Alternative Party 2013 - Felice's thoughts.

It is the month of October and once again, two longtime travelling friends make the regular trip to Gatwick Airport in order to ensure they don't miss the mid-October weekend in Helsinki. The weekend itself, long looked forward to for most of the year after the regular annual visit to the Netherlands for Outline comes up without too much fuss and bother.

I had been doing some research into flights for quite a while and as a result of this, plus also with thanks to Nosfe and other sceners, decided to book our flights with an airline we'd not travelled with before known as Norwegian Air Shuttle, or Norwegian for short. With a recommendation from Nosfe in particular dating back a couple of years or so from the time that we heard that Easyjet were abandoning flights to Helsinki, Norwegian proved themselves to be a more than useful alternative to Easyjet even though both carriers are budget airlines.

The flight was delayed very slightly on the way out but time was made up on the flight up to our second home city, this being Helsinki. We took off from Gatwick at a not too late time despite having an early start on the Friday morning from my home to get to the airport. Landing at Helsinki was a bit bumpy but we got down safely and were into the familiar terminal building in Vantaa without too many difficulties. This was the first time we'd travelled to Helsinki with hand luggage only and this helped a great deal, as we could clear customs and pick up the familiar 615 airport bus service into the centre of Helsinki without any problem.

The hotel we'd picked to stay in was the Cumulus Hakaniemi, located almost next to the underground metro station of the same name and the airport bus dropped us almost opposite the front door, so we got into the hotel, paid for our room and got checked in. The room itself was very comfortable and clean with the deal also including breakfast. We decided to treat ourselves to our first meal at Hesburger, as one of their restaurants was close by the hotel.

Alternative Party itself was being held this time at a different location to before - the Kattilahalli in Suvilahti. The location itself also included a decent bar / cafe and a sauna, which were used by most, if not all, people that attended the party.

When we arrived on the Friday evening, a little while after the party had opened, things were fairly quiet but had begun to pick up in readiness for the evening's entertainment. This largely included music from two artists, one who had played at a previous AltParty event in 2005, Alymysto. The other was a one-man band called Approx who sounded quite good. Unfortunately, due to our overall tiredness we didn't see Alymysto perform, which was a shame but both CiH and myself had been up since around 2am or so UK time (2 hours behind Finnish time) and we're getting on a bit; so we gracefully retired back to our hotel to get some much needed sleep. However, the evening did include an interlude of a couple of hours when Setok and Wiztom took us over to the cafe / bar for a few drinks. Yes, the drinks were quite pricey compared to even what we would pay here in rip-off UK but the wine was good. I think CiH could vouch for the beer that he tried being good too. After a couple of said glasses of wine in my case and beer in Chris's case, along with some chatting with Truck, T101 and one or two others, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

Saturday morning and we were up fairly much bright and early. We enjoyed our first breakfast at the hotel in the dining area, heading over to the party shortly afterwards via the metro and a short walk from Sornainen metro station over to the party place. Saturday daytime was fairly quiet until around 1630 or so, when more sceners started to appear, though we did manage to see something of Diamondie, Babyneko and the other sceners who were already at the party, including Pahartik. On the Saturday morning we had a prearranged meet-up with an old friend, Henna, who we took to a coffee shop nearby for a catchup and long-awaited drink & relax. We also, just before leaving for the party had purchased a box of red wine (in my case) and some whisky (for Chris to share out) from the Alko store which was in the round building close to our hotel.

After the conversations in the coffee shop we went our separate ways, CiH, Paavo and myself heading back to the party and Henna off to her next appointment. We had mentioned to her about the after party sauna; once we told her we had some red wine she was very interested. More to follow on that either later on in this article or in CiH's more detailed report that should also be in this issue.

The compos were held as usual on the Saturday evening though we were once again taken out by Setok and Wiztom, along with another group of Finnish friends, to a pub for a drink or too. Beforehand we'd met up with Q-Funk for a lovely meal at a Russian restaurant. Back to the party place later in the evening for the competitions, the entries were all very good though it was a shame not to have seen any releases from Viznut / PWP this time. The big man himself was certainly in the house but he'd not had a great deal of time recently to code much, with other good personal stuff that had been taking up his time quite a bit.

Competitions over, things quietened down once again and we left shortly afterwards to head to bed. On the Sunday, the winners were announced and we ended up attending a brunch that was organised in the cafe which had been a bar earlier on in the weekend. The sauna after party followed afterwards and this was very good as usual.

There had been a theme of 'getting back to the roots' with Alternative Party as a difference from previous years and this was reflected in the lack of stuff going on during the daytime in the main hall. I unfortunately didn't get a chance to attend any of the talks in Happi, the youth centre which was being used for the talks and would maybe suggest that all the talks are held in the main hall, to get people back in during the daytime. The overall thing at Altparty 2013 this time, I felt, was quieter but I would like to stress that it was still very much an enjoyable event. The team who organised it all had not been formed until earlier in 2013 but they did a fantastic job overall. T-shirts were on sale, official as well as non-ALT branded and these went down very well at the reasonable price they were being charged for. Special mention has to be made to Thoron and Nicole (Babyneko) for their enthusiastic selling of the t-shirts. I was so tempted to get a few for the computing museum that I volunteer for back in Cambridge but heard from the head that we couldn't afford them at that time, so they were left where they were for now. Hopefully this situation will change soon as the shirts were very cool.

I hope to see more sceners at future Alternative Party events. It always has been a worthwhile party to attend and our close Finnish friends appreciated our attendance there, we were aware of that for sure.

Felice.

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