Euro Party 3rd Edition

By: Manora al'Sara in the Tower Parties Forum on the Old Boards

I left my house on Thursday evening and took a late flight to Stockholm where I had a 5 hour layover until my flight to Tampere in Finland. Just for the record I don't ever advise attempting to sleep at Stockholm airport it just doesn't work! Anyway, I arrived at Tampere at about 9am on Friday morning where I was met by our lovely host Rij and by Osaka who had arrived the night before. We went back to Rij's apartment where we waited for everyone else who was arriving by car, before going down to the cabins. Shortly after Morwynna, Doc, Tallan, Saera, Miara and Bakuun arrived and we were off, firstly to do some shopping and second to our cabins.

The cabins were overlooking a beautiful lake and surrounded by pine trees and we all settled in and started cooking! It was rather a group effort getting dinner together and we sat, ate and played cards all evening. It became apparent that the Swede's had some very interesting games to teach the rest of us! But moving swiftly on…

We all got up Saturday and went out to an adventure park with roller-coasters and rides. Some of us weren't brave enough to go on everything but we had a good time, lots of laughs. Morrie and Doc went to see the Dolphin show while the rest of us went on some more rides and did some souvenir and postcard shopping. We had lunch and then all met up later for another few rides and candyfloss – or hakatara??? (probably a very bad spelling) as the Finnish say – and we got in the cars and went back to the cabin's.

We had decided on pizza for dinner but not the kind that come ready made… oh no… we were going to start from scratch. And within a short while we had a little pizza production line going on with Doc making the dough, me rolling out the bases and the others helping with the toppings. We also were making our own dessert – blueberry pie – from scratch too so there was the dessert team, all of us trying to share one lounge/kitchenette in the cabin. Food was eventually served and was delicious!

Then we got down to the serious drinking, the Goldschlager toasting, which due to the small attendance and the large bottle, enabled everyone to actually make three toasts (and therefore shots!) each. Then we started the drinking games including the one with the pants – which Rij and I ended up putting on the end of a pole and waving around in a salute to Mother! – and also the one where we all ended up in a very confused bunch holding onto each other for balance (suggest you see the photos).

By the end of the evening some of us were worse for wear than others and it showed! But we all made it to bed and had a good nights sleep before getting up again – some of us with raging hangovers! – and starting the big clear up. Almost time for us to leave and we managed to get the lady who owns the cabins to take a nice group photo for us and we all jumped into our cars to leave, waving n sniffling n yelling our goodbyes n such as we went. Rij and Osaka escorted me straight back to the airport for my flight home (which was fortunately at more suitable hours).

At this point I also feel its worth mentioning that the only Blue at the party (ie me!) travelled to and from Finland on a Blue plane run by a company called Blue 1 – couldn't have planned that if I tried!