User:JIP/BoundCon 2005 report

Now, for all you encyclopedia enthusiasts, a nice little original research! Luckily it's in my user namespace.

I visited BoundCon II on June 10 - June 12 2005 in Munich, Germany. I had only previously been to one BDSM convention, and that was in my home city in Finland. This was the first time I've been in a convention in a foreign country all on my own.

Getting there
My father drove me to the airport on Friday morning. I arrived at Helsinki-Vantaa airport one hour before my plane left, but I hadn't taken into account that half of Helsinki was going on a holiday at the same time. The queues were so long that I didn't get even halfway through the baggage check-in when it was only 15 minutes to take-off. I had to take all my luggage as hand luggage.

I had only previously been in Munich as a small child, but it didn't take long to figure out how the public transport worked. Luckily I had previously looked up the locations of my hotel and the "Kleiner Olympiahalle", where BoundCon happened.

Munich
Munich is a beautiful city. Two-thirds the size of the greater Helsinki area, or about the same as the entire country of Estonia. All in one city. Perhaps I should go there again on a normal city holiday?

My hotel (Seibel's Park Hotel) was in Pasing, on the western edge of the city. I had a bit of trouble arriving there, as I had misread the house number (it is Maria-Eich-Strasse 32, I thought it was 22). My room, as usual, seemed to be one and a half the size of my apartment back home. If I had been travelling with someone, we would have shared the room.

I learned the routes between my hotel, the Kleiner Olympiahalle, the city centre (Marienplatz) and the Englischer Garten on the first day. I had no problems getting from one place to another.

BoundCon
I arrived at BoundCon half an hour after it started. I had planned to arrive right at the start but was late. No matter, this is a convention, not a scheduled meeting.

Organisation
I was surprised how small the hall is. The hall where the Finnish BDSM convention had been had seemed much larger. A bigger problem was the almost complete absence of refreshments. The Finnish convention had had a full restaurant area serving various snacks and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Here, all there was was a "Topless Fetish Bar" (their words), which consisted of a small area in the corner with two topless women serving drinks. That's all. No snacks.

Another problem was the lack of seats. There were three tables at the "Topless Fetish Bar", with three or four chairs each, but no seats anywhere else. The seats at the bar were almost always taken.

Content
The actual BDSM content, though, was overwhelming. There were stands everywhere with bondage models and their studios advertising their websites, magazines and DVDs. There were two official stages with live bondage modelling and a couple of models did improvised modelling at their stands.

The scheduled main shows were very fun to watch, but seemed not to have any special plot or innovations.

I ended up constantly walking all around the place in between the shows, looking at but not buying the various magazines and DVDs.

One of the funniest thing I saw was a model called "Renée the Bondage Cross Dresser". A 190 cm tall Swiss man dressed up in women's clothes made of latex, usually ending up tied up by two women. I guess there was a market niche for that too.

Bondage Trials
The Bondage Trials were held on Sunday. They started out well enough, with five teams of one bondage model and one bondage rigger each. In the first event, the models were hogtied and had to race across a carpet on their stomachs.

However, this is where a major blunder happened. Seeing as the models wore very little (four of them only had their underpants on, and the fifth had her underpants and shirt), they rubbed against the carpet pretty much continuously. Because the carpet was rougher than they had presumed, this tore the models' skin, causing huge, painful sores. The Trials had to be paused as the models were resting.

The second event was "gag-talk". One by one, the models were ballgagged and the riggers had to guess what they were saying. One of the funniest things was that one rigger couldn't guess "Doctor Frasier Crane", even though both he and his model were from Seattle, Washington!

For the third event, the original planning had called for the models to be tied to a soccer goal and the riggers kicking a ball at them (it was far lighter than a real soccer ball though). But out of compensation for the failed first event, the roles were reversed: the riggers were tied to the goal and the models kicked the ball at them. The last model picked the ball up in her hands and threw (not kicked) it at the rigger's genitals.

End
At the end of the last day (Sunday), the last scheduled show was a three-girl suspension by Lew Rubens. But they were behind schedule and had too little time, so he only ended up with a one-girl suspension, tying up Maria Shadoes. What made this show the most fun, though, was that they didn't even bother to set the show up artistically. Instead, the lights were left on, and both Lew and Maria chatted casually with the public. It was certainly more fun than the three-girl suspension would have been.

Aftershow party
There was an aftershow play party on Saturday night. I didn't attend, because it had a dress code and I don't have any fetish clothes.

Getting back
Although the convention ended on Sunday, I stayed for one more night and went back to Finland on Monday morning. The trip to Munich airport was the opposite of the trip to Helsinki-Vantaa airport. I had about one to one and a half hours too much time, even though I travelled pretty much through the entire city. I rested in the airport tourist class lounge to pass the time.