ehm ja... wenn mein elbisch jetzt was besser wär, würd ich dich vielleicht sogar verstehen.
;D
aber hier, mein "bericht", erstmal gibts den nur auf englisch, mal schaun,w ann ich zeit zum übersetzen find. und bilder kommen demnächst hoffentlich auch noch ein paar...
Ring*Con 2004 – Welcome to Rivendell!
Yes, so we were definitely in Rivendell, at a new council – a gathering of all peoples of MiddleEarth: Rohirim, Elves, Gondorians, Dwarves, Hobbits, Wizards, Orks, Nazgûls and who knows what else. And, as I learned on this particular Friday the 29th of October 2004, we were really in Rivendell. I was told that if the map of ME was projected onto one of Europe, Rivendell would be approximately where we were now: Bonn, Germany.
Luckily I was one of those few who didn’t have to get up at 6 in the morning or earlier, but at a human 8 a.m. My Mum drove me to Bonn by car and then went off to do other things.
But I seemed to enter a different world when I finally crossed the threshold of the Maritim hotel. Perhaps not exactly ME, but definitely one of those in-between places where two worlds meet: the foyer was crowded with people, at least half of them wearing ME-style garment. After having had a look around, I finally got a phone call from Diana, one of those people I had said to meet that day, we found each other (“I’m standing next to the revolving door.” “Me, too!” Well, there are always two sides of “next of”, as we found out…) and then went to queue together, to get our badge and ticket.
The first thing we did was take a look around, especially at those booths selling stuff. We also managed to stand in front of a movable wall showing the Great Eye so that finally a lady from Karstadt (a big German company) asked if we wanted to have a photo taken of us standing there. As it was for free, of course we did!
Then it was time to meet some other guys from the internet. It took us long to find them, but finally we explored the rest of the con-area with them, until it was time for the first lecture.
At 2 p.m. we went to Gondolin (all the halls had been given new names) and listened to Dr. Helmut Pesch talking about the Fourth Age, i.e. what happened after the Lord of the Rings. It was very interesting even though I knew quite a number of those facts already, but he also had some interesting theories, e.g. that Legolas was less than 77 years old when the fellowship set out from Rivendell. And it even made sense the way he explained it!
At 2:45 p.m., Diana and I managed to get a place among the crowd that had gathered for the Gondor-event planned and carried out entirely by fans. Two guys dressed up like Boromir (unbelievable how they do these costumes) told the Gondorian people (quite a number of girls in blue and grey dresses) that they had to leave for Rivendell in order to find the meaning of a dream: “Seek for the sword that was broken, in Imladris it dwells…” (Sadly only in German, but still.)
At 3 p.m. Diana and I went back to Gondolin to listen to another lecture, but this one wasn’t as good as the others. Frank Weinreich told us a story about how a French archaeologist had found proof that 3,000,000 years ago Europe had been ME, but on the whole it was just too obviously made up, and we didn’t really get what the conclusion was all about.
Afterwards we decided to take a little break because by now, we were both hungry. We set out to look for the nearest super market, but when it started raining we hurried back to the hotel and had a little picnic with apples, biscuits and haribo in the foyer. Very nice!
At 5 p.m. the next interesting lecture was waiting for us in Imladris: “The Soundtrack: Pearls before Swine?” by Alexandra Velten. The way she did it seemed rather like a presentation at school, but the topic was very interesting. The “pearls” that were “cast before the swine” were those lyrics on the soundtracks you can’t really make out or understand. She gave us examples of all the languages that had been used: Sindarin, Quenya, Khûzdul (Dwarfish), Black Speech, Adunaic and Rhohirric. Did you know that during the fight between Gandalf and Saruman, they are singing Black Speech? Well, neither did I.
After having regained some strength thanks to the salad bar in the hotel Café, we met Anja. Luckily she had recognised me (with help of my self-made name-tag) and so all three of us went up to the gallery of Valinor, where the Opening Ceremony was due to start at 7 p.m.
