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                              Schreiersgruen 2k1
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    (original article in german by MAD BUTSCHER, lame translation by moondog)

The traditional  Atari meeting  at Schreiersgruen/Vogtland  (ed's note: in south
Thuringia, nearby the czech frontier) took place  this year at March 31th. As in
the last  years the pre-happiness  about that meeting  was quite big, and before
the meeting many interesting things were announced.

On Friday Mr.XY/SWAT had picked me  up at my home  in time and so  we started to
the long journey  to the wild East. After the usual traffic jam before Wuerzburg
we were able to have a nice  trip in  Frankonia and  we arrived  at the Vogtland
around 10 pm.

There  we stood over night, as in  the years  before, at  Helmut Weidner's place
(many thanx for that right here). R.I.K. of Kaisersoft  was already there and so
we sat  together and  drunk some beer. A bit later Helmut was  going to  bed and
R.I.K., Mr.XY and me were still talking about several stuffs. So we talked about
the trip to the Atariada that took  place on  April 28th as well as to the Error
In Line 2 from the 13-16.4.

On the next morning after much too less sleep but therefore a bit frosted, since
I didn't recognized the blanked, we started after a pot of coffee to the meeting
place at  Schreiersgruen. There we  weren't alone for longer  time. As the first
one Wolfgang Burger arrived. Later the  legendary  Atari bus with TXG, Fox-1 and
White Warrior arrived as well.

Mr.XY, R.I.K. and me played a bit Atari-Tennis. Over all we used the possibility
to check the manual that was laying out at the ABBUC stall. Since the tournament
that was  started at the After Eight Party wasn't  finished so  far, I wanted to
train a bit before I had to fight against Artax.
Besides Tennis there was "Missile Command" played  on an  Atari XE Gamesystem as
well as "Multi Dash" on several XE's. Since the R.A.F. is building the interface
as well I saved  two of  them for me. I took  the de luxe  version (with the SIO
connection) as the  normal version with  pins seems not to be useful for parties
(there those things are  flying around always  and so someone  could step on the
pins) to me.

When I'm going to  the Atariada in April, I hope  to get the  sourcecode for the
data transfer and maybe I can  code some game  for the interface  somewhen, if I
have a lot of time. The idea is to create a game in style of "Rally Speedway".
On our funny gaming meetings  it would surely  make a lot of fun. But as said, I
have to  have time at  first. Also a furthere developped "Maze of Agtagon" would
be cool.

As we could  hear, there were  also other ideas  about the XL network, but since
that all are just only ideas at the moment, we should wait if it will be reality
somewhen.

Finally it was time  for the  Gaming contest, held by the R.A.F.  This time they
took "Ballblazer". Even  if I thought  at first  that this  would be  a bit  too
complicated, we found  fast into the game. I reached the  semi finals this time,
but against Reinhold Bittner  I had no chance. It is  cool to see  that an older
(at least as me)  Atari freak has still so much  fun and always  a funny comment
on the lips (inofficial said: Reinhold, that burial is shouting for revanche).
At the finals  Reinhold finally lost against R.I.K.  The winner has got an ABBUC
coffee pot.

After the lunch we played a bit "Atari Carts" on the Jaguar, but overall we have
finished the "Atari Tennis" contest from the After Eight Party. Artax war quite,
but I had won anyway.

When I'm not only  in playing  games, I talked  with the people about the coming
projects  and  conventions, just  as the  JPG viewer and Lunix (Linux for 8bit),
the  Error In Line 2, the  Atariada meeting, the  creation of  memory expansions
and the CDROM interface from Czechia and so on...

But as always the meeting reached its end too fast and  so we were going to some
restaurant to let the day comfortably run out.

                                                                    Mad Butscher
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