dR begins his transcontinental journy to Tampere, Finland.

Thursday April 26th

For the first leg of our trip a back busting 4 hour bus journey is in order, oh brilliant :/ For us its the reliable and cheap €20 for 250km Air Coach. It'll whisk myself and my buddy Rich all the way up to Dublin Airport for our flight to Tampere, oh wait, its tomorrow :(

Lovers of a challenge, we've decided that instead of taking the logical decision of staying over night in a hotel or maybe taking a connecting flight from our own airport here in Cork. We've decided that the best option is leave 14 hours before our flight, hop on the bus, and sleep on the floor in Dublin. Surely the security staff will be kind enough to wake us for that 8am flight? We bloody hope so!

So in around one hour I'll leave my house for the weekend knowing this is merely the start of what could be a pretty damn amazing weekend. Hopefully our foolish (certainly not fool proof!) will work well and we'll be beaming back some great videos and photos from Winter Assembly in Tampere!One things for sure, I have all the essentials!

Thursday Night/ Friday Morning

Having found the airport to be still off the wall at like midnight we begun a walk into the near by wilderness, which contains a few hotels with pubs (though only one wishing to entertain us), some bushes, odd signs and a set of extremely questionable statues, we have plenty of pics, but alas they won't be visable until tommorow, the upload seems borked ;(

The bus journey appeared to be un eventful until we found a junkie asleep behind us in the bus, he later turned around handed me €50 for a slight bit of my Vodka and on we went! Right now we're in a hotel, which we refuse to sleep in having some drinks, The Radisson claimed this hotel didn't even exist!

The Clarion Hotel in Dublin just gave us some bang up Guinness and Red Wine, recommended for when you need a quick drink, yeow!

Friday Morning (Welcome to Hell)

Finished up in The Clarion around 3 am and headed for the terminal, grabbed some tasty chiabattas from the 24 hour food joint, well chuffed. Slapped on V for Vendetta on ye olde laptop, Natalie Portman giving me the big turn ons yeh :) Alright good kip good stuff, up and alive in Dublin Airport at 5 am, stroll around get in the que. Flight FR825 Dublin - Tampere, sound! More of this famous q-ing I dislike so very much! Aight time to check in!

Or not! Seems young Rich's passport is 13 months out of date! Blasted into the nether regions of hell instantly! After much trying to pursuade first the staff, then management and eventually Airport Police we found ourselves with dR checked in and ready to go, and Rich stranded like a mo fo! We had only 90 minutes to get an emergency passport together for the bloke, and it just wasn't happening for us. So Rich decided just to head home, after an annoyingly long time waiting to get to Tampere this is an extraordinarily disappointing and stupid thing to happen, I guess its just plain common sense when you think about it, but we live and learn!

"Passengers Please Note Any Unnattended Luggage May be Destroyed" every 15 minutes for 3 hours, christ, thats another thing I didn't like about Dublin Airport!!!

The Ryanair staff are absolute tits! They constantly stroll pass me when beckoned, the little bell witht the light makes no difference, and worst of all after forking over €9 for a white win and pizza, I felt more hungry and needed more booze, thus the Heineken was ordered (at €3.75 for a 33cl can!) eeesh! Ryanair, seriously, one of these days they will charge you to scratch your bleedin' arse :/

So here I am, Cpt. Lungswoller informs me I'm 37,000 feet about Norway, and you know, after all the strife it really seems worth it. The snow and ice of the fjords has blown me away, and now, with a reinvigerated sense of belief, this now party of one, will roll into Tampere shortly. Quite the journey for a four team competition eh? Mind you, there had better be some Finlandia waiting for me in Tampere, sort it out wAbbitt!!

And now for Tampere Airport, looking much like any European airport of the time, clad in steel and glass I look forward to getting off this plane and maybe grabbing some drinks in the arrivals area. Oh god no! We're mosying along the tarmac to what looks like a building lifted straight from the 1940's. What the hell am I in for here!

If you have ever landed in Tampere with Ryanair, you know what's coming next, if not, I suggest you opt to use Finnair or some other carrier as it would seem the aptly named "Terminal 2" (see dictionary definition of terminal) is under Ryanair control. A series of mental ques formed and I was joslted towards some black doors. Yes, black doors. There black doors made extremely loud ear piercingly loud screams. Next to these doors were some rather beefy looking police boyos, so I handed over my shredded passport to the man, he looked me up and down and found a problem, oh dear! You see in Ireland we didnt get a national age card for boozing until recently, and well I lost mine, thus I needed to use my passport, numerous drunken nights out had rendered this a useless but vital piece of documentation! The coppers spent 15 minutes using dyes, lights and all sorts of crazy shit to verify if it was me, I pleaded my case stating I got through Dublin customs and such, they were happy with that and I was in. When I say in, I mean I now had to go through the dooors! So in the door, into a square shaped 2 foot by 2 foot space, the loud screech and another door opens, wahey into baggage claim. Its extremely odd and rather off putting and I dont really understand the logic behind it!

Baggage claim, oh shit. The method of retrieving baggage is somewhat unorthodox, instead of looping before you in an easily retrievable fashion, the baggage comes out and falls on the floor! Tens of baggs pile up and jam the baggage belt! mine some how pops out, I grab and fuckin' LEG IT!

My first taste of Finland has scared the absolute shit out of me, where am I what am I doing and more's to the point why did Rich not use some common sense and check that shagging passport! So here I am, in desolate Tampere, all I can see are trees and a carpark, plus a car that looks like the Adam's Family motor! I laugh to myself uncontrolably as I quiz my decision to come to this hell hole! And trust me folks, the airport at least is hell on earth!

Finally here met Sauna, wAbbit, Kintac, and some CSSers, will update later accrodingly,and my, isn't Wallu short :D

Friday Afternoon/Saturday

Since arriving I settled in ditched gear, got pic snapping and so on. I have to say its a hell of an impressive site for a lan. It seems large neough to be an air hangar but its one of 3 piches. When the lights are on its well lit and when they're off there's a great LED sort of LAN atmosphere, the small but impressive sponsors stands are packed full of XBOX360 and PC gear and games.

The pro competitions started off disastrously with a 45 minute delay to the CSS. From then on though things started to get in gear and ran smoothily, I got solicited into grabbing some Zzz's as I was seriously shattered beyond belief after a trip around Tampere :D The same chick, the one with dreads was like, my name is on my blow out bed in that room and I'm welcome to sleep there at any time, which was a bit odd, 'cos like, does she want the sexing? I was my usual self just thanking her and LEGGING IT!

Friday night, naked in a sauna, without Premi , dods till 330 am. Oh dear! Friday night seemed really disjointed and at this stage we headed back to premi's place where I stayed for the night. Playing games and taking a real Finnish sauna which is unbelievably refreshing! I had a shockingly bad 3 hours sleep on his cubically shaped couch! It was at this stage in the weekend I lost contact with the Ireland, having left my phone and hoodie @ premi's apartment I knew I was screwed! Not hearing from my girlfriend or being able to let my folks know I was ok was a bit of a problem indeed!

The Day of Defeat competition and Cadre.css's win last night have been serious highlights so far, and this small but excellent lan is facing down to some excellent finals!

Saturday basically consisted of covering the DOD:Source win and CS:Source team coming runners up after a epic loss on inferno to the onfire Team Logitech.

The prize giving ceremonies were very low key affairs, mostly as a hell of a lot of the Pro gamers went home, very little was there to keeep people entertained come Sunday, which was a shame really considering Saturday had the makings of a good laugh.

Come the finish of the prize giving only one thing sat on the minds of Insignia Cadre, another win. Down to the indoor soccer hall we went and faced off against our first opponents. The team consisted of twidi, dR, Filter, and xvO. Single elimination! We won our first match by ~6-1, with the other team seeming to try and default their way to a win! I of course didn't realise this Finnish style of pass the ball, then shoot first time. Anyway I scored, and Filter appears to be Finland's great hope for football success!

We lost the following ,match 2-1 against the eventual winners, who appeared like they really really gave a shit about this competition. Having lead for the entire match they forced an equaliser in the last minute. An eventual winner was scored deep into extra time. Off to the computers!

