agd2 goes RL

First European meeting

It seems our trusty scribe Babe wants to utilize his last vacation days reaching new heights on the ladder and doesn't get around to writing a summary, so I will attempt it.

Babe was the first one to arrive, on Tuesday 13 in the evening. Coming all the way from Paris he came by plane, and I picked him up at the airport. Berlin wasn't prepared for this visit yet, so it was quite cold for the middle of July, only 17° C. We rigged up his laptop, and soon he was ready to play.

Wednesday went by quietly as the others all had announced their arrival for Thursday. Hansi and Kris arrived just in time for shopping before the shops closed after having carried in all their gear, including pillows, bulky sleeping bags and a PC.

As they had brought card and board games we started playing a card game called Ligretto, waiting for Hannes. When Babe wanted to go outside to smoke a cigarette the adventure began: We found ourselves locked in, as between my flat and the staircase there is another corridor with a door. Apparently the handle was broken, and there was no way we could get out, not even after having removed the handle:

The biggest problem was that this house in principle has a housekeeper, but his mobile phone number is announced on a paper in the staircase...

In the meantime Hannes had arrived (10 pm), and as he couldn't get in we had a nice chat through the window and pondered whether we should lower a power cord and an ethernet cable through the window so he could either set up his laptop (for his entertainment) or his electric piano (for our entertainment). It was too geeky in the end, so we forgot about that and just let him wait:

Somehow we found out the phone number of the property management (?), but the guy there wasn't really convinced when I asked him to send for a locksmith during the night as the charge is much higher then than during day time. In the end he could be persuaded, and around 11:45 pm we heard noises at the broken door. After half an hour we had one lock less and two holes more in that door:

Friday wasn't nice weather, so we decided not to go sight-seeing, instead we played a bit of D2 (just a bit, I swear!) after having set up another table and sorted all cabling:

Saturday Maya joined us for a Berlin round-trip, unfortunately the batteries of my camera ran low, so there are not many pictures. First official point of interest were the remains of the wall, and one inscription

invited us to take this picture:

Now, who is who?

Next stop was Alexanderplatz with the TV tower, from there we went on foot all the way to the Brandenburg Gate

with a stop in a cafe where Babe for the first time tasted something called "Berliner Weisse" which consists of a certain sort of light beer and fruit syrup, either raspberry or woodruff, giving it either a red or a green colour.

We also popped into a store especially to take some pictures for u:

On we went, after a glance at the Reichstag we enjoyed the coolness of the trees in forest "Tiergarten" that is located right in the middle of the city, and the most venturous of us decided to climb all 285 steps up inside the victory column that has a platform at the height of 53 metres.

By then we had become quite tired, so we went for dinner in my favourite Indian restaurant. As soon as we got home a silly idea came to our heads: We wanted to get onto the ladder as a team. Carefully we checked all realms and ladders (seems Europeans seem much more keen on leveling than the people on West) and decided to start a team on USWest Ladder Classic HC:

Unfortunately during the night we already disappeared from the ladder, so Sunday morning Maya came over for breakfast and more leveling. The fine-tuning was difficult as killing one too many monsters might be too much, so we ran away as soon as we saw a champion, boss or their minions, and ended up in the blood moor counting single xp points to get just the right amount. Additionally we had to line up in the correct order of course so the text in the ladder screen would make sense. But the effort was worth it, I think we stayed on the ladder for a whole week:

On Monday morning I started school quite unexpectedly as I was dumped into a course that had started in June already, so I was away for most of the day. And rather than taking my advice concerning museums or other tourist stuff I came home just to see everybody staring at their screens hypnotized, Babe struggling to stay on the ladder with his amazon. Hansi and Kris left to be home in time for the RuneCraft team game in the evening, and Babe was accompagnied by Hannes and me to the airport on Tuesday.

And just to solve the who-is-who here are three more pictures: