Slovak Camp 2024

Sunday, 28 April (Kimi)

This was our only free day in the whole week, so we had to use it wisely. On Saturday we tried to find some things which we want to visit today in Vienna.

We were more or less successful. Our general plan looked like this:

Go to Stofl-Tower [1] to get a Znüni, decide there on what to do next.

But when we started walking to said tower, we were already a bit later than expected on Saturday and it was unclear whether we will get there in Znüni-time.

After a great walk through Vienna with some nice architectural achievements from the last centuries we arrived at the great Stofl-Tower. [2]

There was only a slight problem: It was closed.

Now we had to reconsider quickly what to do next. Only the two most important things from our search yesterday came to mind:

• The famous attraction: The Kanaldeckel aus dem Jahr 1903 [3]
• The best Schnitzel in town [4]

In this order we went through our list, first visiting the manhole cover.

After some initial difficulties we were able to find a manhole cover from 1904, which is off by one. But we’re very familiar to such stuff so we believe we found the correct one.

We were stunned by this attraction. In our opinion definitely the best thing one can do in Vienna. [5]

For lunch, we got a Schnitzel.

But sadly the bubbliest Schnitzel in town didn’t have any bubbles but at least we felt a bit at home in the Schweizerhof.

We decided that we will split up in the afternoon.

Yaël and I would go climbing at a near bouldering hall. The rest would visit the Donaudonutdöner-Insel [6] [7]

Yaël and Kimi	Ursus, Leo und Johannes
Transfer to Main-Station, walking to bouldering hall
	Transfer to Donaudonutdöner-Insel.
Trying to sign in to the register-system.
Buying tickets for two people and thinking it was only for one.
	Walking around on the beuatiful Donaudonutdöner-Insel.
Climbing inside
	Ach whatever nobody reads this anyways // TODO: remove
Climbing outside
	Looking at the beautiful Donaudonutdöner-Tower.
Climbing inside again
	Waiting for the other group.
Finishing with some harder grades.
	Still waiting for the other group.
Yaëls new career [8] [9]
Returning to the hotel after a short detour

At the dinner place where we should have been able to get the real Wiener Schnitzels (the ones with kalf) they didn’t have them anymore, but we got a third fake Wiener Schnitzel anyways ( ).

[1]	It’s actually the steffl tower, but who cares. (Sky @ Steffl)

[2]	It’s actually the steffl tower, but who cares. (Sky @ Steffl)

[3]	The best attraction in town

[4]	First google video that pops up

[5]	The best review you’ll ever read

[6]	Why did you click on this? Is this not known well enough?

[7]	If you’re still confused

[8]	The start of a new career

[9]	The end of a new career

Monday, 29 April (Yaël)

It could eventually be the case that maybe Kimis advice of somewhat writing what happened down could be e bit less then bad.

I remember exactly what we did on Monday.

We did the “Torture chamber opens” contest. [10]

war das nicht der tag in dem wir in den lidl und ins riviera gegangen sind? und der anfang vom meme mit kimis später pizza mit ketchup, und das palacinka/desert, etc?

– Johannes

😭 [11]

– Yaël

Oh yeah sure.

For breakfast, the Zombie Duck got some breakfast jetons from the hotel in which we were staying (these were never given back, but that’s not our problem, it’s the Ducks). Additionally, the Miniduck was also eaten, but only temporarily. We didn’t get pancakes from the pancakes machine because of the “to many children” problem. It may now be from context who had the best start into the day from the Swiss delegation.

In the train, probably nothing interesting happened.

When we arrived in Bratislava, we started walking in the typical SOI manner [12]. So we got to see the wrong side of the train station and the inside of multiple university buildings. We also got our first experience with the great ticket machines (I’m sure someone else will explain this in a future blogpost). We wanted to check in, but were forced to eat first as the reception wasn’t opened. In the university Mensa, we then almost successfully managed to explain to the non-English-speaking cashiers that someone had paid for us already, the proof is left as an exercise to the reader. After this, we could finally check in. Or so we thought. It was more of a cccchhhheeeeeccccckkkk iiiiiiinnnnn. At least we ensured that that afternoons contest would start on time*.

Please note our Room numbers:

Not found	$2^{2}\cdot 101$	Johannes, Luca
Method not allowed	$3^{4}\cdot5$	Ursus, Leo
Not Acceptable	$2\cdot 7 \cdot 29$	Kimi, Yaël

Our aura was so strong after this that the Slovak leaders showing us to the contest room also walked in the classic SOI manner [13]. So we had an interesting tour of the whole building, and the contest was even more on time*. We even had time to do a quick Nandor Motivational Speech before the contest started.

