Breakpoint 2010: detailed report. Part 1

Just over a month ago, my friend (he is not yet at Habré, but you can invite him - yandexx AT gmail DOT com) was present at Breakpoint 2010 .
I am posting his report (for convenience, we have divided it into two parts). So,


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Hello, friends. I am one of those lucky ones who could personally visit perhaps the largest true demopati of the planet, Breakpoint 2010 , which was held from April 1 to April 4, 2010, and I want to tell you in detail about how I got there there were impressions of how I survived there, and a lot of things that could not be seen in the BPTV broadcast.

Please forgive for a few sketchy writing style and for possible technical inaccuracies.

Many who are in the subject, probably already looked at the records and demos, so I’ll not particularly focus on the releases.

0. The road there

In this part of the article there is a lot about how I traveled, to whom Breakpoint is more interesting - you can safely skip.

I recall that all 8 years Breakpoint took place in the small town of Bingene am Rhein, which is located in the western part of Germany. For me, in general, such a new trip - I have never been to demopati before, and have never traveled abroad further than Estonia or Finland on my own. However, it is worthwhile to begin by telling what motivated me to go there.

I can not say that I have been following the demo scene for a very long time - the first time I saw a demo from my friend at home, it was fr-019: poemtoahorse , and it was probably the year in 2003. He showed this “poem”, I liked it, but when he said that this thing takes only 64 kilobytes, I was shocked. How?! Of course, then I read .nfo, I went to farbrausch, I began to look through everything that came to hand and understand the essence of things. Since then, I regularly follow the release of new demos on pouet. I do not create anything myself, just a spectator, although I write a little music, I somehow know OpenGL.

In 2009, Breakpoint had its own realtime broadcast, BPTV, and I, fortunately, did not miss it, and closely followed what was happening. Even on the Internet, a wonderful party atmosphere was felt. AMIGAAAAAAA! :) I thought it would be awesome to be there next year, but it wasn’t the real thing.

I have a lot of friends from Europe and the USA, and I know them only through IRC, I personally have almost never met anyone. Of course, I then gave them a link to BPTV, and many of them also watched the action. By the beginning of 2010 with one German (hello to you, Martin!), We still decided to plan a trip to Breakpoint. Because it was impossible to miss such an event. In addition, BP2010 was declared as the last in history.

Studying the official site, I began to plan my trip. The easiest way to get to Bingen is either from Frankfurt or from the small Frankfurt-Hahn Airport (Frankfurt-Hahn). Well, since cheap Ryanair airlines are flying to Khan, and plus my German friend could easily pick me up from this airport, it was decided to fly there. Ryanair fly only in Europe and at small airports, but they are very cheap. In Bingen, these airlines can fly to Khan from Riga (which is Latvia, not Lithuania - now I finally distinguish them!), And I myself live in St. Petersburg. You can get to Riga without any problems by getting cheap by bus for ~ 1.5 thousand rubles (by plane at least 5 thousand).

It was also necessary to plan a trip back. The Dutch friend also joined us with the German, who lives in Eidhoven (Eindhoven), and, if that, then we could stay with him after the party. The eight vacation days that I stayed at work were barely enough, so I had to fly back one of two days after Breakpoint. The plane back from Khan was only on Monday morning, and by that time BP would not have ended. It turned out that not far from the German-Dutch border there is Weeze Airport (Weeze), where again Ryanair flies, and on Wednesday a plane took off from there to Riga.

The result was this: April 1 by bus to Riga, April 2 by plane to Frankfurt-Hahn, from there by car to Bingen, where until April 5 we live on Breakpoint. Then we leave for Eindhoven, where we live for a couple of days, and on April 7 in the morning I fly back from Vec. From Riga, again, the bus.

Tickets, except for the bus there, ordered via the Internet. In sum, it turned out pretty cheap: a bus of 1,800 rubles, a plane - 23 lats (1,300 rubles), a plane back - 19 euros (800 rubles!), A bus back - 1,200 rubles. That is a little more than 5 thousand rubles for transport. How much would I spend flying direct airlines, I can not imagine.

I went there by bus Eurolines through Tallinn, and back - by bus Ecolines, and both companies are worthy. And from Tallinn to Riga there was a bus Lux Express, so there was even wireless Internet on board, although I, tired, at 2 o'clock in the morning didn’t care :) The ride from St. Petersburg to Riga, by the way, was about 12 hours.

Ryanair, though cheap airlines, but there were no problems. Registration is completely online. Is that the citizens of the non-EU at the airport need to put on the boarding pass stamp that there is a visa, and you can go on board. You can take one bag with a size of 55x40x20 cm (the rest is in the baggage for an additional price), and it seems that my bag was exactly the same, but they didn’t check it, although they have a special frame for that. Boeing crammed full - obviously, the airlines are popular. Drinks and food on board of course for a fee, but I was not interested in the menu.

