Okay, let’s pick up where we left off!

Day 5 – Aug 19: Karaoke, the Enterprise. Rainstorm and I had a lazy morning after the late previous night, then we met a friend we’ll call Bebop (yes, everyone’s nicknames are based on their avatars, and yes, I know almost everyone’s IRL name too) for lunch in Camden. Afterwards, we returned to the hotel to get into our cosplay for the evening. Rainstorm and I were going as Eric and (bad)Muriel, and I must say it was amusing to run around London with the word “bad” written on my cheek, ha! About 30 of us met up for karaoke, and it was a blast! I have a karaoke curse – every time I schedule it, it doesn’t come off. This was my first experience with a big group, and it helped that it was a fandom group. I don’t feel even remotely silly dressed in costume singing Lady Gaga at the top of my lungs. And honestly, it was essentially group karaoke anyway – everyone sang everything! After our two hour time slot, most of the group walked a few blocks away to the Enterprise Pub, which is where a scene from season 1 of Good Omens was shot. There, we met up with even more fandom people for dinner and drinks and generally enjoying the fact that all of us were in the same room for the first time in a year. There were some people that I met in person for the first time, people I literally screamed when I saw them because we’ve known each other for ages online. It’s brilliant. It’s the best. It was a lovely night.

Day 6 – Aug 20: The First Annual Meeting of the Ruby Appreciation Society. Essentially, Rainstorm and I spent the day hanging out with Ruby and Jo, and somehow this devolved into a long running joke about this being the Ruby Appreciation Society. I’m the secretary. My job is to take notes. Every time I take notes, I have to say, “XXX/10, no notes” with the first time starting at 10 and each time going up. I think I’m like at 26/10 now. 😄 We started with a breakfast of sushi crepes, which aren’t actually sushi at all, but a place that rolls up fruit and brownies in crepes and then smothers them in whatever sauce you want. They were pretty delicious. After that, we went to the Queer Britain Museum and the Vagina Museum, with a random stop in between because we discovered a bookshop on a boat. After the museums, it was off to specialty mashed potatoes for dinner (I thought this sounded weird, but it ended up being the best thing ever), and then after-dinner drinks at the Cahoots Underground Speakeasy. It was really nice to have a day to hang out with some very close friends rather than being with larger crowds. A down day, despite the busyness!

Day 7 – Aug 21: The Finnish Invasion that was “totally not a heist.” I realize these daily short-descriptions are getting more ridiculous, but if an outing has a specified name, it’s gonna get called that, okay?? Rainstorm, CS, and I checked out of our hotel that morning because we were traveling to The Ineffable Con that afternoon. After leaving our luggage in storage, we met up with four others, including the three Finns who collectively called themselves the Finnish Invasion. Together, the seven of us visited the British Museum. I was pretty exhausted and I wanted to save my energy for the evening, so I went to the library area to sit quietly for the couple hours that everyone else ran around. The group ended up splitting into multiple groups until we got back together in time to make our lunch reservation. (Why “totally not a heist”? Because there were some Finnish foodstuffs that were getting passed along to us, to pass to a few people at TIC, who would in turn bring them back to the US to send to folks there. And somehow, this got mixed up with the fact that the British Museum has basically stolen almost everything that’s housed inside, so the Finns were joking that they were going to steal stuff back. Which obviously no one was actually going to do, yeah? Anyway…)

Now, after the British Museum trip, Rainstorm, CS, and I took a train out to TIC. I’m going to talk about that in a separate post, so I’m skipping ahead to:

Day 11 – Aug 25: St Dunston’s, the Globe. A group of GO fans decided not to end our time together in London after TIC, so we pre-planned to meet up at St Dunston’s and then walk down to Shakespeare’s Globe together before we attended a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The pre-Globe meetup was actually rather awesome and sparked a story idea (a story that I’ve since written and published to ao3, thankfully finished before the site went down). I kinda made a mistake with the Globe tickets. Because Rainstorm has a severe visual disability, they can’t usually see what’s happening on stage. But the Globe has standing tickets. You can be right next to the stage. So we got those tickets. Which was great for Rainstorm, but not so great for my legs/feet after days and days and days of constant walking, ha! But I survived, and being right next the stage was actually really cool. I’m not a big Shakespeare fan, but it turns out I may just be like Crowley – I prefer the funny ones. The players did a phenomenal job, and two people in my group got to participate in different parts of the play! Afterwards, we all went out for a quick drink before the sad goodbyes. (And, fun fact – I got the email with the divorce decree to sign while I was at the drinks party, and the entire group toasted me!)

So that’s pretty much it. The next morning, we got on a train back to Germany. But hey, this year, I got to stay in Europe after TIC rather than flying home to the US! Hurrah!