We were confused by the laughs at the beginning of the contest, but it turned out that they knew almost every task in the contest from previous rounds. Also we got a different contest then the Slovak people because they were to lazy to translate one task as the grader only accepted .txt files in Slovak [14].

All in all, we still performed pretty well, and I beat Johannes (haha). We didn’t get a solution presentation and so everybody went home, apart from us (Yes, they misunderstood the meaning of “camp” and “social activities”).In a next step, we went to a Lidl and bought some very healthy stuff (hey, there were some bananas in there), including a “Have fun” drink for Kimi, for the following contests. Afterwards, we went to some Pizza place ( , we’re still at SOI). Everything that happened there is accurately explained in Johannes message mentioned above. Here is some help for the non-german-speakers:

Rivera	the Pizza place
Pizza mit Ketchup	Mexicana Pizza is o b v i o u s l y done with Ketuchup
Späte Pizza	Kimi schould o b v i o u s l y always get his Pizza last
Palacinka / Dessert	This help is also dedicated to the waiter… [15]

Then, after some very interesting rounds of Mario Kart (Winner in the range [Kimi, Kimi]), we went to bed like good little contestants, ready for the 9 contests to come 🥳.

[10]	No lookup required

[11]	Nooo, I wanted him to respond with “You should write more”, as then it would have been funny

[12]	Just walk in a random direction, hope somebody will tell you if you’re wrong

[13]	You have such a bad memory.

[14]	we found out about translators now and failed to solve it

[15]	“Palacinka?” “Palacinka” “Dessert?” “No Palacinka, Strudel”

Tuesday, April 30 (Ursus)

We slept for our first night in Bratislava very well. So after getting up on 7:55, we went 5 minutes later - like planned - to the canteen for breakfast. But tragedy struck: Apparently, the canteen wasn’t serving breakfast for us, but for another group. Confusion enfeebled our minds, we were told to have breakfast there! Long story short, after some… “discussion” (communication was seriously hard at that point), we got our breakfast. I don’t know if we get some tomorrow, but I hope so.

Directly after breakfast we had 3 hours of contest consisting of 3 tasks. There were 2 Segment-Tree tasks and one cursed probability task. Yaël almost got full-score this time, so congrats to him.

After the contest, we went to the UNI-Canteen, and we had the choice between chicken, pork and meat, so F to Leo, the vegetarian. Well, I believe the soup was vegetarian… or was it? Whatever, the future of his lunches darkened before his very own eyes, and we were not sure, what to do with it.

Anyway, to the important parts in life: We had an another contest this afternoon, a 4-hour contest with 3 tasks. That time, we had 2 somewhat easy tasks and one dumpster-garbage from the bottom of the abyss of geometry! In English: Many of us solved the easy 2 tasks quite fast but no one of us got a single point for the geometry-task. Since I had a lot of time and no motivation implementing this task, I played with the rubber duckies and Tetris on Emacs [16] during the contest.

After the contest we went to the city in order to eat something.

But before eating, we visited the one and only: Ladies and gentlemen, we visited the Zwinger Kebab (not for the food though). It's, , a monumental and sacred place of the Slovak-camp-tradition, because it was known for... well, obvious stuff. Anyway...

For dinner, we got some crêpes, except me: I didn’t get anything at first, because the waiter thought I ordered nothing…? Anyway, shortly afterward, I’ve received my food and it was quite delicious. The internet there was “Temporary full”, i.e, it wasn’t working for - probably - the entire day.

With our satiety restored, but the stamina low, we returned to the hotel. I had to find the SOI-Song which I started in the Sarnen-camp with the Slovak-delegation. It turned out that I hadn’t backupped my song and it perished into the realm of deletion. In other words, I had to bring the song tomorrow, because the guitar-heros from the Slovak-delegation wanted to know how it went out, but I lost it. Crumbled to dust and beaten by my shame, I had to write the song, again.

Well, it was a stressful evening. Perfect conditions to write two other contests on the next day.

[16]	The reason why Emacs is the best editor, also for competetive programming.

