The place to be: Finncon 2008.
>>Finland, Iron Sky, Scifi | July 15th, 2008 @ 13:55 | by Jarmo Puskala
The time of the summer is coming when Energia rolls out on the open road and visists all the interesting happening we have here in Finland.
The first of the major festival is Finncon 2008. The Finnish science fiction and fantasy convention held together with Animecon 2008, the largest Finnish anime convention.
This year the conventions are held right here in Tampere. To be more exact, they’re held in Tampere Hall, some 10 meters straight ahead from this office chair I’m sitting on. So, obiously Energia will be there, but more about that later…
The rest of the con looks to be awesome. There’s always been a great atmosphere at Finncon, even though the last few years have been pretty crowded with minimum of 5000 people attending. This is the first ever Finncon/Animecon held in Tampere and the venue is the Tampere Hall, largest congress center in the nordic countries. So overpopulation shouldn’t be a problem this year.
The guests of honor at Finncon are M. John Harrison, Farah Mendlesohn and Charles Vess. The guests of honor at Animecon are Ms. Mandu, artist duo formed by Nina von Rüdiger & Johanna Koljonen. The Finnish guest of Honor is going to be cartoonist and illustrator Petri Hiltunen, who is also known as a strong advocate of movies with underwater Nazi Zombies battling sharks.
Johanna Sinisalo will be talking about Iron Sky and Moomins. Even Mr. Fukov is going to be there, though he’s going to be disguised as the mild-mannered reporter Janos Honkonen.
There’s pretty much everything, so check out the programme here.
Getting to Tampere
Anyway, if you’re not yet planning on coming now is the time to start hunting bargain plane, train or buss tickets for the weekend of 26th to 27th of July. Those of you living here in Finland should know how to get to Tampere, for the foreigners this is a great time to find out. If you get to London, RyanAir flies directly to Tampere from the London-Stansted airport. You won’t be getting much sleep anyway, so it’s perfectly viable option to use the Finncon floor accommodation - there’s a queue right now, but the organisers are trying to get more space to fit everyone.
And the cost?
Unlike most scifi conventions Finncon is completely FREE. It’s all paid with cultural grants and advertising. The floor accommodation costs 9e per person. The flights from and back to London are couple of hundred euro or so, it changes daily. For getting to and from the airports you should put aside something like 20-30e. You wont need any other transportation in Tampere, the con is situated right in the center within walking distance of everything. Booze here is expensive, food only slightly.
Be there, or be a regular polygon with four equal sides!
Archives
July 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
“To be more exact, they’re held in Tampere Hall, some 10 meters straight ahead from this office chair I’m sitting on. ”
So you dragged your chair outside of the office?
July 16th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Okay, it might be 50 meters tot he actual wall of the building. But I think it’s safe to say everybody else but you got the point…
July 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Point being that you are lousy estimating distances, or that you just like to exaggerate?
As the Bart Simpson said:
Don’t have a cow, man.
July 17th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Ah, swordfighting going on, Monkey Island style.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
“Even Mr. Fukov is going to be there, though he’s going to be disguised as the mild-mannered reporter Janos Honkonen.”
Umm - no, I wont be there :)
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:57 am
Well I heard you were accredited as press…
Be there or be… ohfuhgethabouthit