EasterHegg 23

Ehm, so, quick story about EasterHegg (abbreviated to EH23) where I was earlier this year, in April. I made it since my travel plans aligned miraculously with Easter weekend; in fact I just didn't want to spend my birthday in the plane feeling sad and sick and miserable. If you're not already familiar, EH23 is an event from the CCC - the Chaos Computer Club. It's a much smaller event than Congress, which happens at the end of the year, and is aimed at replicating the small and cozy feel of earlier Congresses. You can learn more about it here.
EH23 was my first Chaos event, though I had been planning Congress for the end of this year for a while, and it lived up to my expectations - it was chaotic :P

main section or smth

bleh, I don't feel like categorising this into days or particular events.
I learned about EH23 from a friend I made on Fedi and I went with him by car all the way to Koblenz. It was a fun trip, with a couple hours of driving to Dover, getting the ferry, and some 5 hours of driving from Calais. We passed by CCCAC - the hackerspace in Aachen and I got to meet a few people who I followed on Fedi. I also got to see around the hackerspace too, which was really cool cause the closest we have to a hackerspace at home is a guy's garage... which is only available when he's home...

We arrived at Koblenz at around 6:30pm and I helped out with unloading the car. There were bags upon trays of stuff to carry inside and I can now admit that I bit off more than I could chew, carrying the VFD display and an Ikea bag of *bits*. I don't know whether it was me being a bit sick, the cold air, or just that I'm a bit weaker than I used to be, but lugging the VFD all the way to the venue was brutal.
At the hack centre, I got to meet the really cool people of Øl Telecom, who I was staying with. They were all really cool people, and I couldn't have asked for more fun people to spend the event with.

The first day was spent with me trying to be social with so many new people, and I think I did kinda well at it ^w^. There was also a lot of setup with so much *stuff*. It was kinda interesting to see the contrast between EH and KubeCon, where a lot of interactions are sort of one-sided; there are attendees and there are the booths/companies/talks giving "content" for the attendees. While EH was so much more community-focused, with hardware being shared and given away, people collaborating on stuff, and just the way everything was arranged.

Talking about the socialness... A newly-made-friend had brought alcohol - a variety of rhum and vodka - and a lot of it too. I remember passing him my mug and asking for just a little bit of rhum, to which I'd add Spezi, and getting more than twice what I expected. Day 1 ended at around 4am for me, when we left our table in a state of chaos (appropriate, isn't it) and walked to the apartment we were staying at.
Over the three days, I participated (kinda?) in a number of different things from running a root DNS server, installing openSUSE like 4 different times in a VM, witnessing the VFD coming to life, decalcifying a Gaggia coffee machine (and having some actually good coffee), and a bunch of other stuff. At times, I did feel quite a bit overwhelmed with all the people and everything going on. Also it was three weeks of travel and conferences and *people* so my social battery was definitely dead dead. When I needed a small escape, I retreated to my laptop and worked on some of my own stuff, which was pretty fun as well; adding a few features and fixing little bugs.
On the last day, which was also my birthday, I wanted to present more feminine to the event. It would be my second time doing so in public, and with the atmosphere and people and EH23, I was sure to not have any issues. It was kinda funny because it was only then that I remembered that all the socials people know me by present me as a guy which is... well, inaccurate. So, actually, the morning of the third day, I sent out a message along the lines of "hi btw im trans, in case you're confused by my choice of clothes". Alas, I don't have any pictures from then, but it was really fun. Nighttime, I had an alcoholic drink of which I forgot the name, which was made up of brown sugar, rhum, club mate, a lot of lime, and crushed ice. The alcohol was deceptively strong, and I think I had my first hangover the following day. Still, very fun way to spend my birthday, and I was really happy to have spent my first birthday as the "real me" :3

The way back was... interesting. The drive through Germany, the Netherlands (lil bit), Belgium, and France was fine. Getting through check-in and customs took hours though, with the Easter weekend crowd, added to the chaos resulting from Brexit. We ended up missing our ferry and got delayed by a whole 3 hours. I only got back home at 9am the next day after spending the night at my friend's and catching the train in the morning. I was running on fumes and very little sleep, but I had absolutely no regrets!

It was a really really cool experience which I'm going to remember for a very long time, and I am looking forward to Congress at the end of the year, if I can make it!