Wednesday, 1 May (Leo)

Today we managed to get breakfast without any problems, as no communication was needed. Apparently, Mišof managed to tell the people from the cafeteria that we were the group they were expecting. Apart from that, there was nothing special about today’s breakfast, maybe except for the fact that the cereal dispenser worked without us having to punch it. Afterwards, we went to the contest location. When we arrived at the building, we were stopped by the receptionist who started talking to us in Slovak. After it became clear, that we didn’t understand a word, she repeated it again and again (in Slovak). After some time, she finally said “Room Number?”, to which everything became much more clear, and we could proceed to the contest room.

The morning contest, which of course started on time, only had two tasks, one of which was a string matching task and the other a prime number task with mostly optimizations, so no one was happy with the contest. After a short lunch break, which, - luckily - included a vegetarian option, we continued with the second contest of the day. This one also ended up not going too well for everyone.

For dinner, we decided to walk around the town and choose the first restaurant that looked good. But before that, the leaders still needed to get cash, so we went to the ATM next to “Zwinger Kebab”!!! For dinner, some of us had some Slovak food, while others had a burger. An interesting dish on the menu was “Kartoffelsocken mit Schafskäse und knusprigen Gammelspeck”, which was definitely not because of someone misreading the menu (he didn’t misread the task statements today though, unlike some other people (i.e. including me)). On the way back to the tram stop we also looked at the manhole cover and the UFO. But before we could go back to our rooms, we were stopped by the receptionist of the hotel, who wanted to make sure that we were hotel guests. As always, communication was golden, but after some back and forth we understood and showed our room keys. Communication was never our strength, I guess.

All in all, this was a pretty exhausting day. We are looking forward to the free afternoon tomorrow!

Thursday, May 2 (Kimi)

After we were told that now we are the group from Finnland (We tried to get breakfast but couldn’t get it because they only knew a group from finnland and None from Switzerland. So we said that we are that group), we got to the contest site.

But today we were excited because there was only one contest and we could explore the city of Bratislava in the afternoon.

Like 3 seconds before the contests started I returned to the room and Yaël told me that we would go bouldering this afternoon with some Slovak participants.

After the contest the confusion cleared up a bit. It was very random that they asked us to go bouldering with them but then I realized that I will write the blogpost for today and if I write the blogpost we seemingly have to go bouldering ( ).

This time Ursus and Leo realized that bouldering is actually fun, and they joined too.

We had a great bouldering session that made up for not being able to explore the city. This was more or less our only social interaction with the Slovak participants, because before and after the contest almost everyone just came/left immediately.

After showering, Yaël and me were tired, and we wanted to do a quick 5-min power nap before we will go and eat dinner. But when the others were knocking on our door we didn’t want to stand up again and discussed how exhausting it is to stand up. After like 5 minutes we were able to give each other a tutorial on how to stand up. The official reason why we were late (on time) was that Yaël was still on the toilet.

We went to the same restaurant as on the first day in Bratislava and ordered a Pizza again.

, my pizza was late again and I was the last person to receive my food. After we still didn’t want any Strudel, he gave us a Lollipop, but we thought that this was because we were the only stupid people that would return to this restaurant.

Friday, 3 May (Yaël)

I remember we were tired (because we overslept by 5 minutes), my negative contest trend continued (8/60 points on the morning contest) and that we ate some palacinka at some place that the Slovak people recommended (We had to wait for Kimi because he got his palacinka last, even if it was waiting "backstage").

So let’s do the easy solution:

weisch no was am fritig passiert isch?

ich ha ka me

—Yaël to Kimi

aber süsch gloub nüt spannends

—Kimi to Yaël

Ok, so that was it, see you next time.

Saturday, May the 4th (Ursus)

Once upon a time, the SOI-participants in the Slovak-camp got up to write their final 2 contests.

Following the same procedure as always: Getting up (on time!), eating breakfast and heading to the contest room. There, we witnessed the second last contest consisting out of two tasks:

• Some interesting task called Minesweeper.
• A copy of the Taekwondo task but 100x worse.

Well, I completely failed in this contest, it was the worst one in this week for me, but Kimi was fantastic this time! So now the ranking between me, Kimi and Leo was really tight, one could smell the excitement in the air.

After having some ordinary lunch, it was time: Ladies and gentlemen, the final contest with three tasks!

• One task about a robot repairing a wall [17]
• An interesting task about connecting graphs
• A Rubik’s Cube task where you had to create 6 carefully constructed matrices of size 1x54 by hand (and they mustn’t be incorrect to get all the points!)

