Meeting-Report: Paris 25th-27th of July

Here is my report of the meeting in Paris. Thanks to Julia, who checked it, so there shouldn't be too many mistakes!



The best and worst meeting ever!

The FanForce meeting in Paris from 25th - 27th July 2003 was so eventful that I just wasn't able to fit everything into one meeting report. So I made two. Enjoy.



The meeting was horrible. We had so much bad luck, it's unbelievable.

Right at the beginning, on the way to our hostel, Julia?s wallet was stolen. She lost everything: Money, identity card, driver?s licence, credit card and so on.
We went to the police station immediately, but the officers weren?t exactly helpful, as they didn?t speak a single word of English, not to mention German. An American girl who was there to report a theft herself had to translate for us.

After that, we went to the hostel. The rooms were very small and dirty, the beds were uncomfortable, and there was no wardrobe to store our clothes.

Most of us booked together, so we could sleep in one room. (Well, two rooms ? one for the guys, one for the girls. ) But Jean, our honorary member, was supposed to sleep in another room full of strangers, most of them male.
Of course we couldn?t leave her there! Our two couples offered to share a bed for one night each, and Jean gratefully accepted.
So Flo and I squeezed into one of the (very narrow) beds together?it surely didn?t look comfortable!
For the others, the night was not much better. The bunk beds were so instable that every time someone moved, the person above resp. below could feel the bed swing.

We hadn?t had any food all day, except for a small sandwich on the plane. So we were quite hungry? but of course, it was late, and restaurants were already closed.
After searching for a while, we found a McDonald?s ? not exactly the famous French cuisine that we had wanted to try.

You?d think that?s enough bad things for one day, but it wasn?t over yet.

By now, it was way past midnight, and we wanted to get some sleep. But unfortunately, there was a party in the hall underneath our room. And the walls were very thin, so we could hear just about everything. Suffice to say that most of us didn?t get much sleep that night.

Things could only get better on the next day. Or so we thought.

The meeting with the FanForcers from France and Sweden was scheduled for nine o?clock in the morning at the Eiffel Tower, so we got up quite early. The breakfast at the hostel was yet another let-down: A single piece of bread for each person, some bad (and I mean bad) coffee and tea and a single jar of strawberry jam on the table - that was all?

Now it was finally time to meet the others. And here, the first good thing happened ? people were actually really nice!
The French FanForcers had arranged a program and acted as tour guides for us. Unfortunately, we were still ill-fated? it rained heavily all day long. So the view from top of the Eiffel Tower was quite blurred, and everything looked gray and unfriendly.

For dinner, the French had booked a restaurant for all of us. But we were so wet from all the rain that we decided to go back to the hostel and change clothes first.

At the hostel, the next bad surprise was waiting for us: We had to leave immediately!
The hostel staff had messed up when we checked in: We had to pay for one night only, and told us that the other night had already been charged by credit card ? but she was wrong. So the rest of the staff assumed that we wanted to stay for one night only, and gave our rooms to others. Of course, our luggage was still in the rooms! The new guests had thrown everything on the floor, to make room for their own stuff. We hope we didn?t lose anything in this chaos!

Now that we had picked up our stuff, the real problems began: Where to stay for the night? In the middle of the summer holidays, on the weekend of the finale of the Tour de France, and without any knowledge of the French language, it was pretty much impossible to find a room in another hostel.
The hostel

 

It can't be so worse!


But if it will be such a great meeting again... I don't know!

 

It's really ok, Julia! Thanks!

 

Oh, I hadn't heard about your bad luck on the Friday.

 

Ok, here's the page where I keep the updates of my picnic-dress, for the last con that I was to I made a budget-version. For my membership in the Rebel Legion I used the blue Tatooine dress.

 

No, I haven't done that one, I don't really have a figure for that dress.