oloriel | The Hitchhiker's Guide to Middle-earth, 2007

Friday, July 6th

Thank Eru the organisators of the MEF know their audience's habits. That means you can have breakfast until 11:30 and there is no fixed program before 10, giving people a realistic chance of regeneration after the night's partying.

After breakfast the Elleth and I have to leave for the archaeology hike, which starts in the Finges, as they call the Pfynwald down in the valley (the funny thing about the MEF is that it takes place on the border between a Francophone part of Switzerland and a part where they speak something that, for lack of a closer relative and for reasons of shared syntax and orthography, is filed as "German"). Accordingly our adorable tour guide is from the French-speaking Lower Valais and claims that her German is 'orrible (Actually she is quite fluent, and her German is more intelligible than your usual schwyzerdütsch). She is convinced that there are actual Elves living in the Finges (elfin Elves, though), but they are very shy and don't reveal themselves to humans, so she's delighted to have people in Elf-garb run around. And my paste-on elf ears fascinate her. Otherwise she doesn't know much about LotR and keeps asking questions about the stories (my favourite is "Oh, it was written by an actual author? I thought it was a real mythology!").

Our hike takes us to the Mörderstein, a massive chunk of rock, but we don't get to see much because they are doing excavations there currently. The highway through the Rhône valley is going to be built soon, and as the Mörderstein is in the way, it'll either be blasted or removed. Either way the archaeologic remains "from prehistory to the 1950s" around and underneath the rock won't survive it, so they're trying to find and save as much as possible, and the site is shut for laymen. But one of the archaeologists busy there tells us about the kinds of findings they expect and the discoveries they already made.
The rest of the time we spend leaving archaeologic evidence of our own, as our guide has the idea of building an elf village by a narrow irrigation channel.
On our way back, we encounter a blindworm. It writhes around frantically until

ladyelleth takes it, at which point it curls up on her hand. Elleth, the lizard charmer!

Back in Leuk we finally find the copper workshop we've been searching since we arrived, but of course they're already full and almost finished. Alas. We write a postcard to

leany75, have supper, and gather on the meadow for the evening's entertainment.
Forzarello, the Duivelspack, Romulus the bard, the Würzburger Greifenpack and the Phoenix Fireproject pass the time until dark splendidly with music, juggling, acrobatics, stage combat, jokes and just generally a lot of fun and action. And once the sun has set, Knud returns! This time he brought the Tom Bombadil band (how fitting! ^_^) along so we get live music to go with our medieval dances. I must say that this is something I keep missing at all those Medieval Markets and at Ring*con: a group that does danceable music, the space to actually do the correct dances, AND a reasonable amount of people willing and/or capable of actually doing more than bouncing on the spot. Well, we don't actually have all that much space as the meadow is only ten or so meters across, and I guess it's debatable whether around 100 people still count as "reasonable", but at any rate I get my wish. It's all very chaotic, and some dancers always have to drop out because their partner moved on and the next didn't show up, most people don't know the dances too well, and I get to do the man's part all the time, but it's tremendously fun and once again the band has to leave much too soon. One final Chapelloise and they're packing.

Elleth and I keep dancing until there's no music outside at all. Then we find a nice cozy bench, rest our weary feet and recite poetry and sing songs until we can't think of anything anymore. As it's 3:30 when we reach that point, we decide that we can call it a day.

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Early morning exercises for the ~~hasty~~ early risers/ Empty benches on empty tables

Moments of relaxation

Dragon and Phoenix

Oh, and have a brief moment of a mass Chapelloise! Here be video.

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All right, the other two days will be done tomorrow. This took longer than I thought. >_>