[Old blog] An epic and unexpected London-worldpremiere-adventure

It has been a little over a week now that I came back from my latest trip but my pointy ears are still wiggling in excitement.
When my fellow-Elves and I heard that the Hobbit worldpremiere of 'The Battle of the Five Armies' would be held within Europe, we all knew that this may be the last chance for us to ever attend an event such as this and immediately started looking for affordable travel-routes. Being still a student, the decision to really go on that trip came with a few sacrifices and a tight budget plan, but it worked out perfectly fine.
My already existing costume went through lots of upgrades, as well as adding a wig to avoid bad-hairdays and the moist London-weather making everything stressful.  Elves will be Elves.
On saturday morning I got up way before dawn (and was a very tired Elf for quite a while!) to catch the train, that would bring me to the bus, that would bring me to the airport. It was quite a journey and I ended up traveling about as long as if I would have taken a direct bus to the UK.

My luggage consisted of 70% costume, 10% random Nerd-things and  15% thermo clothing and 5% of what one would consider 'normal'.

Having just arrived, I teamed up with my dear friends as well as my sister in spirit, in order to already get our queueing numbers for the premiere day. It came as a surprise to us as we thought we would at least have the saturday to walk through London a wee bit, but the choice that we had was easy: we either say yes to sleep on the streets that night - absolutely unprepared with no camping equipment and temperatures around 0°C but keep our good position or go to the hostel, come back the next day and mabye not even get into the red-carpet area.
It wasn't really a question to be honest.
We even ended up improvising our sleeping-space into a glorious, silver-sparkly elven fort made of cardboard, cosplay-robes and some blankets that we accidentally smuggled out of the hostel in my sister's siutcase.
We didn't sleep much that night for the gound was hard and the city a lot noisier than I thought it would be - but I cannot complain, I've had a lovely 5am walk through London by night with Cage, the elvenking and we even ended up seing the Thames and Big Ben, so I may even call it a spontaneous sightseeing-tour *winks and giggles*
(Lots of Elf-love to the absolutely lovely chinese girls camping next to us, it was a pleasure to have your company and I hope we may meet again sometime!)

Behold the glory of the allmighty wristbands being bestowed upon us the next morning!

Because Elves don't need that much sleep, we also attended the official theonering.net party at Waxy O'Connor's which is an absolutely lovely pub that looks like a cozy woodland-tavern!
I absolutely fell in love with the design of this location and I would most gladly move it thehehe!

Look at the nifty branch-decorations! *fanelfing*

We've had a great time (in the slightly overly-crowded area) and  met so many lovely people who came by to greet us or take some pictures - a grand mae govannen to all of you, I really enjoyed talking to you and all your incredible compliments were so kind and sweet!

Sadly that evening didn't stay as peaceful and enjoyable, for when actors like Billy Boyd or Luke Evans showed up to the party, the crowd went absolutely berserc and suddenly everybody had to take a picture with them at the same time it seemed., not even leaving them time to arrive, settle down or even fetch a drink, it was absolutely insane.
At some point the crowding and and constant pushing became so bad and ruthless, that it  triggered my asthma and I had to get out immediately, which was not that easy because people simply wouldn't move aside because the only thing they were paying attention was the actors and not at all the people around them.
My sister had to get verbal and violent to make space in order for us to get to the exit - we even had to whitness people making fun of us for being 'overreacting, crazy fangirls'. Being laughed at is not what you want when you are struggling to breathe.
My Noldor-badluck decided to hit in too because as faith wanted it, my inhaler was in the wrong bag (it was used to soothe another fan's asthma-attack the night before and was not in my usual storage-place).

I could have died that night if it weren't for my sister who made sure people would stay away, gave orders and helped to calm both my panic-attack and my breathing; as well as Kizaki and Petra who made one epic sprint to the hostel and back to fetch my medication and saved me from a night in an emergecy room or worse. 

It is over now, I am well and happy as ever, but please be a little more attentive and try to watch out for what is going on around you - not everyone has a sister to take care and kick a way out. Sure it is nice meeting your favourite actors and mabye getting a picture with them, but is that really worth harming somebody else's health...?

That being said, I can move on to happier things: The premiere itself. And what a grand experience that was!

Having slept outside (I cannot believe we actually did that :') definitely the craziest thing I have done for the sake of fandom so far!), we've claimed a front-row-spot (lots of more waiting and "not leaving the queue!" was involved until we finally made it - all of us in full cosplay and up to our pointy ears filled with excitement!)
We really did enjoy ourselves on this grand event and were honored when various TV-reporters took their time for an interview with us, it was seriously overwhelming I had not expected that at all!
We even got to take a few #Elfies with some of the actors and I finally claimed my long longed for Sir Ian McKellen autograph! *excited shrieks of elven happiness*

After the premiere (and getting kicked out of a fastfood restaurant because my sister and I were a tad too excitd for the security man's standards!), our little group settled down at the pub we've been at the night before, to relax a little and enjoy the rest of the evening there together. All of us were a wee bit exausted (and not few of us bore battle-wounds since some people at the premiere beacame a little too physical when trying to get the actor's attention *sigh*) and none of us wanted to part but my flight was scheduled in the earliest morning-hours so I was the first one to leave the fellowship.

Being on the internet for the first time after a couple of days, I almost dropped my teacup finding out that our pictures where everywhere - my goodness! *gasps* (there are also some seriously derpy pictures but to be honest I am highly amused about them!)

All in all in those four days I count about 9 hours of sleep - the remaining time was filled with fantastic adventures with my friends, many grand experiences and unforgetable memories.~