They started with some videos, among them fan-creations using bits of the films which made laugh my head off: “We will rock you” sung by the “Orc-children’s-choir Dead Earth” wishing their Daddies good luck in the war against those “evil humans”; a trailer for the Olympics 2034 in Minas Tirith, showing all the different disciplines like horse-riding, boating, bow-shooting, swimming (showing Sam nearly drowning at the end of FotR), snowboarding (Legolas gliding down those stairs at Helm’s Deep) and putting the weight (showing Gímli asking Aragorn to toss him), concluding with the torch-bearing Ork so well known to many fans. But the best video was one where scenes from the films were cut together to fit the lyrics of “Wann ist der Mann ein Mann?” (When is the man a man?), a German song.
There was also some stage-fighting done, especially impressing with the WitchKing (perfect costume) versus Gandalf.
And then the stars were presented by Marc B. Lee, master of ceremonies, Stefan Servos, webmaster of herr-der-ringe-film d e (that’s where I get all my news from) and Marcel Buelles, founder of the German Tolkien Society.
The list of guests was fantastic: Tolkien experts, authors and artists such as Dr. Helmut Pesch, Friedrich Schneidewind or Colleen Doran (just to name a few) as well as people connected to the films: Sandro Kropp (Gildor Inglorion and others – the only German on set, by the way!), Thomas Robins (Déagol), Jorn Benzon (Rumil and others), Jarl Benzon (Glorfindel and others), Paul Norell (King of the Dead), Lawrence Makoare (Lurtz, WitchKing and others) Mark Ferguson (Gil-Galad), Craig Parker (Haldir!!), Bernard Hill (Théoden) and Billy Boyd (Pippin)!
Everyone got much applause, but it was probably loudest when Craig appeared on stage, together with Mark Ringconnies’ favourite, and of course, Billy – who was late due to his flight being late! So when Billy was pushed onto the stage, he didn’t really know what to do and soon went right back. In the meanwhile, the fans were entertained with a video showing many of his Pippin-scenes, and when he returned, a question and answer session began.
Billy was asked at least thrice to sing, but sadly he wouldn’t. Instead he told his fans about the new scenes in the RotK EE, revealing a completely new scene where, he told us, Pippin had to go to the toilet – it wasn’t very believable that for a year nobody had had to go there, Billy said. And I completely agree with him there – we’ll see if there really is such a scene in a month and a half!
Billy was asked a lot of questions, and sometimes I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not, for example when talking about an incidence with Bernard Hill, a whip and Orlando Bloom, but it was funny anyway.
When Billy finally left after about half an hour or more, Lawrence Makoare went on stage. We watched for a bit, but then decided to take another stroll over the con-area, where I finally met the last person I had planned to meet there. Diana left the con then because of a headache, but Anja and I had another picnic in the foyer.
We returned to Valinor at 10 p.m. to watch the talk with Craig and Mark which was said to start at 10:15, but it had already begun when we arrived! There were still a few questions asked, but then Craig and Mark started doing some funny stuff, like telling an improvised story, both saying a word at a time in turn, about Frodo on his quest for “Reibekuchen”, i.e. potato pancakes! They also did an interview-thingy where Craig would “translate” the German answers a girl gave back into English, which was very funny at least for the German-speaking part of the audience. (There were people from at least 28 different countries at the Ring*Con this year!)
But then it all ended at about 10:20 p.m., much too soon for my liking. Neither me nor Anja was really in the mood to wait if there was party about to start, so my Mum then picked us up, brought Anja back to the Youth Hostel and then our road lead us home again. Sadly!
But there will be another Ring*Con next year, in Fulda, and if I somehow get enough money, I will definitely go there!
[glow=purple,2,300]Heut ist der Tag, ich werd das Leben erleben!
*sich an die 17 Euro für das Autogramm von Billy Dee Williams erinner*
