so little money *lol*
We went back to our hotel after eating to get ready for the party that would start around 9 pm. Theme was Superheroes. I mean, I didn’t do much except for taking a shower and putting on another shirt and neither of us dressed up.
(Sunset outside our hotel - it was beautiful. We took those pictures in between arriving back at the hotel and leaving for the party :D)
We were back at the hotel around 9.30 - we went with 2 girls who had a car and offered to take us with them since they were staying in the hotel next to ours.
The music at the party was quite fun and there were SO many great costumes. There was even one Sara Lance/Black Canary and one Roy Harper/Red Arrow (or whatever he’s going to be called in Season 3) and a lot of other costumes I have to feel ashamed for not recognizing like “Thor” and “Loki” (like Isabel told me) and yeah, people had put a lot of effort in lots of those costumes. It was really nice to watch.
There were also a few Lydia’s and Allison’s running around, and one of those Allison’s looked JUST LIKE HER. I kid you not. She was cosplaying Allison ALL WEEKEND and she was SO beautiful and she looked SO much like Crystal and everyone told her. She could have been her sister. Whenever I saw her I basically stared at her. Beautiful girl. And she had all those outfits, like the white dress and the jeans jacket or the blue pullover with the skirt and such. She’s probably been doing that for a while =)
They also had a professional photographer at the party who had built up a little photo studio in the corner and for 5 £ you could take pictures there with your friends that would get printed out until the next day and Isabel, Fiona and me decided to do one of those pictures in the “Charlie’s Angels” pose. The first one turned out terrible, but fortunately, they let us see the picture beforehand and so we could take another one right away and that one looked much better :D
(Fiona, me & Isabel - I kinda like the picture and think that was nice to have the photographer there :D)
We stayed at the party until around midnight and then got to the hotel with some kind of coach. Actually, he should have only brought us to the bus station (and then go back to the hotel again), but obviously he thought it was too dangerous for all of us girls (the coach was full and there were like 9 people in the back - including us) and so he brought us all to our hotels. FOR FREE. Which was completely awesome. Which he didn’t have to do. He drove to 4 different hotels and like I said. He was only supposed to bring us to the bus station.
We didn’t stay up much longer after we went back into our hotel room since we had to get up around 6.30 to get ready for the convention and everything.
I don’t know why but somehow I couldn’t sleep. I rolled around ALL NIGHT and I didn’t get a single second of sleep. And Isabel had problems with her nose and started snoring REALLY loudly. It’s not her fault, but after that started (and never stopped) it was completely over. I don’t know if Fiona got any sleep, but for ME it was impossible. I even got up and moved to the floor with a blanket and my pillow, hoping I wouldn’t hear it that much but the floor was terribly hard and yes… didn’t make it much better…
So around 6 I decided to get up, took my stuff, went into the bath room and started to get ready, waiting inside until the alarm went off and Fiona and Isabel had to get up as well… =D
More in Part 2… =D
And obviously it’s going to be 3 parts again, even though I thought since the Con itself was only 2 days I would only need 2 parts, so please bear with me. The “main action” starts tomorrow and part 2 of the report will follow tomorrow when I have slept a bit :D
You all know that my journey already started on 9th of July when I left home for Vienna in the evening where I met with a friend and had dinner and something to drink and around 8 my train to Cologne left. It was already there like 30 minutes earlier, so I could get in and get settled.
It wasn’t exactly a “relaxing” night and I didn’t get much sleep because until like 1 in the morning people were still getting into the cabin I was in and then around 5.30 people started to “get out” again. And I mean, about 30 minutes before everyone had to get off the train one of the employees came to wake them and bring them some coffee, which yeah, was kind of nice, but I would have found it even nicer to get “paired up” with people leaving the train the same station I did, and so it was more like an “on-off” thing to get some sleep.
And of COURSE I was pretty damn tired and exhausted when I got off the train in Cologne.
But it wasn’t THAT bad.
I met up with Isabel (who stayed at my place during Alpha Con) - we found each other pretty easily - and we ended up eating something at McDonalds before we looked which train etc. we had to get to get from the train station to the airport.
Didn’t take us long and it was actually fairly easy to get around.
And it was only like 15 minutes to get to the airport.
It took us a while longer to find our Terminal and then we had to wait until around 11 for it to open. I have no idea why, but “flybe” (the company we flew with) didn’t have one of those “self-check-in” thingies in Cologne, and so we had to queue to get our boarding passes.
We looked around a bit afterwards and then sat down to drink something and talked a bit before we had to get to our gate and shortly afterwards a bus brought us to the plane.
A pretty small plane I wanna mention.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a small plane.
