Gadi Evron (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} gevron) wrote,@ 2007-08-31 19:42:00 |
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A jew in a German camp
This is supposed to be a funny post. Dan Kaminsky came up with that joke in the subject line, but I found it funny. Let's not talk about Jake's joke with showers at the Austrian camp. :)
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting the CCC Camp, 30 minutes outside of Berlin. It was indeed an experience.
Lovely area, trees and lakes all over the place. Thousands of hackers coming out of their caves for around 5 days, living in tents and drinking Mate (mah-teh), which can be compared to redbull on steroids and a touch of lemon in a one liter bottle.
The location of the camp was an old Russian air-base, apparently the former air command for Eastern Europe. I gave my lectures in a bunker (okay, an heavily armored hanger). How cool is that?!
I am definitely going there again, it was fun. At one point it started raining. Luckily, I was in the Anaconda camp main tent at the time. As I was sitting and joking around with a couple of guys, we had a life and death reality show happening in front of us. A guy ran to his tent just outside ours and for about 10 minutes (no joke) tried to get his tent open. We felt for him, but it is just too funny when stressed people can't get anything done--we added commentary--I even shouted "O the Humanity!". Of course he didn't hear us do it. Eventually he gave up and ran away.
He came back. He finally managed to get into the tent (which was now likely a pool of water) and he then couldn't get it closed. It must have been horrible for him, but us, we had a good time. There wasn't much we could do to help and the mood wasn't very good, so we made it good.
Another Anaconda tent had a hull breach. Some people ran out to help. I don't mind the rain but they seemed to be good. I popped my head out and asked "hey, you guys need help?". The answer which followed was to the negative, although eventually I figured they were just being nice and went out anyway. Not that they needed any help at that time.
A lesson learned from this experience is; don't make fun of the rain, dude. I did, and tents became boats. Who knew you could strategically dig around water to get rid of it? :P
I just wish I listened to myself and stopped making fun of the rain whenever it slowed down.
After the rain I went for a walk. Another lesson learned was: Italians are fun!
The Italians had serious "swamp" issues. When we approached their first tent a nice guy welcomed us with his arms saying "Welcome to Venice!" while another ran into the water with his arms up in the air shouting "Italian bungalow!" (he said Gondola, but I thought me writing bungalow by mistake was funny and didn't want to fix it).
At another local Italian swamp, two guys started playing soccer while a kid was dancing next to them. They weren't wearing much.
Then, as we were very supportive, we had mud wrestling! That kid was still dancing next to them. New players came along and things were just fun.
Impromptu fun like that is very hard to come by often.
At this point I saw John Gilmore "Gadi, we can say hello to each other". I tried to explain I had nothing against him and was just walking around enjoying this movie I live in, but oh well.
Under the wings of a Mig 21 (I think) I joined some Polish guys for a drink. They had this "wedding vodka" which states it has 120% alcohol. hehe
All together, the camp was amazing. The Italians, Polish and Argentineans were a lot of fun. The Dutch also count.
A Dutch girl named Agnes (A-ch-ness) taught me how to speak German "you have to mean it". Speak it like you mean it: "Hier Zigaretten!!!" as a cigarette sales cart exclaimed.
At one time, we were searching for a shortcut to the camp driving a Mercedes jeep. We ended up taking a wrong turn to Finow airport. We drove on something optimists may call a road, between two fences and scary looking warning signs, with bunkers and man-holes on both sides. One of the guys constantly metnioned being scared of mines.
After passing a guy who was running there... (where did he come from?!) we reached the CCC camp from the other side. An organizer (angel) ran at us "where did you come from?! It's closed!" I looked back, and saw a sign stating "Danger! No Entry!". Right.
I love Germany, and I love the Germans. I am definitely going back again, and this time with an Israeli flag. Heck, I kept confusing the Swiss one at the Swiss camp with the medical bunker flag (inverse colours), and everyone else had flags at their camps.