Saturday night myself Blanzzi, twidi, xvO and Filter settled down for some gaming in the main LAN arena, we were rather loudly and rudely interrupted by some Assembly Loves You crap. They went around the arena playing crap music and talking crap, dead loud! Soon afterwards there was some more random loud music played seemingly just to wake everyone up all the time, it turned out it was a crazy race in one of the huge football pitches. It basically consisted of ~250 people running up the pitch taking 12 envelopes and they could keep whatever they liked, I sorta started in it, but people had sorta come from the sides so I stood no chance. A small girl got trampled to hell and looked prett smashed up, so it kinda seemed an idiotic idea from Assembly, especially considering that there were fire crews painstakingly expecting the arena on Friday afternoon!

Blanzzi disapperaed at this point and wasn't seen until Sunday morning, Filter also went to catch some z's and it was left to myslelf and xvO to screen poach one another in some CS:S and DOD:S public. With youtube videos of very gay Finnish men and Yellowcard we really ripped up that night!

Sunday

Mostly consisted of me making the ardiuous trip home. Which of course was no straight forward affair at all! Off to premi's apartment again to pick up my damn phone and hoodie! We woke the drunken bastard up and got my gear, off to the joke of an airport, and let me tell you, departures ar Tampere-Piirkila airport is hell on earth! I of course qued in the wrong que for ages, I was heading to Dublin, not Bremen!

The security checks were nightmares! And I mean nightmarish to the max! I wouldnt mind, but this airport is a dump, even the most seasoned terrorist would opt for a better spot to rage his own Jihad! Laptop through, there's a problem, hand luggage through, there's a problem, camera through, there's another problem! Belt off, baggy pants dragging, there's a problem, in the end, I had to take out my lip piercing, talk about stone age equipment! Oh I forgot to mention, my luggage, you know the way it is automated behind check ins in most airports? Not in Tampere it would seem, third world-esqu, I had to drap it myself to where it would finally be loaded to a truck for the plane.

Through the procedures finally I carried my weary and sleep deprived self up to the restaurant, come tobacco factory. Finland allows smoking in public and the fact there were three Ryanair flight and on Finnair flight within 45 minutes, it became onvious this airport was grosely undermanned. Foolhardily I set up my laptop for some wi-fi, to no avail :( I did however idiodically pay €6.60 for a can of Guinness, simply because I was so tired and sick of this airport. I got talking to a girl who seemed insanely familiar, but she was German, I charged her ipod off my laptop, and criticised her music before departing, again through nonsensical security checks and thos god for saken black doors from hell! Goodbye Finland, I'll miss you, goodbye Tampere airport, I hope you get smallpox. So at this stage I thought, LEG IT!

I fell into a coma on the plane and was only awoken by some steward/stewardess, seemed like some fairy fella anyway, saying get off bud! Back in Dublin, back to what I know, grabbed my gear after a marathon from the gate we arrived at, called the folks and Aimée, everyone seemed strangely happy I was home, little did they know I would not be getting home in as straight forward a fashion as they expected.

Aircoach driver bring me home I declard! "No, traffic's bleedin' crazy, and I only go to O'Connell St. you bloody culchie!" Crap! Took ages to get into Dublin and when I did I got fucking lost to the max, I knew the bus used to leave on Nassau Street, but the bastards moved it to Westmorland St. which was not as hilarious as you would think, frantic calls on a perilously dead battery and much moving around with my bags in the dead heat of that Sunday afternoon resulted in me just about making it to the bus on time, not before some stupid Chinese bitch couldnt make me a proper sandwhich of course!

Onto the Aircoach, the smooth and relaxing air conditioned bus had me sucked into a near coma like state, the bus driver was sound too busting out jokes all the way, right up until the bus broke down for 2 hours at the side of the Motorway.

Listen to cut this story short i did eventually get home, 3 hours late and on some piece of shit bus which I couldn't sleep on. All in all it was an eventful trip and really, I did have some great memories locked away in my head, for sure I'll be back for the Summer version in August, but thankfully this time I'll only be tackling Helsinki airport!