Sorry for this slightly late Tracon summary post - let's get on with it!
My journey to Tampere actually started already on Thursday 6th September because I and
Jäätynyt Enkeli had decided to carpool with some other congoers from Oulu. It was soooooo much cheaper than going by train.
The driver picked us two up from Kemi 12:00 and then we drove to Oulu where we picked up two other con people. I soon opened up to these new people and the car trip was rather enjoyable.
At night we arrived to Tampere city, got lost but then found our way to the right sleeping place. It was some kind of campground with some small cottages one could hire. When we got to the campground I got the impression that only 4 people were allowed to be in each cottage, so at first there was some talk that me and
Jäätynyt Enkeli might have had to use some mad ninja skills to get a bed to sleep on.. but luckily there was no one checking the amount of people passing to the campground
at least not that late so it was safe, ahaha.
I must say it was COLD inside those cottages... but maybe that's because I picked the bunk bed right in front of the door. Not the smartest choice. *shrugs* Oh well, I solved that problem by sleeping with my clothes on... and a scarf. It was extra cold too because I didn't have any duvet covers.. no one told me I needed those...
Friday morning finally came after a rather cold night
(but it was cheap so I can't really complain) and I woke up and decided to eat my breads I had made yesterday for the carpool. I was worried they might have gotten moldy already but they were still fresh.
After breakfast I played some on my Nintendo DS and then everyone wanted to go to a foodstore to buy coffee and whatnot. After the foodstore trip me and
Jäätynyt Enkeli got a ride to Tampere's train station where we awaited
Ri-kun's arrival.
Ri-kun soon came and we then started our trip to the Omenahotel. This time we had the one Omenahotel farther away because we were pretty late on booking.
(last year me, Ri-kun and LittleOcean had the closer Omenahotel with the emocorner. <3)
We got to the hotel and later Mira-kun finally showed up, yay everyone is here!
The rest of Friday evening was random hotel derping.. until it was time to go to bed. We didn't find the duvet covers for the two extra beds so we decided that everyone sleeps in the double bed! :'DD Well, it was an experience in itself, ahahah. Buuutttt. Being that close to 4 people soon turned on the sauna effect, not to mention it felt pretty crammed and whenever I managed to find a comfortable sleeping position a certain someone was moving away my legs so I always woke up.
At one point I decided I needed more room to sleep so I migrated over to one of the pillow-less and blanket-less extra beds. Again, it was cold. But I slept anyway.
Saturday morning came and when I woke up I noticed
Mira-kun sitting at the table while everyone else was still in their beds. Oh well, we had our breakfast and then it was time to put on Saturday cosplays, Tracon's first day! 8D
I cosplayed Hajime Saitou from Bakumatsu Renka: Shinsengumi.
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| Tracon studio photo by Emilia Lahtinen. |
Saturday was a rather rainy day... con weather brought to you by Desucon. lol
Most of the day our hotel group hung together and derped but we bumped into familiar faces too!
Around lunch time something we decided to go search for the ramen restaurant Hanabi. After a lot of searching we found out that it didn't exist anymore.. and I think a part of me died. No more Shingen Takeda ramen or Oda Nobunaga ramen. (yes, ramen dishes
were named after famous historical persons, it was fucking epic)
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| I HAD BEEN LONGING TO EAT AT HANABI SINCE LAST YEAR |
Oh well, we went to a Chinese restaurant instead and then
we went back to Tracon. Back at Tracon, the usual wandering alone and
looking at everything continued. My usual con routine because I'm too
lazy to attend panels (not interesting enough and if it's something that would interest me there's one hell of a queue...) and I mostly go to cons to spend time with my friends.. even though I end up only walking around until either my feet dies or my back breaks. lol
Our hotel group decided to leave Tracon a bit earlier than usual because everyone more or less was in some kind of pain and we decided that we had already seen what there was to be seen today.. and we wanted to spend time hotel derping again. XD Although this night everyone slept in their own beds.