Usually they push those stairs against the planes to get in and usually there are at least 2 entrances, but this time there was only 1 and like 5 stairs and I think the stairs were basically the door. And the plane was pretty damn tight too. But somehow we managed.
We landed in Birmingham around 3 Birmingham time and there we waited for our roommate Fiona, who would come by train to the airport so we could meet up with her. We didn’t have to wait for very long, though and when she was finally there we wanted to take a bus to our hotel since we heard it was pretty easy. Well… Probably for the people from around there. We didn’t find a plan or anything like that and ended up taking the taxi.
But it was “only” 10 £ and we were 3 people, so it’s not THAT bad (and the bus would have cost 2,10 too, so not THAT much of a difference).
We checked into the hotel - paid the hotel - and then went to our room, and DAMN, that room was GORGEOUS. I should have made a picture. Like seriously. I don’t know why I didn’t (because last time when I was in London, I did), but it was MUCH bigger than I expected. Especially for that price. There was this huge double bed and then there was like a metre in between and a single bed and it was just so spacious. I was seriously surprised.
I mean, our room when I was at “Asylum 9” con in London was MUCH smaller and even more expensive than that one and for only 46 pounds for 4 (!!!) nights it was money well spent.
Me and Isabel decided after a while to get something to eat and such and since Fiona was tired she stayed in the room while we went to check out the supermarket. The lady at the reception said something about a 10 minutes walk, but damn, that was MUCH further - or maybe we just went to the wrong supermarket, I don’t know - but it took us at least 30 minutes to get there. But well… We still went by foot and got some things to eat and drink (like pot noodles and something for breakfast) and then we went back to the Hotel.
Fiona said we must have been gone around 90 minutes, maybe a little more… well, definitely felt like a long walk :D
We didn’t do much more this evening besides eating our food and talking a lot and decided to not stay up all too late, even though we could sleep in the next day.
Which we kinda did.
We didn’t get up until around 10.30 and it was really, really nice. And I was even able to sleep, which kinda surprised me to be honest, since I usually don’t sleep that well when I’m not in my own bed and those UK beds are quite high… I’m really not used to that…
Not that much to do for that day except registration and party later and so we stayed in our hotel room until around 2.30 and then checked out busses and went to the main train station and from there to the airport to get a bit of dinner.
And then the most crazy thing happened. We ran into a guy who looked EXACTLY like Mark Pellegrino, but wasn’t him. Especially from the side. Seriously. IT WAS FUCKING CRAZY. And we were watching him for a while like some crazy stalkers *lol* And then when we sat down to eat something he sat down the table right after ours and we had REAL difficulties not to stare at him ALL THE TIME *lol*
Isabel and me managed to kinda take a picture of him. Not sure if he noticed it, but it was kinda funny. Fiona called us both crazy, because she was too scared to take one herself, but seriously. How could I not? :P
(Mark Pellegrino Look-Alike)
We went back to the train station from where we could walk over to the NEC and from there to the “Hilton Metropole” hotel where the convention would take place - and therefore the registration - and when we walked in A LOT of people were there. So we sat down in the lounge waiting since registration for Upgrades was at 4.30 and for groups A to D should have started at 5.
I was group B (no idea how or why since Izzie was D and we booked and paid the same price) and in the beginning it ALL looked a bit chaotic. Especially when they started with registration and people were jumping upwards and running towards that room, so they had to kinda tell them to get in line and they would do it with groups.
It worked out better than I thought. I was almost expecting it to become a HUGE chaos, but it didn’t. Instead when my group was called I was able to get in, get my convention package and my wristband and walk out again and then I had to get into another room if I wanted to buy some photo ops. Okay… well… there were already A LOT of people in there and so that one didn’t go by all too quickly. I was in that room for maybe 45 minutes…
But Isabel came like 20 minutes after me and there were SO many people already so that I just winked her over to me, asking the girls behind me if it was okay for her to get in line next to me (or after me) and since no one had a problem with it, well…
It was pretty easy to get everything we wanted… I bought 2 pictures with Holland, 1 with Daniel, 1 with Ian, 1 with Stephen and 1 with Seth. And Daniel’s autograph. Unfortunately it wasn’t included in the ticket price since he was a sponsored guest, but I just HAD TO talk to him again and get his autograph, so yeah… that was also on my plan… which makes it a total of 6 pictures.
(Photo Coupons, Convention Package, Badge, Program and Booklet, and the list to check off the free autographs too :D So you see 7 autographs were included in the cheapest ticket already, not that bad, right? :D)
Isabel got her own pictures and the ones for Fiona (since she was group H and she would have never walked out of there again if she had to line up herself), and then we left to get something to eat.
And then the most funny thing ever happened.
