Debconf finally ended for me, and I am now sitting in Paris-CDG, the very friendly airport with not enough benches for people to sit on while waiting; or wireless, or even plugs for when you run short on battery. Luckily I found a hidden plug in the stairway to one of the boarding gates. If you are leaving Helsinki via CDG and have a few hours to kill, you can use these two plugs which are in front of check-in #6, in gate D78/79. Only 4 hours of wait to go...

I've been in Otaniemi for the whole Debconf, after arriving late on Saturday. It has been fantastic. Better than my very best expectations.

Besides doing all sorts of stuff, like nearly getting killed by the cabal or voluntarily risking my life in the stupidest adventure of the entire Debconf, I've been doing other things. I've attended some very interesting talks and bofs, although admittedly I haven't made it to any of the 9AM talks (except Jeroen's, which I happily slept through as the video guys had the kindness to record for posterity) because night life in Otaniemi is quite intense.

More important than the work done in talks, bofs and small meetings in the Smökki, has been for me the social part of the conference. I have met many people -the list is way too long- I've been working with or chatting for years, and had never seen in Real Life before. The atmosphere you could feel between the Debian Developers and other Debian community members during the week is something that will help me renew energies to keep working on my Debian tasks, and will make me start thinking of Mexico for next year.

I have specially enjoyed some of the features Finland introduced in this Debconf, like all the sauna and naked swimming dipping in the pond we've enjoyed throughout the week. Stuff like this really helps making friends and socialising with your project mates, and is very enjoyable if you come from countries where nakedness, far from being as natural as it is in Scandinavia, is nearly a taboo.

The campus where Debconf took place at Otaniemi was also fantastic, being brand new, just 100 metres away from the sea, virtually inside a forest, and relatively well connected to Helsinki. Had I not fucked up my leg, I would have also been able to take advantage of the athletics field that will be used in the paralympic championships next month, and run through the forest to discover what was around the campus.

The nights, as I said earlier, have been a source of many anecdotes. A few days I went back to Helsinki to sleep a bit more than what you could in Otaniemi not having a room, but after leaving early for the last bus and missing the spontaneous Alcohols of the World party one of the first nights, I decided to stay there to sleep, in whatever corner I could find. This generally has meant going to bed at 5 or so every day, except for the last two days, when I just didn't sleep at all.

One day was the now famous Ubuntu chorus day, led by mdz and sabdfl, which woke up the entire debconf at 4AM, and never ended until 8, when a few people sneaked into the hotel and had a big breakfast. Sorry about that guys, next year we'll have practiced in advance and at least it will be something resembling to music. :) Before the singing, a large group of people had moved to Helsinki to find some cool club. Soon the group split in two, and I ended in the so called "Ice Bar", which was... cold. Way to early, at 3:30, we were kicked out from the place and while standing in the line to take taxis, a request to climb Thom ended up in a few people doing human castles in the middle of the street, climbing lamp posts and other "I am bored and a bit drunk" kinds of stuff.

The second night, after barely no sleep (if you don't count the two hours of sleep under direct sunlight, thanks to madduck), a group led by Mako went to a club, and there was dancing for over 4 hours. I think I should have stayed at Otaniemi because, being so tired, after a while I was just waiting for the closing hour to go back. When we finally did, at 4:30 or so, people were already waiting for their taxis or packing their stuff. My idea was to go swimming and see the sunrise, but it was a bit too late for that, and after saying goodbye to everyone that was already awake, I was lucky to find data who was about to drive the van to the airport, so I even saved quite a bit in a taxi drive.

In short, this has been one of those weeks that you wish it never ended, in some ways eye opening and quite productive in many aspects. Thanks to all of the organisers like data, gwolf, marga, Andreas and the rest of the team who have made it work so smoothly, despite of the huge amount of people who attended. You make Debconfs rock!

I can't wait to get to València and sleep 10 hours for the first time in a long time. It won't be easy to get back to work tomorrow after all of this.