Sunday arrived and it was time to put on the Hakuouki cosplays! For some reason our Hakuouki group always decided on Sunday being the Hakuouki day and that also makes Sunday the main day for us. The day you look forward to the most. So yeah, on with the cosplays and it was time to dress up as Isami Kondou!
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Tracon studio photo by Emilia Lahtinen.
Me as Kondou, Mira-kun as Okita. |
We had to take all our luggage with us to Tracon and check out. It wasn't so cool because my body decided to be weak as fuck already on the morning, before I had done anything WHAT_THE_FUCK again and trigger a lung derp. Wonderful. OTL Big thanks to Mira-kun for the help dragging my and Jäätynyt Enkeli's shit (aka luggage) to the con. ;A; <3
Oh well, we got to the con and soon we were trying to gather all our Hakuouki cosplay group members so that we could enter in the Välähdys cosplay photo competition. After that our group split into smaller groups again and I was hanging with
Mira-kun,
Ri-kun and
Jäätynyt Enkeli, just like yesterday.
At one point I heard my phone ringing, it was one of those carpool congoers I had traveled with. She said they will leave 15:00. Earlier there had been some talk whether or not one of the two cars
(aka the one me and my twin would take) would leave the con 17:00-18:00 but it seemed it got changed to 15:00 in the end. I think I died a bit again. Especially because this meant that I would miss the planned Hakuouki cosplay shooting and I would miss precious time to hang around with my friends whom I likely would not see again for the rest of this year...
Oh well, nothing to be done about it. I couldn't just go and take the train because it would have cost me an arm and a leg. 3 hours of extra con time is maybe not exactly worth 80 € after all. *sighs*
So the last minutes our hotel trio walked around Sorsalampi and we just had to stop to take a few quick shots
like this one before we continued over to the other side to say goodbye to
Jäärä,
Zkitsune,
Yamachu,
Ellu and the rest. But. When we got there they decided to do a mega quick ALL TOGETHER NOW Hakuouki shoot. I'm so happy. <3 But I was stressed out because I knew those people were waiting for me and my twin and when we "finished" I ran like a mofo back inside.
Lungs didn't like it, ahaha... It felt awesome when I noticed an Okita and a Saitou following. Totally warmed my heart. <3 We met up with the carpool people and I went and changed my Kondou wig into my Saitou wig because it was easier for travel and then I decided to take off my hakama too for the same reason. After that we left the con area, walked a bit to the cars close to the graveyard with
Mira-kun and
Ri-kun following even the last bit. Awwww. ;A; Some sad goodbye hugs ensued and the car was rolling........... to McDonalds. CHICKEN NUGGETS. IN THE CAR.
And then the journey up to Oulu started for real.
On Sunday night we were at Oulu and me and my twin slept at one of our maternal aunt's place again because any trains to Kemi didn't go that late.
Monday morning came, we packed our stuff and
Jäätynyt Enkeli went outside to meet up with one of the carpoolers because he had forgotten our train tickets in the car yesterday.
We got the tickets and headed straight for the train station, thinking we would be there just in time. When we got there and I looked at the train departure list something felt a bit off. I couldn't see our train's number anywhere... AND THEN I NOTICED THAT IT HAD DEPARTED ALMOST A FUCKING HOUR AGO. I HAD REMEMBERED THE TIME WRONG AND WE COULDN'T HAVE CHECKED IT EARLIER BECAUSE WE GOT THE TICKETS ALREADY TOO LATE.
I felt like I wanted to kill anything that moved when we stood there at rail 3 and waited for the next-to-depart Rovaniemi train's conductor to appear so that we could ask what the fuck to do now. The conductor came and we explained the situation without going into details and he was all "lol you can change the train tickets to this train."
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| BEST DAY EVAR |
So yeah, we went inside the train, the conductor came and changed our tickets like nothing had happened and we went on our way to Kemi. It is during times like this when you are so fucking happy you bought the (more expensive) standard train ticket instead of the (cheaper) advance ticket because seemingly the standard ticket allowed for changes... just in case you miss a train like we now did. It saved us money in the end. <3
All's Well That Ends Well ~