By the way, the visa is a Finnish Schengen (getting a visa in St. Petersburg is easier than ever, and to go to other countries of the Schengen agreement, you must first just go to Finland itself at least once). If I lived in another city, I most likely would have to do a German visa, which, they say, is much more complicated.

1. Party like there no tomorrow!

I was taken from the airport somewhere around 12:30, and after a couple of hours we arrived in Bingen. Closer to the building itself, the signs “Brechpunkt 2010” were hung on pillars on the street. We left the car in a nearby parking lot and went inside. The entrance is organized in a spacious tent, where for 55 euros you will be put on a red bracelet with a Breakpoint emblem, which plays the role of an entrance ticket.



The hall itself is quite spacious, there are a lot of rows of tables and folding chairs: in front of the big screen, as well as to the left and to the right of it. Half of the seats had already been occupied by that time, but we found an unoccupied table in the middle section, albeit with places with our backs to the screen, you can always turn around. Grabbed the right things from the car and decomposed on the table.

Through the same tent at the entrance you can go out to the patio, aka Beer garden, where there is a fireplace, there are benches with tables and cabins in which you can buy hot food and drink. Only here I ate the whole party. Among what you could buy to eat: pizza, scrambled eggs with a sandwich (always ate it for breakfast), pasta in tomato paste, sausages; in the Turkish trailer - shawarma or döner (half-smoked with a bunch of minced meat, salad, mayonnaise, etc.), well, and much more. All this cost about 2 to 5 euros. Tea, coffee (coffee on the street is disgusting, and inside was a great coffee machine, which, alas, broke down on the third day), beer, cola-fanta and other drinks. The tent sold cola and beer in a glass container. For the return of the bottle give 50 eurocents. There also seemed to be stronger drinks, but drinking them in the main hall is prohibited, as well as smoking, of course.



The Internet was both wired and Wi-fi, but the organizers insisted on the possibility of using cable. Alas, I didn’t get an ethernet cable (although it could have been bought on infodesk), and I sat on the wireless network, and it was, to put it mildly, not fast. In the local network at www.party , the Breakpoint portal for visitors was raised. There you could see everything the same as on the official site, but also register, shout to oneliner :) and, if you wish, declare your work for the competition.

The large screen, which is projected at 1080p from a distance of 30 meters, is excellent. The sound is also gorgeous. As they say, BASS! All announcements were preceded by a jingle from the invitation-demo .

On the first day there was no compo, but there were deadlines for the most simple contests. I myself wrote a track in a couple of days at home and declared it in the category Streaming music compo, but more on that later. In addition to deadlines at 21 o'clock, Breakpoint 2010 opened the opening ceremony, which began as a funeral for this demopati, but of course it could not do without humor. The organizers of okkie and dang`r`us sat down near the coffin and told how everyone died on BP2010, how smash was killed by a ribbon, Navis was shot down by train / motorcycle / truck / helicopter, and scene.org server was eaten by a burning horse on the moon :) ( Alas, all this is a joke for the initiates, but you, my readers, I think, in the subject?), after which the Main scamp got out of the coffin and called everyone to party like that no no tomorrow!



Also at 23 o'clock the band BASS played their concert! They played Breakpoint in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and the band consists of people directly involved in the demostsen. Sir Garbage Truck on the microphone, Gargaj on drums, graga on the guitar and a few others unfamiliar to me. They played well, despite the fact that they had almost no time for rehearsal, and the graga seemed to be connected to the case at the very end. We played both our own tracks and well-known ones, for example ROB IS JARIG! :) or a theme from Portal, during which kb himself joined the group :) Later Romeo Knight and scamp participated. Not without PANTS OFF! on the stage. The funny thing is that Gargaj played like that, he broke the drumstick, along (!). I was right next to the stage, and when he got off her, he said to someone nearby:
- I just broke a fucking drumming stick! Length-wise!
What I got:
- Why?
And in shock with sarcasm he answered:
- Yeah it's a tradition, I tend to do that !!!
After that, the dude and I, who were sitting next to us, laughed for a very long time, as it sounded incredibly funny :)

About how to sleep. Experienced party members laid out mattresses in advance all the good places upstairs on the grandstand, but at 3 o'clock in the morning (and there is no sense to go to bed before — music is playing everywhere) I found a spot where I laid out my self-inflating mattress and fell asleep to wake up from the cold of hours so at 5 in the morning. Sheets covered. By the way, on the information board they distributed free earplugs, but not to say that they helped a lot.

To be continued.

UPD: Read the second part .