Sidestory: Northern Lightning ~ Malmö & NFC Day 5

 23-Feb-2025

Today starts with some unscheduled emergency repairs of Krevyasz, my trusty jacket, which  has been with me on six continents by now.

Once that's taken care off, I head out towards the Clarion for one last time. This is my approximate route there and back for today.

Today, it's misty outside again. But it's not as cold as it was a few days ago, so this is basically okay.

I stray through the Gamla Staden again.

There, I come across a bike renting station.

In this weather, there aren't a lot of furries outside, but there's still some around.

Once inside the Clarion, I take the time to put my likeness onto the group picture. Finding some space for it is actually getting pretty tricky by now, but I manage.

 

 And then, I get in line for the closing ceremony, which is coming up in a little over an hour. As such, the line is still reasonably short at this point.

I stand behind a hyena with a badass bag he made out of a plushie himself. It even has a fitting pin.

Also, I run into a fur who is wearing the same CMYKitsune sweater as I, and this time even matching the same color scheme!

And one of the other furries in the queue also has this neat animated avatar of himself in VRChat that he is carrying around.

 It is now close to the opening of the closing ceremony, and by now, the queue has extended all the way to the back of the hallway, looped around and gone back past us again. Good thing I was here early.

Things get a bit chaotic from then. There's some issue with queue management, and the back  of the queue gets sent to the front, and then back again? I'm  actually not sure exactly what happened, but some furries get a bit angy about that. However, everything is sorted out in a basically okay way, and I still get in near the beginning, so I can grab a good seat for the ceremony to follow.

In the remaining time leading up to the ceremony, Iris and Mausie  are entertaining the crowd with some cute antics of their own.

And then the opening ceremony starts with a neo.traditional song and dance performance on the Koto by WannaBeast.

The head of the charity department also makes a daring bet: Since right now about 320.000 kr. have been  donated to charity, he dares the audience to raise it to over 400.000 by the end of the ceremony, and if that happens, he's gonna let Trax shave his head bald right there and then.

There's also many more funny furry antics allover the ceremony.

And here's some statistics. This year's NFC had 5335 attendees...

...from 56 different countries, including 3 from Iceland, where the charity is from. 25% were from Germany, by the way, and they actually outnumbered the furries from Sweden, who only came in at second place.

There were 845 first timers, which includes myself.

And 2273 sponsors, which  sadly does not include myself, because sponsor ticket sales had already closed by the time I spontaneously decided to register.

2924 of the attendees were fursuiters, which is over half of them.

Also, over 1.5 tons of pancakes were sold... but only 2 kilos of carrots. clearly we need more rabbits. Incidentally, three of the girls from the charity are now furries, and one of them is a rabbit.

There's also another dance performance somewhere down the line, but I forgot exactly when that one happened.

 Then the theme for the next  year's NFC is announced: It's gonna be a circus theme!

And then comes the moment of truth for the future bald head of charity. The goal has not only been met but exceeded, and so he has to get up on stage and gets shaved bald by a furry hairdresser right there and then in front of the audience. But he endures it with a smile. And if you think about it, allowing yourself to get shaved bald in order to raise roughly 1000€ for charity is actually a pretty good deal.

 

After that comes the final curtain call, where Trax, Mousie and Iris declare this year's NFC officially over. Also, did you notice that Mausie and Iris are there two times? Their fursuits got upgraded this year, and  here's them in both their old and new looks at the same time!

Once the closing ceremony is over, I head to the Jam Bar with Rayn - the furry friend whose  tail I helped sew back on a few days ago - and we have some burgers there. In fact, they even have a special NFC burger. It's expensive, and  not bad, but also not really outstanding, so overall I don't think eating here is a good deal.

He's going to help tear down the arcade over in Valhalla, so I accompany him there, meeting quite a bunch of other furries along the way and back. If only this could be an everyday sight.

I pay one last visit to the jamming corner...

...and see my last cute animated backpack for a while.

But I'll be back. Definitely. In fact, next year, I intend to help out the STEW, and as such the last event I attend is the STEW recruitment panel. There's a bunch of interesting departments, such as the  haunted house, arcade and media that catch my eye. But really, my decision is pretty much made when Ericmon - head of ConOps at the EF where I work under him, and head of Venue here at NFC - comes up to me, shakes me and pleads "COME TO VENUEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!" It's good to feel needed and wanted. =^,^=

Walking around after that, I find a few people playing Root.

And here's an NFC sticker wall that has been thoroughly covered these last few days.

For my  final SOUP task  of the year (and quite possibly ever, if I'm gonna be STEW next year), I help with the teardown of the charity booth. This includes lugging heavy boxes of unneeded con books over to the yard sale - a task that requires me to set them down halfway and  catch my breath for about a minute or so. Fortunately, there are only two completely full boxes left, and the half-full box and extra stack are easy enough to carry.

Further work includes bagging and stowing the leftover prizes from the charity lottery.

And then the booth itself gets disassembled one piece at a time.

 

 

 

Two fursuiters stay to the end, making doodles for charity even  without any chairs or desks.

I log my last SOUPing times, which gets me to Lv41, and then I make my own last rounds, hugging a fox bearing the name of Inarizaki (稲荷崎 "Cape Inari").

 

And I suppose this row of furries simply did not survive the announcement that the con was now officially over.

Meanwhile, other cats have already gotten into their boxes and are ready to leave.

But then, it's really finally time for me to leave this furry wonderland behind, at least for this year.

 

On my way to get something to eat on the way home, I come across a shocking sight: A closed 7-Eleven!!!

That sight is so unsettling, that I drop my camera. On the plus side, it does survive the drop onto the hard cobblestone road. On the minus side, however, it doesn't survive it unscathed, and though it works, I thing this event just marked the point where I have to get a new one after this trip. Well, I suppose that started when its strap broke off near the beginning of this tour, because otherwise I would have been wearing that, and it wouldn't have fallen down in the first place, dammit!

I had originally planned to eat at the Kappabar, but for some reason, that's closed too. What's going on here? It's barely past 20:00 on a Sunday night! I would expect food places to be open! But there's actually a lot of them that are closed, and even the 7-Eleven, the whole point of which is that it's available 24/7 is closed. What in the name of Dragon?!?

As a result of that, I have burgers a second time today at Bastard Burgers.

I actually run into two other furries by the door, and we have dinner together, which makes them my last furry contacts for this trip. Anyway, the burgers and fries here are only half as expensive as the ones in the Jam Bar, but taste twice as good. Still not legendary, like that Dulf's Burger in Hamburg, but still definitely recommendable! Also, as con attendees, we get a 25% discount.

After that, all that's left is getting back to the Airbnb through the city and along the Rörsjökanalen.

Once back there, I try my  best to fix up my camera, and am partially successful. It won't be as good as new, and has definitely entered its end-of-life phase now, but I hope it will at least serve me for the remainder of this tour.

And that's the end of my last full day in Malmö, and the final day of the NFC. Tomorrow, I'll meet up with Robert, and together, the two of us will continue north to Oslo by bus. Until then stay tuned, and be of great cheer!