weeknotes for w/c 29/12/25 [congress edition]

Congress is a weird, timeless place with endless side-quests. therefore, this will be a soup-like collection of thoughts and musings from this week, with no real structure. I'll see you all in the New Year.

• thoroughly confused with how the HVV metro system works, but bought a prepaid card for my collection
• I feel like a lot of my brain an O(1) cache that holds a copious amount related to all my sensory input all the time. I realised this a few weeks ago, and it’s surreal
• traipsing around with Willow was great
• time works unusually here. the day counter doesn’t tick over at midnight, but at the "first" session of the following day. something that’s 4am on day 2 means 4am on the 29th, not the 30th!
• it’s a high trust environment, where everyone has effectively free rein of everywhere. people trust you know what you're doing, and you'll ask if you don't. also, everything is super accessible, because it’s bilingual in English and German.
  • the one exception to this is anything operations related, which requires a working knowledge of German
  • I’d consider getting medical aid training of at least 48 hours to help out with the first aid team here, but you also need to speak fluent German. I might just do it anyway
• lost of people used scooters and roller blades to get around, pretty cool
• a lot of training goes on during Day 0 and Day 1, which I missed. however, managed to do some phone helpdesk training. did a bunch of angel volunteering shifts overnight, accumulated 20h, got a sick shirt. I delivered shockingly little Chaos post, though
• it's quite hard for people without an assembly (or what I'd call a village, because I'm a camping festival person)
• there's a CCC orga network infrastructure talk I've been meaning to watch
• picked up someone's SoundCloud and it's actually... pretty good?
• got a recipe for... some drink which was REALLY good and warming. don't remember what it's called, but here you go
  • 35l water, 1kg brown sugar, 120g mate tea leaves, 1l lime juice, rum to taste (golden rum best, white is worst)
  • boil water and steep leaves for 8min, remove leaves and let cool, re-add leaves and steep for 5min, enjoy
• I find a lot of people either accept the status quo or try to change existing systems without understand them. I don’t understand a lot of systems, I’d like to meet people who understand and want to change them, so I can understand and help change them too
• threw some cash at the dotMeow GTLD Kickstarter
• tried some home-brew alcohol at Food Hacking, including a really good coffee stout
• after leaving Congress, it was weird going back to explicitly gendered toilets
• somehow didn't drink enough water, so my bottom lip split
• started coming down with some mysterious c3flu post-Congress. decided to book a last-minute flight back to the UK
  • I actively despise flying. airports are overoptimised and highly liminal spaces with bad vibes. my ear popped during the flight and was really painful and uncomfortable, and playing spot the luggage after was also ridiculous
  • made it through customs at Hamburg smoothly with the millimetre wave and CT scanners
  • lost a “don’t bully me I’ll cum” label I left loose in my passport when I handed it over to the German border guard 😔
  • missed New Year's celebrations as I was in knocked out in bed
• saw this banger on Mastodon dot com

• pro tip for next time, carry a medication buffer of a few extra days, in case plans change. I used up all of my meds before I got back and really suffered for it