(Reproduced, with kind permission from Michael Ferguson's original post to 
rec.juggling)
 
Wow, what a good time that was!
 
The largest juggling convention ever!  3500+ jugglers.  Man, that's a lot 
of jugglers!  Say what you will about the convention, but, well ... there 
certainly were a lot of jugglers there, weren't there?  It struck me as 
so on the third day when I vacated a packed-to-the-rafters sports hall to 
head out for some suds at the beer tent.  (And the Dutch do like their
sudsy beer, don't they?  ;-)  All the way along the path to the tent site
a steady stream of jugglers kept coming in my direction.  Surely a show
must have just let out, I thought.  Hah, nope, not so.  The grounds at
the tent site were full of open-air flingers, and the beer tent was
jammed with those taking a break from the flinging, and the marquees were
full of folks watching shows or tossing stuff themselves.  That's when it
hit me that there were a lot of jugglers on site.  A helluva lot of
jugglers!  Not that there aren't problems when you have a full house, but
(imo) better to have a full house than an empty house.  [Rule #1 for
festival organizers:  get the jugglers to show up.]

For me, there's just something about the dynamic of a European Juggling
Convention that can't be beat.  The international aspect of it all is
fantastic:  sharing the bounce slab with the German twins, the French
National Ball Bounce champion (hey, that's what he said ;-), a Welsh
woman, an Englishman, and two other Americans; or watching Piqua Rick
trying to explain his ball spinning techniques to a French juggler, a
couple of Scottish jugglers, and an Italian all at the same time; or the
ad-hoc parasol workshop led by the Japanese jugglers with more
nationalities looking-in than you can count; as well as the fun of
slagging off the bad show acts (particularly the ones you didn't even see
;-) together with people from five different countries representing three
different continents.  Yep, this is the way it should be.

This is not to say that *everyone* was there.  Alas, some friends from
past EJCs were notably absent and were missed, but maybe they've got
lives outside the world of juggling (what losers then, eh? ;-).  And the
IJA wasn't there either and neither was their Juggle magazine.  Yep, the
IJA took a pass on the biggest gathering of jugglers ever.  I guess
that's no real surprise, but, geez, they sure do a lot of whinging about
not selling enough of their magazines and so forth to be skipping the
biggest juggling marketplace ever, not to mention the odor of elitism
they project by ignoring such a large number of their fellow jugglers.
(But, fuck 'em, the gym was full, and the beer tent rocked, so whose loss
was it really?  I think not the EJC's.)

And, say, there was a good bit of talent around and about too.  No, those
3500+ weren't just all poi swingers.  I noticed that right off when I
stepped into the hall for the first time and right away caught sight of
ten rings jumping upwards by the back wall.  Valentino may be no Gatto,
but he sure can fling 'em.  Toby Walker, well, dang, what can you say ??
-- long runs of 7 clubs to clean catch finishes plus all the other Toby
stuff like the 5 club Mills Mess and the 5 club backcrosses and the 5
club quads to flats -- geez, he's pretty good with the clubs, isn't he?
And give Haggis his due too, as he did indeed go into 5 clubs from 3
clubs with a head balance by SIMULTANEOUSLY kicking up a club AND
dropping down the head balance.  No easy trick that!  Later in the week
John Nations showed up, and in his usual sandbagging style, showed that
he can still fling 5 things with handles pretty damn well himself.
Another standout in my mind was Tony, the French ball bouncer, whose
throws seemed to be little more than a twitch of the arms, as if the
muscles were being shocked by electrodes.  Yep, some dynamite ball
bouncing from him, including a brief force bounce of 8, a bunch of
catches bouncing 9, and a 4-ball shower bounce from a full leg-split
position (ouch!) done at about the height of my big toe (okay, excuse the
hyperbole there, but it WAS *REALLY* low).

In general, I thought the overall skill level was much higher than I
recall from the last EJC I attended in Edinburgh in 1998.  Early on I
took a photo of some guy doing 6 clubs, then I took another photo of some
wee lassie doing 6 radical fish, then I took a photo of some fathead
juggler (sort of) doing 6, then I decided to stop taking photos of 6-club
jugglers because I didn't want to waste all my film on the same trick.
Also, it seems that 5-clubs is nothing now (hey, even Rob Stone can do
it, what does that tell you?  ;-)  There was no shortage of 7-ball
jugglers either, and a few blokes who could toss up the 8 and 9 balls for
more than just a few catches too (and to their further credit, they
haven't found the need to post their catch counts to this newsgroup
either ;-).  While my ramblings here are mostly about the sorts of
juggling that I'm interested in, that's not to say the other disciplines
weren't equally well represented with talent.  It was pretty much all
there to be seen.

