Germanies largest Scene-event so far reviewed in a report. No party's perfect. Yet some are closer to perfection than others... It was a rather cold, quite windy and grey day, this 6th April 1996. Not so a damned good omen for yet another attempt to have a proper Scene-based party in Germany. There have been massive tries before. A lot of parties, the same amount of utter flops. German Scene parties always ended up in a big mess with the audience lusting for terror, the organisers at the end of their Scenish career - sometimes also their economical 'Out!' as the partyplaces normally looked like a herd of rhinocerosses had a soccer match in them. Where was the party place? Although being described quite well in the forefield of the party, the Veranstaltungszentrum Hittfeld wasn't so easy to find. Especially problematic when coming by train as there were NO signs at all. For example me, I had to be guided by a friendly native and his dog the 3 km by feet. Oh, before I forget about it: Where was the promised shuttle? "Next year we will have real aluminium streetsigns for this. It will cost us money that we don't have again, but this year we had paper signs stucked at they have all gone in the wind", an organiser sullenly explained to me. The hall and environment The outside of the hall was quite attracting and modern. A small lake nearby with ducks as foodsupply looked very tempting. After having tried to trade down the enterance fee (comment: "We don't have any exchange money left, please pay in fit." - "I only have two DM 20,- notes here."; "That will pretty do!") and having the obligatory plastic rope tied to my jeans, I entered the also very attractive and modern inner of the Veranstaltungszentrum. My first impression was the emptyness in there. After having had a look on the desks I saw estimated 500 people - only - a figure which lateron got verified by the organisers. Although this means that only 50% of the expected number of people have actually showed up, the hall still was much too hot. Not to say how it would have been if 1000 or more people would have crammed in. Another minuspoint surely the constant low lighting. If it wasn't dark totally, they dimmed down the lights to very low in order to enable people to watch the video presentations and movies ('Plan Nine From Outerspace' underneath!). A good idea in the first place, headache forciating on the long term. Very good indeed was the work of the cleaning personnel. I didn't wanted to dinner in the toilets, yet I guess one wouldn't have gotten coli- intoxicated automatically. Too bad I haven't seen any showers. Also the hall itself was cleaned every now and then so that from the hygienic point of view, there was nothing to mutter about - at least not under regard of having 500 people trying to give a good mess afterall. The foodsupply was rather sporadic (Pizza in the midday and from 18.00 to 20.00 only), yet there were a lot of good restaurants and also a gasoline station where one could get liquids etc. nearby - who wants to live from small fatty pieces pizza for DM 4,-? Facilities Now we come to real pro stuff: The light equipment was real advanced and the big screen wasn't only huge but also of real good quality. Too bad that somehow the hall still seemed to be a little too light so some competitions appeared to be a little pale. Deadly for dark effects... The sound was - for unknown reason - quite noisy; real garage sound. I guess here this hasn't been a problem of the equipment as it looked quite promising, but of the equalizing. Someone was sitting on his ears seemingly. The videoequipment (including VLab Motion) has been sponsored by 3M. All releases have been brought to videotape and cutted so that the competitions could been shown without loading breaks, virusattacks etc. A very good idea which can nothing but advised further to other organising crews so that loading breaks like at The Party V are history, especially on the background that no loss in visual quality was to be made out. For all interested, there has been a small Internet-Cafe with free surfing and chatting - if one was able to catch one of the five places. Boni, Skonti and Concerts The organisers were in a good mood which might also result from the fact that there were 20 officials overall to host (and sometimes throw out) the audience. Normally rather embarrassing attempts to attract the audience, like having a quiz about 'Hitchhiking Through The Galaxy' or to puzzle a torn-to- pieces-keyboard together again, turned out to be real entertaining. A witty host and goodwilled participants made it possible, where Jesus/AFL has to named as unvoluntary highlight for being extremly pointless. In the nights we were given a splendid lasershow by a Danish team, who especially in the third night tried to battle the demos from the competitions with breathtaking effects. Often criticised, yet from the quality better than said to be was the concert from Noisedrift. They gave experimental housemusic much alike the early Prodigy, although with too simple arrangements. The breakbeats were - against popular believe - not sampled but programmed on 909 manually! For the interested their Equipment: Casio CZ-1000, Roland XP-50, MidiPro Keyboard S-2000 Sampler A1200 In the early morning (clock 8:00 a.m.) a friendly voice (with a sadist subtone) from the speakers made the sleepy crowd awake - no one could cry for having missed the compos by sleeping. Curiosities for all and gratis Seldomly, the organisers and the audience had so many reasons to have a good laugh together on no ones specifics cost. I just recall all the strange requests over the speakers: "Ehrmm, has somone a gluetape for us? And what about a scissor?" The absolute highlight however undoubtfully was the mysterical Sea-Competition. Organiser Crash of Polka Bros. speaks out about the background of this event: "We were just sitting outside having an ice and thought about having a competition outside. We were looking at the sea and said to ourselves: Oh, we have such a cool lake here - something must be done to get the guys for a dive. We took some shirt and software and so it went." The point actually was that a empty Coke-bottle was thrown into the lake and the winner would be, who would bring the bottle back to the organisers. Dog-owners know this game under the name of aportion. What happened? After the first easy throws, leading to just some wet feet, the last throw was a big one, directly into he heart of the lake. What no one would have held possible, two guys threw themselves into the muddy water and fought to get the bottle. Their amazing prices: One Party T-shirt, one Porno-CD(!) and one game. This is not much to make someone look like the nr.one sausage, isn't it? A really genius idea anyway... Coming to an end... What remains is the impression of a widely successful partystrategie by the organisers. The Symposium was, to keep it short, the best party I have ever been to. We had everything one cold have wished. The smaller bugs sides the organising team (antiquaric voting-system by votesheets, delays by having given themselves only one hour to listen to all modules) were quite foregivable and weight nill in comparison to the otherwise brilliant organising. Yet if you believe this is my opinion or even that I get paid to this... Just have a look on the nets. In case there will be another one, be sure to meet me there.