Foreigners at The Gathering

People from all over the world attend to The Gathering every year, but we would love to see more foreigners attending. So, why arent there more foreigners at The Gathering?
The main reasons are probably the cost, the hazzle of getting there, and the fact that people dont know enough about us.

Still, we have some loyal TG-enthusiasts out there that makes a real effort trying to change this. Gordon Tews from visitgathering.de is one of them. Visitgathering.de is an info-portal for germans - by germans. If you are wondering how to get to The Gathering from Germany or if you want someone to travel with, they can help.

We wanted to know more about visitgathering.de, and asked Gordon to write a few lines about his efforts.

Gordons story:

When I first read about TG in January 2004 I was so fascinated about the idea that one thing was clear immediately: I had to go there - no matter the costs.

The problem was that I coudn't convince friends to drive 1.500km to an event that is known as LAN party in Germany (Yes "I" know the difference...), but in summer 2004 i met Tilo Bohnert who visited nearly every computer festival in entire Scandinavia (TG, Assembly, Dreamhack). Here in Germany you don't read much about those events, and when Tilo told me that there are not many people coming from outside of Norway I got motivated to start an information portal about TG to bring more people there (although I had never been to TG yet).

Tilo offered me help making visitgathering.de, and gave me tips about things you should know about TG and so on. Another friend made the design, and I wrote about the different possibilites travelling to Hamar: car, plane and so on. Finally the page went online in January 2005, and I posted links in some forums to make people aware of the site.

The idea of bringing new people to TG was to be more difficult than I thought. For most people it is too expensive all in all, while others have logistic problems because they don't own a notebook.
Since last year I've found only 4 new people who will travel to TG, so my success is not yet satisfying. In the beginning I thougt about the idea to organize a coach trip to Hamar. If enough people had been interested I would have done this, but it is a financial risk.

As of last year some Austrians and us organized a group seating together at TG. We are 9 or 10 people I think, but there are also some other German groups not organized with us. All together there I think there will be about 20-25 people from Germany and Austria.

By the way - this year I will travel by plane from Cologne to Oslo. The complete journey takes only 5-6 hours from door to door - much less than for many Norwegians :-D

Greetings from Germany near Cologne/Bonn
Gordon Tews

 

We would like to thank Gordon for what he is doing, and encourage others to do the same. Our hope is that more people will realise that the trip to The Gathering can be relatively cheap and swift even though you are coming from outside Norway. Get organized, and join the fun!

Your story - we want it..

If you have a story to share about travelling to The Gathering from outside Norway, we would love to hear from you. Send your story to tg06info-content (at) gathering.org

Submitted stories:

From Ian Dupont - Belgium

Hi

I'm from Belgium and I went to Dreamhack last winter, with Tilo as a matter of fact.

I was amazed by the atmosphere there. and although we do have LAN parties here as well, they are totally different. I wondered if there were any other big LAN parties in Scandinavia and he recommended The Gathering and said it was even better, but different (less commercial). I think Tilo is the ambassador for traveling to LAN parties :) , hope to see him there.

So there you have it, this year I'm going to The Gathering with 3 friends. 4 is not a lot, many people have trouble with the price, but if you look at it as a holiday (which it is), it's actually cheap, we think about 200-250€ would do it, for 8 days. A few guys told us to gather some information and next time they might come as well.

Back in Belgium we organize LAN parties as well (not so big of course), so we hope we can crack the secret and bring it home with us.

Greets
Ian Dupont