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FACTS 2012
18 October 2012 @ 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
When the alarm went off at 6:30, we dragged ourselves out of bed after a short night, and Markus wondered, not for the first and certainly not for the last time, why anyone would have a hobby that means getting up at half past 6 on a Saturday. But we soon got over our initial sluggishness, and shortly afterwards we were sitting in the cars, setting off from Essen to F.A.C.T.S. in Belgium, a two-hour drive away.
When we arrived there at around 11:00, a long line had already formed in front of the hall, which we joined, somewhat annoyed. But time didn't drag, because there were already lots of costumes to admire there, so we quickly got into a real convention mood. After some jostling, we soon found ourselves in one of the big halls, where fans of fantasy, anime, science fiction and comics were milling about. We joined the bustle and strolled through the hall, checked out the goods of the many vendors and discovered some rare lightsabers among them, which, however, were beyond our rather modest budget.
Nevertheless, around noon we left the vendors' hall with a few new acquisitions and headed to the second hall, where we met Daran and Susan from JQ-Sabers and Erv' from Plecterlabs, whom we hadn't seen for a year, so it was a happy reunion. So we spent the next few hours talking shop and presenting some of our new sabers.
In the afternoon we decided to spin our sabers a bit on a big lawn in front of the halls and refresh a choreography or two from our current program. We quickly attracted the attention of some visitors and gladly answered the questions of some Star Wars and lightsaber fans. But since the weather wasn't particularly good, we soon retreated to the warm halls again and spent the rest of the afternoon with our friends at the Rebel Legion booth.
When the con closed its doors at around 19:00, we drove to our hotel, tired. It turned out to be a castle-like building with towers, gloomy corridors, open fireplaces and large paintings. Even though the building was strongly reminiscent of a classic haunted castle, we were too tired to explore the intriguing corridors more closely, soon retreated to our rooms and a little later, exhausted from a long and very eventful day, collapsed into our beds.