Friday 27. June (Till)

Our journey started in Zurich, where we boarded our first train to Italy. Well, there were six of us; the others only joined the train in Zug and Arth-Goldau. Inside the train, we could have a seat and, with currently high motivation, start our long ride. Unfortunately, our seats weren’t all together but spread out a bit, and of course you need to take your reserved seat on a train. But at least we had four seats together where I started to play some games with the others. Time went by, but it felt strange as we looked at all our clocks and counted up and down; they almost seemed random, almost… crazy. Yeah, we were playing Crazy Times, with way too many rules and cards that were not only normal clocks but also so-called sand clocks, “les heures verres”. If you heard all the bad jokes we made, you would probably agree that we went quite crazy. When sums that became prime made us lose to double rule, we finally had to call it a day and quit the game. We had a crazy time.

On arriving at Milano train station, the first thing we noticed was the heat. Of course this was the feeling we would have all the time during the rest of our trip. The station was big, but we had no time to look at it because it was straight to the next train, where it was fortunately cool again. It was a pretty calm ride with various activities like sleeping, listening to music, talking, and finally learning what VS Code is. It seems like Word ended up not being good enough anymore as an editor. We arrived with only 30 minutes of delay (in contest terms, that’s starting on time) and were once again at a way too hot train station in Florence.

The last train then brought us to Pontedera. It was a local train where you apparently have to talk very quietly. I didn’t know that until I was first reminded by a guy in French and then shouted at in Italian by the same guy. I still have no idea what he said. Stranded in Pontedera, we had to wait for the bus and went to get some ice cream. There was a Coop, an Italian one; no idea what the connection there is. But it had good ice cream and water for us and seemed to be the only cold place in the area. Back at the station we met the British team and some people from the Italian one, which took the bus with us. The last ride was about an hour through curvy mountains to Volterra. The landscape was exactly like our perfect imagination of Italy, with dry meadows, the vegetation, and some lonely Italian brick houses here and there.

Our long ride made us arrive only after eight, so we skipped the check-in for now and went straight to dinner. Our first pasta of the weekend. And you also get a second plate with even more food along with your pasta. AND there is also dessert, some cake and more ice cream that Luca brought us. Then it was check-in, where we got some playing cards and a T-shirt, and we took a look at our rooms. Apparently the meta is to turn up your AC and not open the windows so you don’t get eaten by mosquitos. This worked well, and the first night was cool and comfortable.

First, though, it was setting up SOI laptops with the contest VM we needed. After the leaders helped us and basically did all the work, this was a quite easy job. So the machine was running and definitely wouldn’t cause us problems later… So we enjoyed the rest of our evening by playing some Ping-Pong. Myriam invented a new technique where you get pushed around in a chair instead of moving yourself and thus made it a co-op game. Hoping to see that as a gift soon. In the end, Levin and I tried to defeat our end boss (Ferdinand), taking opposite turns and playing to six. Ferdinand absolutely destroyed us; he won at least thirty games in a row. But we finally ended it in… Breaking the ball. What a great evening.

Saturday 28. June (Levin)

The second and most important day of WEOI started with breakfast from 8:00 to 9:00 with nothing unusual happening. After that it was time for the three hour long practice contest that was going to be the start of some devastating VM difficulties. For those participants who wanted to implement a simple addition program for warm-up, the practice contest might have been a bit challenging as it consisted of the real contest tasks from last year. The long duration of the practice contest was useful, as it allowed for most VM issues to be resolved. Then there was a time slot for lunch before the real contest started.

For the real contest the participants were divided into four groups with one assigned room each. After us participants had installed ourselves we had to wait an hour due to technical issues that can naturally arise when so many different systems and components are at play. After the delay, the contest could start at 15:00 which meant that it would end at 20:00. There were four tasks to solve.

“I hate roads.” ~ Jovian & Andrej

The following graph shows the average joy value of SOI participants during the contest when solving a given task on a scale from 0 to 100 based on a survey conducted.

After the contest and the dinner that followed it was time for socializing with other countries. Some unknowing participants from the Belgian team were easily convinced to play the game Crazytime, which got increasingly exhausting after the prime number rule was added. This rule changes the “%12”-nature of the game to be “%24” instead, incase the last two cards add up to a prime number and no other rule applies. Later in the evening we played a probabilistic card game that was based on the card combinations of poker. With that and some other games the contest day came to an end.

Results

1. Getting up

   We got up way too early (7 AM) for a group picture at SIAF.

2. Group Picture

   Great group discussions before the picture:

   Hongjia: If I jumped from that wall, would I die? Ursus: No, that wall isn’t that high. Hongjia: Yeah, but what if I jumped with my head on front? Myriam: Why would you do that?!

3. Breakfast

   Then we ate pasta the same breakfast at the usual place. We got a lunch bag afterward and quickly went to the bus.

4. Transfer to Volterra

   We went to main city of Volterra. Volterra looks pretty nice! Also, the heat was present as always. We went to what looked like the central plaza and there we found confused Swiss tourists, and also made more pictures.

5. Solution Presentation

   We went into a building (the city council, it looks quite fancy). Me, Ferdinand and Hongjia played the one and only Ferdi-game until solution presentation.

6. Medal ceremony

   Let’s go through quick and painless:

   • Andrej got 2nd place overall and got gold!
   • Jonathan got silver!
   • Myriam got silver!
   • Levin got bronze!
   • Till got bronze!
   • Jovian got bronze!
   • Hongjia got bronze!
   • Ursus got Ferdinand’s blessing [2]!

   It turns out that Me, Andrej, Jovian, and Hongjia got brutally trolled by that one task which was just a #|@*1! Some didn’t suffer that much, some others suffered… well, a bit.

   Despite some hardship, congrats to everyone!

Noon and Afternoon

1. Brudi, why so many pictures

   We took more pictures in the front of the city with all the medals. We also played the Ferdi-game with the Portuguese leader, before we eventually went back to Pontederra.

1. Bus ride

   This was the most normal bus ride ever.

2. Train station

   After the bus ride, we said goodbye to most of the delegations and went to the train station. There we found a nice scorpion friend. At some point the train arrived.

1. Train 1

   We were just talking, but at some point I heard something like:

   Person 1: Smiling Imp Person 2: Sad Imp Person 1: Lmao Person 2: Angry Imp Person 1: Smiling mao Person 2: Angry Mao Ursus: Brudi, did all brain cells just die?

   Yeah, I think we know which people were involved. At the end Hongjia saw like a animated kid’s show on a childs tablet and was like “Oh, that looks so fun!”

2. Train 2

   Finally, we had seats and an internet connection. First thing many of us did, was writing to exact same person. I realized we all do that, so I opened a chat with us all and invited some guests and so the official “Ahoy!” group was born. It’s a highly philosophical Discord group where the finest of discussions are held.

   There was also a great screen with some Lego advertisement with flying sharks and world rifts… I had many questions. But most importantly, we were told that “We are running on schedule.” (impressive!!!!)

Evening

1. Train 3

   We realized in train 3 that we are quite tired. Myriam didn’t let me do anything anymore, because “u r sus, thud!” We also shit talked a lot, and at some point Jonathan had to leave the train, so he came to me, shook hands for way too long, and said: “You are a very kind person, thank you!”, continued to Myriam, “You are a very cool person”, train stopped, continued to Levin, “… Goodbye!”

   After more shit talk, we arrived at Zurich, where I had to leave quickly for my train.