Since I currently have a project about Rubik’s Cubes, I knew what I had to do! So I tried to remake the transformation matrices for the 6 different turns, and it went out… well, totally wrong. This disgusted me and I had no motivation debugging these matrices, so I plugged, as a real competetive programmer, my laptop to the contest PC and copied my matrices from there [19].

Yaël solved the other 2 tasks, but he didn’t do the Rubik’s Cube task (because of obvious reasons).

With that, we had finally completed all the contests this week. We did a lot this week, for example:

• 27 tasks to solve.
• 10 contests to fight through.
• 701 points to gain.
• 35 hours of contest being tortured.
• 8.5< times of a task being misread.
• 6 solution presentations.
• 4 times Johannes going jogging instead of implementing tasks.
• 128 PC restarts because of VS Code.
• 10 times wanting to rage-quit.
• Infinite ducks.
• A lot of Tichu!
• No sleep
• 5+ times SOI leaders borrowing money from the participants.
• Every day, troubles with communication.
• Every time, ordering Wiener schnitzel in Vienna.
• 2 times Kimi never getting a pizza.
• 3 Earworms
• An estimated 35h of Luca watching MtG-Arena and Mario Maker 2 gameplay for working (Everytime I looked he was watching, therefore it must've been 35h).
• Wait, you are reading me? Wow, your instincts are truly admirable...

Indeed, this week was an experience like nothing else!

So after the contest we went to the city for dinner (and visited the Zwinger Kebab on the way).

There, we found some restaurant, which had a TV with the resolution of our Contest-PC but stretched to 50 inches [20]. We had a wonderful miscommunication, but also wonderful food. After dinner, we went to have some nice ice-scream. Leo just chose cone with no ice-scream (He had arguably the best air-bubbles and therefore the best ice-scream). With that, we walked a bit through the city and finally made ourselves on the way back to the hotel.

But then, an unexpected turn of our life arose from nothing. Somewhere, over the river, there thrived a rock-concert, and upon this moment, their final song was engraved unto our minds. It was the so called “umta-umta-umtata”-song, which is a Slovak-children-song, and it was surprisingly good earworm [21]. From this moment on, it became a meme, and it filled our lives with joy.

Anyway, after arriving at the hotel, we solved the daily problem (which was a total troll task chosen by Johannes, ).

But then, ladies and gentlemen, a once in lifetime event: The Online-F3RD1N4R!

Remember the F3RD1N4R from the Sarnen-camp [22]?

Back then, it was amazing, but now, it was ferdimazing. With it, we discovered the true power of the “F++” programming language, and we hope it will be available for the finals. Alica was also there with some high-quality and high-level cat-gameplay.

Thus, through the night, we played Tichu and listened to some other songs, but at some point, the tiredness took over us and everything faded to black.

[17]	So, it turned out that the English translation was “slightly”[18] modified, because the original Slovak version had instead of holes in wall holes in the streets, which also reflects the reality of Slovakia.

[18]	With that I mean, the lore and the joke was completely lost through it.

[19]	Don’t look at me like you do now, you should rather ask who da fuck made this boilerplate task.

[20]	With that, everything looked like being recorded by a potato.

[21]	The lyrics are also very thoughtful and true!

[22]	If not, you have missed the meaning of life. [22.5]

[22.5]

For real, you’ve missed everything! [this-is-not-an-exaggeration]

[this-is-not-an-exaggeration]

It’s da truth.

Sunday, 5 May (Leo)

Today we went on a 9 hours train ride back to Zurich! The most interesting part of today can be read up in yesterdays blog post. But back to today after sleeping. We stood up and left for breakfast, o b v i o u s l y on time. We didn’t have any troubles this time. Then we checked out and went to the train station. On the train from Bratislava to Vienna, we played Polish Tichu [23] , which went really well, especially because the rule “whenever a 7 is played, the direction changes” definitely didn’t confuse any sleepy people. In Vienna we then went on an adventure in the main station to find a supermarket, which took way too long, and then ate lunch.

In the train from Vienna to Zurich, we were sadly not sitting in a compartment for four, so we couldn’t continue playing Tichu. So we went to solving the daily task and writing the blog posts, which will o b v i o u s l y be published on time. Then everyone did something else, I didn’t really keep track. Well, except for mainly Kimi and Yaël trying to solve a task with a really long task statement from the Monday contest which only the Slovaks had and where you had to submit a program in a .txt file. As the travel came to an end, we were all a bit sad, but luckily we will meet again soon at the finals.

[23]	Polish Tichu is normal Tichu, but after each round another rule can be added.