Easter in Northern Germany report by Fishwave/Scoopex (Seenpoint #8) Easter - the ideal time for sceners to celebrate themselves by visiting parties. How does it look like? Hundreds of coders, musicians, graphicians and other scene beings running around looking for Easter eggs and chocolate-hares? It's rather that they work on demos, drink beer, smoke pot and chitchat. All to be found at this year's Mekka Symposium. MS'98 was held at the same location as in 1997: Fallingbostel. A small town in Northern Germany. Eventhough we Seenpoint editors didn't meet any sceners while doing our investigations in the inner city of Fallingbostel, it pretty well may be that some went searching Easter eggs in the nice pubs. Whoever didn't, had to stay in a overcrowded partyhall. Already a few hours after the official beginning one couldn't find a single free table. Last year there were 750 attenders, the organizers counted with 850 for this event. A number of about 1000 would be more exact perhaps. Worth noticing is that there were more Amigas set up in comparison to previous MS-parties. Also there was a big part of sceners coming from abroad to this German party. Danish, Dutch, Polish, French and even Finnish people prefered Mekka Symposium to The Gathering in Norway. In fact, MS is famous for excellent scene atmosphere and this year no difference was noticed either. MS has many faces: Some sceners try hard to finish their releases, others just came to speak to some scenish friends and others were there to enjoy themselves with alcohol and the likes. After drinking beer, which was officially forbidden but then again not at the partyplace itself, you feel like going to the toilets. There were enough of them, though sometimes the cleaning service was missing. Also some people weren't too happy about the showers who had open only now and then. Talking about the facilities the biggest disadvantage of MS is still the lack of a proper place to sleep. Again there was no sleeping hall but a tent only. Granted, it was big and they had a heater in there - but sleeping outdoor in Germany during April is no pleasure at all. Practically everyone thought it was too cold in there. Afterall, it's hardly to imagine that the party can be continued at the current location. It simply got too small. Hopefully the organizers will find something bigger and rent a real sleepinghall, too. Whatsoever, 90% of all sceners spent most of their time in the partyhall anyway. As mentioned above you met people from all possible countries - and from all the active Amiga groups there are. The German scene was present with almost every VIS there is. Artwork, Abyss, Essence, Nuance, Gods, Da Jormas, Haujobb, Secretly, RNO, Scoopex were spotted just like Ramses, Mankind, Venture, Eremation, Depth, Efreet, Crux and many more. It was impossible not to chat with someone! With so many groups present the expectation for the competitions rised from "lets take whatever comes" to "will we see a new no.1 demo?". All in all the competitions were pretty good, although the big surprises were missing - and a real breathtaker, too. The 4k and 40k competitions were of average quality what cannot be said about the great graphics and 4 channel contests. That good demos were released, too, hasn't been stressed. Haujobb, Abyss, Mankind, Venture and Puzzle - all of them tried their best to take home first prize. Overall the organizing was well done, except for one almost fatal omission. When watching the first Amiga productions (4k, 40k) people started to wonder whether the compo-machine was indeed 060 equipped. It was not! Upset Amiga sceners demanded the change of the Amiga and the organizers needed the help of Airwalk/Polka Brothers who gave his 060 Amiga to them. Furthermore some people had to install the special 060 libraries, something the organizers were not capable of. But except this, nobody should have reasons to disrespect the great work of the entire MS organizer crew. No party without some short notes about various persons. For instance Nomad of Scoopex, the famous 3d artist of My Kingdom, should have had the shortest stay at the party. Only a few hours after he entered the party first he already drove back home. Alcohol and joints - a deadly combination. We hope he feels better by now. Another really strange situation occured during the Amiga demo competition. Hardly the Crux demo had been shown sceners reported to have seen a crying Clary. Reason for this: she missed her demo on the big screen. The organizers were friendly enough to show it a little bit later again to comfort Clary. Eventhough we may consider she is a woman - didn't she overreact? And there was a truly happy end, too! After the last competition, C64 demo, and the very last demo people were able to read the following in the ending scroller of the Smash Design demo: "Do you want to marry me?" (name has been forgotten, sorry). Soon after a young woman entered the stage and shouted out "yes" to her beloved demo programmer in Smash Design. Mekka-Symposium the romantic way. A very nice party that really was worth it. Sceners will visit it next year, too, that's for sure!