The European Convention - The Euro Tower party 2002

By: Val a'Shain in the Tower Parties Forum on the Old Boards

The tower party was the first time I actually met any of you in person. Therefore it was a dangerous business. For all you know you'll be staying with a bunch of axe-wielding mad people ;). Fortunately Rhuarc wasn't allowed to take his spears on the plane. Armed with a healthy dose of suspicion and a good supply of forkroot, I took off for Rotterdam.

After a 2 hour journey I met with 4 very nice people. Everybody was armed with the inevitable mobile phones but no axes. Rotterdam is one of my least favorite parts of the Netherlands (to put it mildly), but Elyna has a very nice place there. As I promised to do, I tried some of my cooking on Rhuarc, Rijomu, Janos and Elyna. Despite my best efforts no cases of food poisoning were reported. We spent the rest of the evening watching Lord of the Rings (some of us had actually managed not to see it before).

After a short night (shorter for some than others right Rhuarc?), we decided over breakfast to skip the trip to Amsterdam. Unfortunately the weather there was to be very hot and staying in Rotterdam was a bit more appealing under those conditions. We hid inside during the hottest part of the day talking to each other. Favorite subjects were: WoT (very surprising isn't it), linguistics, axemurderers, strange habits in different European countries, and of course tower gossip (of course we didn't talk about you.....). After we had subjected ourselves to Rhuarc's cooking, (do post that recipe I really want to try that) for lunch we decided to let a professional handle dinner. We went to a Mexican restaurant in downtown Rotterdam. Afterwards we had ice cream at another place, which is where most of the pictures are taken. We'd like to get one thing straight though... Rhuarc is NOT stoned in that picture....... I swear on my hope of salvation and rebirth. We spend most the evening (and night) in Elyna's garden drinking, talking, admiring the local wildlife, and annoying her neighbours.

After another very short night more or less the same morning ritual followed: Val getting up way to early and watching the others go through their morning ritual while he is drinking coffee. After breakfast, packing and a lot more talking it was time to say goodbye to our host and head to different parts of the country. An event definitely worth repeating next year. The only question still remaining is: who will host next year's party?