I started this con in the usual manner, by waking up too early & being unable to get back to sleep. I killed some time responding to, or at least reading, the pertinent bits of yesterday’s email barrage, most of which had to do with LonCon, so as to hit the breakfast room(s) at a slightly civilised hour.

Sat in the lobby reading Old Man’s War for a while, then Katie turned up, so we nattered for a while until Registration opened & we could collect badges. Sneakily, they’d set up the line to be mostly-invisible until you rounded a corner, though it moved fairly quickly.

There’s a pretty big dealers room & art show; I’m still holding off on buying much, as I don’t have that much wiggle room in my luggage, for volume or mass.
Outside the dealer room is a sort of con suite/fan village thing, with the various bid & fan club tables at one side, where I was able to find out how to say Wrocław*, and pick up a badge promoting the Polish Eurocon bid. Probably should have told them that I had no dog in that fight, and indeed didn’t even know how to vote, but they were so keen to answer questions & give away promotional things, including a little laser-cut wooden silhouette of the convention centre.
( * Vroksuave )

First panel was Newcomers Guide To Cons, which I didn’t really need to go to, as EuroCons seem pretty similar to other varieties. I did get an “I Loved Loncon 3” badge ribbon, though I had to write on the “I Loved” bit myself with the pen provided.
(One of the panellists was handing out his accumulated ribbons on increasingly strange pretexts)

Next was Missing Medieval Women, talking about the non-damsel in distress women missing from historical narratives, and thus from high fantasy.
Two of the panellists were historians, so there were a bunch of references & citations, plus the odd shoot-down of assumptions & audience questions.

Made In Ireland: Come To Ireland, We Have Tax Breaks was … exactly what it sounded like; How the artist exemption on tax works here.
It was unlimited at one point, but the tax-free amount has been decreasing over the years, down to €40k. The panel did point out, multiple times, that Bono moved elsewhere once the unlimited exemption went away & he had to pay income tax.
The idea, and they say it has worked for some artists, is to make it less miserable in Ireland for creative types.

I had intended to go to a thing on 2000AD, but got persuaded to go to Conrunning – How The Sausage Is Made.
Better than other sessions of that sort that I’ve been to, but there were too many panelists, & too many people chiming in towards the end of the hour. Basically, it got loud.

Immediately after that was the opening ceremony, but after leaving the room into a corridor which was even louder, I decided to skip the ceremony, wait out the worst of the crowd, & go back to my room to read for a while in the quiet.
I’m pretty happy with my decision.

A panel on Translation for books & games was good, and veered wildly between “The Responsibilities Of The Translator” seriousness and “here’s a funny problem/mistake”.
Turns out that Swedish has 4 genders, two of them being ‘it’. This makes it hard to conceal someone’s gender without being obvious about it.

After that, because it was in the same room, I re-watched The Truth About German Fandom; Not as funny the second time around, and the group of Polish fans who found out that the next event was about Germany & left for historical reasons put an odd spin on things.
It wasn’t a big public walk-out or anything; Just a “What’s the next thing? German fandom? Nope!” conversation which I was probably the only one to hear.

Eventually I got dinner at the hotel bar/restaurant, who seemed kind of rushed off their feet, and the usual convention process of being about to leave when someone you know sits down, then someone they know comes along, …, and eventually it was 11:30pm, and I really had to go & get some sleep.