Let's hope I survive that. :)
Gadi Evron.
This is supposed to be a funny post. Dan Kaminsky came up with that joke in the subject line, but I found it funny. Let's not talk about Jake's joke with showers at the Austrian camp. :)
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting the CCC Camp, 30 minutes outside of Berlin. It was indeed an experience.
Lovely area, trees and lakes all over the place. Thousands of hackers coming out of their caves for around 5 days, living in tents and drinking Mate (mah-teh), which can be compared to redbull on steroids and a touch of lemon in a one liter bottle.
The location of the camp was an old Russian air-base, apparently the former air command for Eastern Europe. I gave my lectures in a bunker (okay, an heavily armored hanger). How cool is that?!
I am definitely going there again, it was fun. At one point it started raining. Luckily, I was in the Anaconda camp main tent at the time. As I was sitting and joking around with a couple of guys, we had a life and death reality show happening in front of us. A guy ran to his tent just outside ours and for about 10 minutes (no joke) tried to get his tent open. We felt for him, but it is just too funny when stressed people can't get anything done--we added commentary--I even shouted "O the Humanity!". Of course he didn't hear us do it. Eventually he gave up and ran away.
He came back. He finally managed to get into the tent (which was now likely a pool of water) and he then couldn't get it closed. It must have been horrible for him, but us, we had a good time. There wasn't much we could do to help and the mood wasn't very good, so we made it good.
Another Anaconda tent had a hull breach. Some people ran out to help. I don't mind the rain but they seemed to be good. I popped my head out and asked "hey, you guys need help?". The answer which followed was to the negative, although eventually I figured they were just being nice and went out anyway. Not that they needed any help at that time.
A lesson learned from this experience is; don't make fun of the rain, dude. I did, and tents became boats. Who knew you could strategically dig around water to get rid of it? :P
I just wish I listened to myself and stopped making fun of the rain whenever it slowed down.
After the rain I went for a walk. Another lesson learned was: Italians are fun!
The Italians had serious "swamp" issues. When we approached their first tent a nice guy welcomed us with his arms saying "Welcome to Venice!" while another ran into the water with his arms up in the air shouting "Italian bungalow!" (he said Gondola, but I thought me writing bungalow by mistake was funny and didn't want to fix it).
At another local Italian swamp, two guys started playing soccer while a kid was dancing next to them. They weren't wearing much.
Then, as we were very supportive, we had mud wrestling! That kid was still dancing next to them. New players came along and things were just fun.
Impromptu fun like that is very hard to come by often.
At this point I saw John Gilmore "Gadi, we can say hello to each other". I tried to explain I had nothing against him and was just walking around enjoying this movie I live in, but oh well.
Under the wings of a Mig 21 (I think) I joined some Polish guys for a drink. They had this "wedding vodka" which states it has 120% alcohol. hehe
All together, the camp was amazing. The Italians, Polish and Argentineans were a lot of fun. The Dutch also count.
A Dutch girl named Agnes (A-ch-ness) taught me how to speak German "you have to mean it". Speak it like you mean it: "Hier Zigaretten!!!" as a cigarette sales cart exclaimed.
At one time, we were searching for a shortcut to the camp driving a Mercedes jeep. We ended up taking a wrong turn to Finow airport. We drove on something optimists may call a road, between two fences and scary looking warning signs, with bunkers and man-holes on both sides. One of the guys constantly metnioned being scared of mines.
After passing a guy who was running there... (where did he come from?!) we reached the CCC camp from the other side. An organizer (angel) ran at us "where did you come from?! It's closed!" I looked back, and saw a sign stating "Danger! No Entry!". Right.
I love Germany, and I love the Germans. I am definitely going back again, and this time with an Israeli flag. Heck, I kept confusing the Swiss one at the Swiss camp with the medical bunker flag (inverse colours), and everyone else had flags at their camps.
Let's hope I survive that. :)
Gadi Evron.
