TLS Distand Worlds Weekender NL 2023

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Hi all!

UPDATED opening post due to 'rona developments and stuff; original post and preamble below.

On Friday March 3rd there will be a Distant Worlds concert in Amsterdam: https://ffdistantworlds.com/concert/dw35-amsterdam/
This is a great opportunity to organize a meetup, lie the 2017 TLS Weekender.

We'll pool our resources and get ourselves group accomodation and transport; outside of the Friday night event, we can do various activities like sit at home and play video games, do alcohol and drugs and eat filth. Or we can do other touristy shit, I guess, hmph. :monster: just kidding.

Some other activities we can do during the weekender are tours of e.g. Amsterdam, and there's a national video game museum that could be a great day's out.

Accommodation, I'm hoping we can get a decent group together so we can get a group accommodation to ourselves (like a chalet); personally I've grown out of sharing bunk beds and accommodations with strangers so something with smaller rooms and privacy and shit would be ideal. There are plenty of bungalow / chalet parks around for example, and other group accommodations like that. That said, I don't expect to actually stay in Amsterdam itself, it would be a bit gash imo. Organizing your own accommodations is also an option, of course. I'll set up a sign-up again at some point soonish to get a rough gaugue how many people we need to book something for, ideally we get something with a bit of flexibility.

Travel wise, it's probably best to arrive on Thursday 2nd; arriving on the day itself can also work, but then it's best to arrive early. Departure then on the Sunday or Monday; personally I'd lean to monday because maximizing time, and I'm fairly sure travel is cheaper on mondays. But please let me know your own preference.

Anyway that would be accommodation for four nights.

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ORIGINAL POAST:

In 2018 2017, Mage organized the TLS Weekender; we managed to get a good amount of people together for a fun, casual weekend, catching up and hanging out and drinking all the things and all that.

We'd like to organize an event like that again. This time around, I'd like to organize it in the Netherlands (given that that's where we live now, lol). I've googled around a while ago and there's plenty of accommodations that could host a group of any size, and at a wide range of cost as well.

One uncertainty is that probably by the end of this month, the UK will leave the EU; at this point it's uncertain what traveling from the UK to NL will be like. Personally I expect it shouldn't be a problem, but still.

You'll also likely need a passport and all that to travel here.

We do plan on hiring a van again like last time, so transport from within NL or within the airport shouldn't be a problem, or from our accommodations to any activities.

Re: activities, there's a billion options there; feel free to spew ideas here. I mean we can go to Amsterdam if you really want to, personally I think it's a bit naff but hey :monster:. We've got a wide range of locations to go, activities to do, at all price points.

I don't know yet where exactly we'll end up, it depends on a number of factors including but not limited to: number of participants, available budgets, requested anemities, etc etc etc. I'll look up a list of accommodations once I've got more information on participants and budgets etc.

On budgets, I think we can come to an arrangement where we can share some of the financial burdens; if anything you won't have to worry about not being fed or getting about in the country.

I've made a poll to gauge interest and get some information; please only fill it in if you have the intention of coming. I'll do another more definitive signup later on.

Please fill in the form at https://forms.gle/ThrG2rd2p6pBggU6A. Feel free to ask questions or put in suggestions and / or wishes in this thread as well!
 
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Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Random ideas / activities that I've done in NL that are good:

* Pub crawl in my current hometown of Amersfoort; it's got a loooot of pubs and restaurants in its historical city center.
* Go to Utrecht for dinner and beer at Cafe Olivier; it's a big pub in an old church with great food, for me it was the first pub I went to that had a lot of different beers and shit. Only stipulation is that you need a fairly sizeable group if you want to make a reservation for a table. Also it's a very noisy place, being a church and all.
* Visit random museums. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is a popular destination, although keep in mind that the tourist destinations in / like Amsterdam are going to be fuck busy most of the times.
* Hiking, idk where though, there's a few options.
* Beach, can be done at any time of the year, it's just going to be windy and miserable during the off seasons.
* Airsoft / Paintball / Kart racing, I've done this with work a few times and it's h*cking fun. Airsoft can be a bit pricey though, think €75 / person for a two hour session.
* National Videogame Museum in Zoetermeer, actually a (former) colleague founded and runs this place.
* Awesome Space in Utrecht, a much smaller venue, more like a hacker space. We can probably reach out to them if we want to organize a day out there. But we'd get to sit down and play, eat pizza, etc there.
* FFVII and FFVII Remake streaming marathon; we'd need an accommodation with a big TV and good internet connection (in a pinch we could do it at my place), as well as people that know how to set up something like that on a technical level. But we could get a group together and play through the game(s) (or in case of the remake do it back-to-back). Actually we could do this as a fundraiser event so we can get people here who can't afford such an outlay normally. IDK how successful it would be but fuck it, we're TLS, we need to make a Name for ourselves as the FFVII experts. It'd give a lot of material to republish on the youtube channel as well. A side-by-side playthrough would also be interesting to do.

Stuff!
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
09d.gif


Love me some hiking so I'd be all for that and shit. I like the idea of maybe doing a streaming marathon as well (my impossible dream scenario for a TLS thing to do was always to steal Easy Allies' idea of renting a beach house and streaming from there for 50h non-stop :wackymonster: )

(also, wasn't the weekender in '17? :P)
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
I just looked at the title of Mage's most recent post and it said 2018 without reading it, my bad :monster:

We can do September if moar people are available then, :monster:. Or if someone's won the lottery and can sponsor everyone in the TLS orgy mansion or whatever we can do multiple this year, I dunno! Options! :monster:
 

Lex

Administrator
How warm is it at those times of year Yop <3

You know me, I can't hack heat and in a country that close to sea level *grimaces*

(I'm half joking... half). Long overdue to visit you!
 

