I was there!
-First day was Thursday, I had a pretty nice ride with some friends to Hannover. Drive was fun and chill. I didn't have anything to do and just wanted to get situated with my stuff and maybe try to find a place to sleep at. TaKe grabbed me from the entrance and I headed over to XMG where I should commentate on the next day. It was really confusing and exhausting and I mainly ended up chilling in front of the stage and watching stuff. Talked to Socke and SjoW, met Bumble and a few other mouz guys.
TLO, Nazgul, IdrA, MorroW, qxc. drooL behind them on an actual chair.
It turned out that there was no way I would get a place to crash with my sleeping bag so I had to sleep over at my grandparents'. That was going to be more of a hassle with getting to the event (and getting back ofc) but I probably had the most comfortable bed out of all the other guys :p
-Friday morning started with me not getting on my train because there was a strike. Didn't know about that beforehand which made me be kind of desperate because I had a casting gig pretty soon. Back in front of the train station I met 2 business guys and a young woman who had the same problem and joined up with them for a taxi. Plus I didn't even have to pay for it because businessman 1 took care of it. Also, I was at the wrong side of the exhibit area so I couldn't get TaKe to give me my entrance pass. Np, businessman 1 gave me one of the ones he had left over. Sooo easy. I hurried to the Schenker Notebooks/XMG booth were I was supposed to cast the finals of the XMG cup series, but the guys were a bit slow and there were a lot of technical difficulties that they should've taken care of wayyy earlier. We started an hour late but it was pretty fun, although commentating in German was really weird - got used to it after a few games anyways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYeqd8Tsmw8
Me casting in German (2nd game ever - still feeling weird) with quick post-game interview.
After the semis and finals were done, I headed over to mouz and watched IdrA and MorroW play some offrace games and had some nice talk with Nazgul.
I don't think they really hold a grudge
Then I rushed over to ASUS where I was told to cast some Socke vs DarKFoRcE showmatches. I arrived and they were all really sluggish - didn't have anything setup and the players didn't really know what was supposed to be going on although Jonathan came from Bavaria solely for this "event". Long story short: after we had setup (~1hour) the WLAN got really unstable and there was no way a BO5 could be played since we already lagged out in game 1. We postponed it to Saturday. Epic waste of time :>
mouz hangout. Standard. (Hasu, Khaldor, MaNa, qxc)
Rest of the day was watching some games on stage and hanging out (mouz booth, naturally). When everyone was about to leave I heard that TLO, Nazgul and RotterdaM were to grab some food in the city, so I joined them. Rotti ended up staying because XMG had a booth party with a very nice DJ and pretty hot booth-babes. Guess what made Kevin stay. :p
Rotti rather trashed the day after.
So I had dinner with Victor and Dario in a very nice restaurant. Good times.
After that, when heading home I had to change trains in some town. Got on the wrong one and went right back to Hannover. It felt so good to be back. -.-
The guy who made this must have had a similar feeling of stupidity when he realized. Maybe there is a joke that I don't get though.
-Saturday was pretty much the coolest of the 3 days. Started out with hanging out at the mousesports booth (basically the place to be), watched the 3rd place game on one of the PCs there, played some customs just for fun ("join game" on bnet -> ez way to pwn some noobs) while MorroW laughed at me for being bad. During one game I got a call from an ASUS guy, so qxc just took over the game I just played. Opponent didn't believe it though :/ After that I went over to the ASUS booth to finally do the showmatches between Socke and DarKFoRcE. Went pretty smooth and Socke rolled his mate 3-0 on Tal'darim Altar, Metalopolis + Xel'Naga Caverns.
SC2 finals crowd, pic kinda related to text below.
After that the finals had started and they wouldn't let anyone in anymore. I asked if press/semi-VIP was allowed and he said 'Yeah sure' but I had forgotten my badge >_> So I called out my buddy from Fragster and he got me in and into the Deutsche Post VIP Lounge as well :D Place to be no. 2: free cocktails (pretty nice ones too), other drinks and food and really nice service maids. So we had some drinks and watched the finals from that sweet little place we had After the finals had finished and the noise went down a little bit we went back to mouz, and watched some showmatches between qxc and SycK, the new mouz recruit, who is a pretty decent Zerg.
qxc duking it out with SycK, who you probably haven't heard of.
The hall started getting empty quite quickly and after it got boring we and Hasu went back up to the VIP Lounge for some more drinks, Socke and ClouD were already there. After some minutes WhiteRa showed up out of nothing, pleasant surprise
drooLRa
And that was pretty much the last thing that happened that day. People started leaving, and I went around and said goodbye to various guys and had some last conversations. Amazing how many nice characters I met and got to know Looking forward to the next event <3
Greetings to: Socke, DarKFoRcE, GoOdy, ClouD, MaNa, MorroW, Bumble, Hasu, SjoW, qxc, mOOnGLaDe, diejule, RotterdaM, TLO, Nazgul (thanks again <3), Oli/Marth, the XMG guys, the RAZER guys, the ESFI guys and of course TaKe
Little stuff:
-MorroW played IdrA at the Mouz booth. Offrace fun. MorroW pwned IdrA PvT because "mech is terrible against Protoss". He played well though, too, with a nice blink/Zealot/Immortal combo. qxc stood by IdrA, coaching a little bit :p See pic above in the text.
-RotterdaM is really tall. And (oh surprise) likes the ladies. Pretty slick in that regard. He also tried the leather gracket (yes, THE leather gracket) and it actually didn't look too bad at all :D
-That said, qxc is surprisingly short. So are Khaldor, SjoW and mOOnGLaDe.
-Day9 seemed like he was really zoned out between games, cannot blame him at all. After I talked to him though, we met on the toilet a minute later and he outpissed everyone. He was still pissing when I was finished although I started at least 10 seconds late. Baller at life, Starcraft and everything else. From what I'm hearing he's sick right now as I finish this blog up. Get well soon Sean!
-ClouD was just as nice as I expected him to be. Goody and Socke are obviously pretty chill too.
-If more stuff comes to my mind, I'll edit it in.
PS1: Sorry for crappy picture quality/not that many pics. It was the first time for me having a camera at hand and I wasn't really fast enough with my trigger finger at a lot of times and also too lazy. And I'm not that used to making photos, that's why some are shaky. Anyways, I had a blast and I promise to bring better quality pics next time!
PS2: If some text is incoherent, tell me, I'll fix it. This was written over the course of 4 days and partly backwards in time, so there might be some idiocy that I haven't caught when I proofread.