Revision - and why more Atari sceners should attend.

For Easter 2013, myself, my wife and CiH decided to do something different - we decided to make the trip over to Saarbrucken in order to attend the Revision 2013 demo party, that was being held at the E-Werk within the city.

I was originally one of the Atari sceners at Mekka Symposium 2002, so can understand the frustration as to why Atari sceners did not bother to attend the Breakpoint or Revision demo parties in recent years. Organization, at least, to us as the Atari scene, was not that good at the time and comfort levels were also quite low too. However, our faith has been restored by the current Easter party, which is held at the city of Saarbrucken, in southwestern Germany, since 2011.

We had been turned off the big Easter parties, largely after MS2k2, but after quite a while and realising that Easter in itself was quite an empty time, we decided, after watching the live stream from Revision 2011 and 2012, that we'd make the trip over to Saarbrucken, for a change, and see how things went from there. My wife, a while before we got together, had been to Dresden and Leipzig in Germany about a month or so after the 3rd Error in Line party. She was very fond of Germany, having visited a number of friends there in years previously.

So it was that Easter 2013 came around and we booked the hotel in Saarbrucken, got the Eurotunnel crossing booked and headed on over to the European mainland during the late morning of Maundy Thursday. The drive to Saarbrucken was straightforward with the help given by my satnav; taking us via France and Belgium, down through Luxembourg and into Germany, getting to the hotel in Saarbrucken just after eight-thirty in the evening, German time.

Once refreshed, on the Friday morning we took a short stroll out to do some sightseeing around the city. Whilst the city was largely closed due to it being Good Friday, we did enjoy what we could see then. We then headed over to Revision 2013 a little while later on and got seats near the back of the hall.

Whilst we were at the party, we had set up our ST's, mine running various demos thanks to the new HxC device I had bought in 2012 from Lotharek at the Sillyventure party in Poland. These gained quite a lot of respectful interest from other non-Atari sceners who were at Revision, with a number of enquiries to show particular demos again that I had stored as images on the SD card that mine was using.

CiH had his STe with the Ultrasatan drive; quite a bit of interest was shown at his setup too.

Whilst there had been historical issues with shuttles at previous parties, this was no longer the case. The hotels in Saarbrucken that sceners could stay at were well connected with shuttles allowing transport back to the hotels late at night. Saarbrucken itself appears to be a safe city during the day for walking around but nights may be different, so the fact that regular shuttle buses were available to get us back to the hotel helped a lot.

We certainly enjoyed Revision 2013 on a personal level and have felt subsequently that this will not be the only time we visit. Obviously, like everything else, it is down to finances and available time; hopefully we'll see more Atari sceners at future Revision demo parties.

Maybe we'll see more Atari sceners at Revision 2014 ? We plan to be there again, hope you'll be there too.

Felice.

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