Travelers life, day 1 of Gamescom

Travelers life, I love it and hate it at the same time. Here we are, sitting next to Laima store in Latvia, Riga's airport and waiting for our connecting flight to Frankfurt, Germany.

Like pretty much always (except for our trip to China), the day started way too early. I had decided to go to sleep early on Thursday night, but unfortunately we had our alt raid that day as well, and it was around 22:30 when we killed normal Ragnaros on 10-man and, I got to pack the rest of my stuff. I and arx had of course planned well ahead (as always) and our laundry was still wet as a dog when we went to sleep. We hoped that a couple of fans would do it and we didn't need to start our adventure naked.

Luckily everything was dry and ready the next morning at 6 am when we woke up, and after getting a bit of breakfast it was time to grab our stuff and step outside to the crisp morning air in Espoo. I and arx were more than half dead and didn't talk much, just tried to survive to the airport bus and to the airport. As we wanted to make 100% sure that we'd make it to the flight in time, so we ended up arriving to the airport 2,5 hours before the h-hour. I bought a (Discworld) book to entertain myself when arx was working, and we spent the next 2 hours in silence and too tired to form words. We woke up a bit when we took the plane to Latvia, Riga and the weather outside was just marvellous, a lot warmer than in Finland. We spent around 2 hours in Riga waiting for the connecting flight to Frankfurt, and wathed a movie to kill time. They started the boarding to the plane very late, and the whole flight ended up being late more than 40 minutes.

When we arrived to Frankfurt after 2 hours long flight we were pretty nervous about making it to the central railway station in time to catch the train. So we rushed to the cab, drove to the station and had barely time to buy something to eat before boarding the train. But my god, when we talk about long trains in Finland they have like max 7 cars, and this one had like 70+, at least it felt like that. Or well, maybe around 30 in reality, but our car was the one furthest out from the station, and as we arrived almost late, we had to carry the big luggage bag inside the cars and sweat like pigs. And then we realized the train would have stopped at the airport... but at least we made it to the right train and were on our way to Cologne.

We ate what we had had time to crab from Frankfurt station, killed some time by reading A Dance with Dragons and Unseen Academicals. Then it was time to contact our friend Hans, who me met for the first time in China, about how we could get to the hotel and the event. We ended up taking a cab to the hotel where Hans was waiting for us. He is part of the Manaflask staff, and we've come to know him well and like his unique (German) humor. While it's our own money on the table with the trip, Hans was the guy who took care of many of the neceassary arrangements in Cologne, and it was great that he also took care of us in addition to For the Horde and Ensidia members.

We had already travelled 12 hours when we arrived in Gamescom for the first time, so we both were very tired. It was still fun to meet the For the Horde guys (Drno, Eloi, Tarilya, Felyndiia, Ariohn, Smasher, Kalyn, Dexxz, Barrelroll), and Ensidia (Mek, Narilka, Santella, Deify, Rivah and Mancy) who also visited the event. We also met more of Manaflask's staff (Eoy, Nessaj, Deko, Kerrag, Tschatscha, Soe). It was great seeing Greatshock, Smasher and Felyndiia who we had met for the first time in China, and wespent good 30 minutes chatting with Smasher about how they survived their flight home after the night out in China.

Old and new friends at Gamescom

We chatted a bit with all the new and old faces, and checked out the huge Blizzard booth in hall 6. Even when it was quite late already during Friday, there were still a lot of people at the event. And the venue was just HUGE. There was 11 halls full of Gamescom, and 4 of the halls were pure e-sports, future games, consoles, and gaming related equipment. Hall 6 alone had Activision, Blizzard and like 12 more companies with huge booths, screens and of course booth girls. We promised ourselves we'd explore it all better on Sunday and Saturday when we had more time. We were all exhaused and headed back to the hotel for a dinner. The food was good, and there was a lot of it. I and arx chatted with Felyndiia and others who sit nearby, and ate way too much of bread while waiting for the hot food to arrive. I always make that mistake :/ Too sleepy to go to the party with some of the crazy duracel party guys, I and arx went to sleep to wake up fresh the next morning.

Having a dinner with For the Horde, Ensidia, and Manaflask members