For all that, I was struck by the fact that some European jugglers
mentioned to me during the EJC that they guessed that the skill level at
American conventions must be higher than that at the European.  Why so?
Myth of the superman juggler *over there* perhaps?  I don't see such a
juggling skills gap between the two sides of the Atlantic myself.  It
just seems to me like there are skilled jugglers everywhere now.

Of course, it's not enough to just get the jugglers there, you need to be
able to support them during their stay with juggling space and food and
drink and toilets and showers and drink (oh, sorry, did I mention 'drink'
twice?  ;-) and places to sleep, and then you have to entertain them a
bit and set up a bazaar so's they can buy jugglie stuff and give them
workshops on how to use all the jugglie things they've got and so forth.
I don't think it's real easy to organize all that, is it?

From my point of view, I thought the main sports hall at this year's EJC
was the best juggling hall I've been in anywhere, bar none.  I'm
generally pretty fussy about lighting and ceiling height and all that,
but this one was no problem for me.  Fantastic I thought.  Quite large,
high ceilings, comfortable floor, quiet lighting, and pulling out that
one section of risers made for a convenient gawkers gallery without
really sacrificing much juggling space.  Sure, it was often crowded, but
when you've got 3500 jugglers around and about it's bound to be so.  All
I can say is that I did lots of flinging in there.  Lots!  The only down
side for me was that the floor sucked for ball bouncing, but if you're a
ball bouncer you get pretty used to that sort of thing.

Having said that, I'd also have to say that the organizers really screwed
the pooch when they closed down that nice juggling hall for a day and a
half to (try to) make it into a theatre for the main show(s).  That sort
of thing is never a good idea.  Never!  [Memories of juggling in the
hallway for two days at the IJA in St. Louis in 1991 dance in the head.
The horror, the horror ...]  Perhaps there needs to be some supervision
by the EJA in the future to ensure that the local organizers don't make
such a mistake ever again.

But aside from that nonsense with the hall, I can't say that there was
much to bitch about.  Well, okay, right, the official convention shirt
rather sucked.  Please, just a regular convention t-shirt will do in the
future and spare me the story about who sewed them, okay?  Also there was
something about an outdoor movie theatre that didn't quite work right,
but I think that really was meant to be some sort of performance art
farce, wasn't it?

As for the food, I found things to eat, no problem.  Sure, it was proven
there that the Schiedamese don't know how to make hamburgers, but the
spaghetti boulognese was fine, and everyone raved about the chicken
wraps, and there were always chips available (except sometimes they were
available but you weren't actually allowed to buy them ;-), but all in
all it sure was nice to have a bar serving food right in the same
building as the juggling hall.  The tent site also had caterers, but one
of them always seemed to be closed when I was out there, so I ended up
eating a lot of bami and nasi mit kip or sate or whatever the hell that
was -- hey, at 3am one tends not to be too choosey.  And when caught in
between the hall and the tents, the pancake house made for a nice
stopover.  A bit pricey, but yum, yum, those pancakes were good!

The drink?  Yes, there was drink.  I drank.  Okay, you're right, at 2.50
guilders (~70p/$1) per token for a small glass of beer the festival Mini
bar was a little overpriced, and at any price it was unnecessarily loud
in there, but it was always full of action and it really is quite a laugh
watching jugglers try to dance after they've had a few beers.  OTOH, I
thought one got plenty for one's suds guilders at the sports hall bar,
and overall I don't recall anyone bitching about going dry.  For sobering
up purposes, one could get a nice cup of coffee at The Spoenk coffee shop
just down the street from the tent site.  It always seemed to be rather
smokey in The Spoenk, but most of the jugglers didn't seem to mind that a
bit, and there was a rack outside for parking your unicycle.  The Q8s
near the sports hall provided most other sorts of beverages, although I
missed the open all night convenience commonly associated with such
places in America.

Stuff about toilets and showers and sleeping accommodations I'll leave to
other jugglers to comment on.  All I can say is my hotel room had all
those things and it was dry and it was only 100 meters from the main
juggling hall.  For that I am thankful.

Okay, I've rambled on.  Sorry, did I forget anything?

Oh yeah, the parade and games and workshops.  Yep, they had that stuff
too I'm told.

Oh, and shows, I think they had juggling shows too, or something like
that.  Actually I was too busy having fun at the time to pay much
attention to all that.  However, one guy did tell me he saw most of his
juggling show on a big television screen in the sports hall and I'm
wondering if maybe that is the way of the future for big juggling
conventions.  :-/

And it rained a bit.

For me, it was a good time.  More, please (thank you).

Cheers,

-- 
Michael Ferguson (a.k.a. Fergie)