Erotic Materia

[CONFUSED SCREAMING]
Man, I wish I lived in a place where I could reasonably just hop on over to another country for a casual weekend.

Color me jelly.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
What airport is the closest to you guys?
Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Eindhoven?

Amsterdam probably, but there's not that much of a difference; if you can get a cheaper flight to Rotterdam or Eindhoven instead of the default Amsterdam airport then go for it. We can either detour to there or you can take a train to somewhere closer to us. We don't yet have a location for the venue though, it'll depend on the number of signups and budget etc.

How warm is it at those times of year Yop <3

You know me, I can't hack heat and in a country that close to sea level *grimaces*

(I'm half joking... half). Long overdue to visit you!

Spring / Fall: Up to 20 degrees; winter: usually anywhere between -5 and +10

Summer: I want to say it goes up to 36 the hottest but honestly lately it's just shit. But, summer edition will involve swimming pools and shit.

Man, I wish I lived in a place where I could reasonably just hop on over to another country for a casual weekend.

Color me jelly.

We've had people going to and from the US and Europe to attend e.g. Kupocon, so it is possible. If costly. Ideally we would be able to raise a lot of money to help people come over. I mean there's a bunch of people that have been with us from the start that nobody's met IRL yet <_<.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
That's ok, we can just crash your house instead, :monster:

We've got 7 responses in the poll so far and... the dates are all over the place :closedmonster:. 3 votes for late May and summer holidays though. IDK what to do with this, lol :monster:. I should probably just pick a date and go for it. I mean we can make it any scale we want to, :monster:
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Right, the poll re: dates is a bit all over the place, so I'm going to propose the last weekend of August (29 & 30); Monday the 31st is a UK bank holiday, and that weekend is the last weekend of the summer school holidays around my area. If we pick this we should probably book early, both venue and transportation, because bank holidays are more expensive generally speaking.

There's no UK bank holidays in between the 31st of August and christmas I'm afraid; we can plan something a bit later in the year but it may be a bit more awkward for people to get time off then.

Please let me know if you want to attend; I can go look for a rough sized venue then. I will keep in mind that some people due to Circumstances won't be able to attend or don't know if they can attend / make a last minute decision, but we can probably manage around that.

Also please let me know if you cannot make that date because of $Reason; for example, if flights are prohibitively expensive.

That said, if you are in the UK and can take time off work / whatever, you can look into carpooling and taking a ferry or the Eurostar.

Also I suck at organizing trips :monster:. Let me know if you can / want to do the last weekend of August. IIRC that was also when we did the last weekender.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
I'm hearing through the grapevine (read: Discord) that autumn may work better for people from the US. I could make a poll listing every weekend in fall but idk how effective that would be :monster:
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Well, frick; with this corona virus malarkey, everything's a bit up in the air INNIT? I still hope to be able to organize this but at this rate it'll be end of the year, and by then, IF the restrictions are lifted, I can imagine a lot of the venues will be full because people haven't been able to do a vacation yet.

But that's all hypotheticals. Let's see what happens :/
 

Lex

Administrator
Well, frick; with this corona virus malarkey, everything's a bit up in the air INNIT? I still hope to be able to organize this but at this rate it'll be end of the year, and by then, IF the restrictions are lifted, I can imagine a lot of the venues will be full because people haven't been able to do a vacation yet.

But that's all hypotheticals. Let's see what happens :/

1. This will definitely still happen at some point
2. Speak to your brother and procure some weed in preparation

I can honestly say right now that life has been beating me every which way for at least two years and I would like to look forward to finally visiting your homeland, seeing everyone, and having a super chill time. I know we can't make solid plans ATM but count on me being there as soon as we can.
 

Carlie

CltrAltDelicious
AKA
Chloe Frazer
Yes I think now more than ever we all could benefit from a meetup.

And please yes have some weed ready, if I'm going to Amsterdam I anticipate to take full advantage of my cannabis options.
 

Mage

She/They
AKA
Mage
Look I'll be blunt, more of you fuckers need to commit or I'm gonna come and drag you here. Coronavirus doesn't stand a chance against one of my curries. :monster: Srsly though, I know it's all a bit fucky ATM, if we end up rolling it into next year it's not the end of the world (WE HAVE NOT DECLARED IT SO), I haven't visited my folks since last August for various reasons so I know how fucking shit it is wanting to do stuff but having assorted impediments and TBH I need you buggers to come here and get Mage-mommed. DO IT.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
I don't know how to weed, lol :monster:. I mean there is a coffee shop in town but what, do I just rock up there and go "Yeah uuh, three days times twenty people of weed pls"?

I'm Dutch and I've never done weed.

Also Mage's curry is THE BEST.
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
I don't know how to weed, lol :monster:. I mean there is a coffee shop in town but what, do I just rock up there and go "Yeah uuh, three days times twenty people of weed pls"?

I'm Dutch and I've never done weed.

Also Mage's curry is THE BEST.

I'm happy to go home a day or two ahead of whenever we are doing this and get the stuff. I'm also Dutch and have never bought weed but my siblings have.
 
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