We sat down in the lounge (that was the “restaurant” of the hotel) and ordered a portion of Potato Wedges deciding to share them - me and Isabel since Fiona was still registering - and then we waited for them and during that Fiona came back and then all of a sudden there was this waitress coming bringing us pizza and fries and a bottle of coke.
We were “WTF?” and told her “Sorry, we didn’t order that. We actually ordered Potato Wedges” and she was like “that’s a special offer” and we showed her our receipt asking her “Are you sure? Because we paid 4 £ and ONLY ordered potato wedges and she was like “yeah, special offer”… ehm… oooooookay. We didn’t think twice, although it was a LOT of food and so the THREE of us (me, Isabel and Fiona) had enough with what we got.
Thing is: When we had started eating there was another waiter coming over bringing potato wedges and we got quite confused.
In the beginning we thought they maybe had ran out of potato wedges and that’s why they kind of gave us the fries and pizza as some kind of compensation, even though it STILL wouldn’t have made sense, and when we were all pretty confused there was another waitress coming over telling us obviously some orders got mixed up and that those are our potato wedges.
Which yeah… we TRIED to clear up, but the other waitress was so persistent (I kid you not) telling us that’s what we get that we just started eating, and in the end we had 1 pizza, a bowl of fries AND potato wedges AND a whole bottle of coke (like 1,5 litre bottle) for fucking 4 £.
They didn’t even try to make us pay some more since OBVIOUSLY it wasn’t our fault and we would have NEVER started eating the pizza if that waitress hadn’t told us that’s ours…
So in the end it was quite funny… So much food for so little money *lol*
We went back to our hotel after eating to get ready for the party that would start around 9 pm. Theme was Superheroes. I mean, I didn’t do much except for taking a shower and putting on another shirt and neither of us dressed up.
(Sunset outside our hotel - it was beautiful. We took those pictures in between arriving back at the hotel and leaving for the party :D)
We were back at the hotel around 9.30 - we went with 2 girls who had a car and offered to take us with them since they were staying in the hotel next to ours.
The music at the party was quite fun and there were SO many great costumes. There was even one Sara Lance/Black Canary and one Roy Harper/Red Arrow (or whatever he’s going to be called in Season 3) and a lot of other costumes I have to feel ashamed for not recognizing like “Thor” and “Loki” (like Isabel told me) and yeah, people had put a lot of effort in lots of those costumes. It was really nice to watch.
There were also a few Lydia’s and Allison’s running around, and one of those Allison’s looked JUST LIKE HER. I kid you not. She was cosplaying Allison ALL WEEKEND and she was SO beautiful and she looked SO much like Crystal and everyone told her. She could have been her sister. Whenever I saw her I basically stared at her. Beautiful girl. And she had all those outfits, like the white dress and the jeans jacket or the blue pullover with the skirt and such. She’s probably been doing that for a while =)
They also had a professional photographer at the party who had built up a little photo studio in the corner and for 5 £ you could take pictures there with your friends that would get printed out until the next day and Isabel, Fiona and me decided to do one of those pictures in the “Charlie’s Angels” pose. The first one turned out terrible, but fortunately, they let us see the picture beforehand and so we could take another one right away and that one looked much better :D
(Fiona, me & Isabel - I kinda like the picture and think that was nice to have the photographer there :D)
We stayed at the party until around midnight and then got to the hotel with some kind of coach. Actually, he should have only brought us to the bus station (and then go back to the hotel again), but obviously he thought it was too dangerous for all of us girls (the coach was full and there were like 9 people in the back - including us) and so he brought us all to our hotels. FOR FREE. Which was completely awesome. Which he didn’t have to do. He drove to 4 different hotels and like I said. He was only supposed to bring us to the bus station.
We didn’t stay up much longer after we went back into our hotel room since we had to get up around 6.30 to get ready for the convention and everything.
I don’t know why but somehow I couldn’t sleep. I rolled around ALL NIGHT and I didn’t get a single second of sleep. And Isabel had problems with her nose and started snoring REALLY loudly. It’s not her fault, but after that started (and never stopped) it was completely over. I don’t know if Fiona got any sleep, but for ME it was impossible. I even got up and moved to the floor with a blanket and my pillow, hoping I wouldn’t hear it that much but the floor was terribly hard and yes… didn’t make it much better…
So around 6 I decided to get up, took my stuff, went into the bath room and started to get ready, waiting inside until the alarm went off and Fiona and Isabel had to get up as well… =D
More in Part 2… =D
And obviously it’s going to be 3 parts again, even though I thought since the Con itself was only 2 days I would only need 2 parts, so please bear with me. The “main action” starts tomorrow and part 2 of the report will follow tomorrow when I have slept a bit :D