(2016 note:- Can I EVER get away from this party? After all these years, a dusty corpse of a party report emerges for the first ever demo party that I attended, yes it's bloody Symposium '96 again! - CiH, Jan 2016.)

                     SYMPOSIUM 96 PARTY REPORT
                     -------------------------

  Done by Slimer

The Symposium 96 was held near the German city of Hamburg in a village called Hittfeld on 5 till 8 april. The DBA crew left four men strong in the early morning of Friday (day one). KGE had arranged a stationwagon including a ski- box(coffin). The car was packed to the brim as we packed beside the usuall goods, five computers, five monitors and microwave oven.

After a ride(including pits-stop) of approx. 4 hours we arrived without much trouble at the The Burg-Seevetal Conference Centre. Hittfeld is a very small rustic village with an old church in the middle. I seemed to be the only one to notice the interesting buildings as the other didn't seem to care. We arrived around 12:30, payed the entrance fee of 35DM and started unloading the car.

The party centre could be described as a modern building with two large rooms and a few smaller ones and the main hall. The main hall contained a bar were you could get drinks and food for ridiculus high prizes(one litre Coke for 5DM and a slice of pizza for 4DM). All the computer platforms got their own area, the Atari scene had their own room, the smallest. There was a room with a large screen on which video and demo's were displayed, this room was mostly occupied with Amiga and PC owners. Other computer platforms present were Acorn Archimedes and CBM64.

We (DBA) took a complete row of tables all for ourselves in the back of the room. Later that afternoon the other members of the Dutch Falcon scene arrived. At the end of the afternoon the Dutchies had their own space in the crowed room. Sentry brought their Stereo and VCR but got a warning not to play their music to loud. There were more restrictions like not showing porno-pics, which we did anyway. We already knew that this party wouldn't be as good as the good old Fried Bits parties of the previous years.

Despite the restrictions we made the best of it all. The organization wasn't that good as we had trouble finding sleeping places. Only one small room was avialable with only room for 40/50 people and there were at least 400 people on the party! There were only a few toilets available and there were no showers! The only positive thing was that the toilets got cleaned every morning! People who wanted to take a shower had to go somewhere else.

Finding food was also a difficult quest! There was no McDonalds in the immediate proximity nor a decent pizzarestaurant. We had to do with Chinese food and fake pizza's. Some of us ate artificial microwave meals that were bought in the only supermarket in the village. The supermarket had a limited assortment of food and was expensive. We had to drive to another village to get crisps and other party food.

The competitions were chaotic as they didn't got annouced properly. I was sad to see that there weren't many Falcon demos. It was a mostly dominated by Amiga computers. Sentry worked on a 96Ktro but the competition was almost cancelled because there weren't enough entries. Bonus(DBA) managed to cook up a 96Ktro in 45 minutes and thus saving the competition. OTM (DBA) was coding a 4Ktro with multiple effects in it, but heard that only one effect was allowed. He threw out the multicolour effects and entered the competiton only to find that the others DID use multiple effects. The competiton rules clearly stated that only one effect was allowed. Needless to say that we were all pissed off!!

There were of course positive things as well. We met lotsa people and saw some old friends. I was honoured to meet Chris Holland, Richard and the others of the Maggie team which turned out to be friendly bunch of guys. I also met Greg of Coma diskmag and his friend! Most people of the Dutch scene were present and it's always a pleasure to party with them. Anyway, we made the best of it. I shot some film on the party, so we can have a laugh afterwards.

The last day of the party arrived sooner than expected, on the otherhand I was longing to get some decent sleep and a shower, so I wasn't really griefing. We packed our stuff and said our goodbye's and took off. On the way home we almost had a car accident as some moron in a mobile home suddenly switched lanes on the motorway. KGE had to hit breaks and we were lucky not to hit anything or get hit from behind.

Sometime later we stopped by one of the many fastfood restaurants and we eat and drunk something, making us feel a bit better because four days of partying had took its toll. I'm still not fully recovered though (yawn). Read the real- time article for all the details and nonsense that took place on the party. Thanks got to the guys of Maggie for their contributions. They almost took over the whole article! You will also find a comprehensive party report in Maggie 20!

Some special greetings go to the people who made the party worthwhile:

The Dutch scene:

Sentry(Eagle, T-tje and XCT-1) for showing weird video's and producing the
winning 96 Ktro!
Giants(Havoc for the usuall crap)
Fox and Goof for being very nice dude's
Wingleader the lonely Synergy member
The Tos Crew(Ins_Allah and Mr N!)
and some other Dutch weirdo's

Others:

All those weird guys from the UK (Maggie team and Reservoir Gods)
Coma Team
NPG (Carnera)
Lazer (Energizer)
All those of Absence (Stallion and co)
The rest of the Falcon scene


Slimer.

Back to the Commemorations.