NMES is a yearly event where English students all across our dark and gloomy land get together and rage against the dying of the light. This is made easier by it being organised in the springtime when darkness is loosing its grip already. I mean, we are English students not some demigods on a quest and we will take an easy way out if we can. But I digress; the 23rd annual NMES was held in Vaasa from 10.-12. of April and the theme was necromancy. How did the theme affect the gathering? To tell you the truth there may have been corpses resurrected during the night for all I know, because the levels of alcohol consumption may have caused some slight irregularities in my observational skills, but I never saw any real evidence of it. Okay, I lied. Some of the faces that greeted me in the morning, when I stirred from my nightly three-hour powernap, may have been resurrected corpses. However, they seemed to get livelier as the evening approached so I tend to think it has more to do with the alcohol, and, quite frankly, the fact that these were English students and thus not accustomed to getting up before noon without a huge pot of coffee, a string of swearwords and an existential crisis over the direction of their lives.

Ah, but there was a more formal and academic side to this event as well, where the theme was extremely visible. Firstly, there was the pub crawl race where we were divided up into random groups named after supernatural creatures (No I don’t think any of the teams were called Sam or Dean) and then ran around Vaasa, occasionally without underwear, trying our best to score points in the tasks given to us. We did not win, but we were very well socially lubricated by the time we got to the sauna and after party, which I think is a victory in itself.

Then the following day there were the lectures: one on monsters by Tiina Mäntymäki and another on necromancy by Johannes Sumuvuori. Of the two the necromancy lecture must be commended on both its theoretical side, which was surprisingly math and physics heavy on a poor hung over arts student but still fascinating, and on its more practical black magick approach, which made much more sense to someone who just spent the previous week writing an essay on the supernatural in Hamlet. Sadly the fruit fly did not stir, but we were promised that the efforts would not be abandoned and they hoped to get some graduate students for test subjects.

And finally there was the academic dinner party. Where cultures clashed as the traditions met and battled for supremacy, but were quite quickly resolved by the song masters who calmed the boiling blood of the chieftains of each city. No, not really but there were some cultural differences and, to us, odd habits but things went quite smoothly, although the girl next to me wanted to hurt quite a few of the people suggesting songs, because she couldn’t eat. I found this hilarious.

There is also a tradition of putting on shows of some sort for these events. This year the theme for the shows was D&D, and no it isn’t dick on dick like some of our entourage thought, it stands for dungeons and dragons, the roleplaying game. The shows were varied and Oulu Jyväskylä won it fair and square with their tinfoil helmets and armours. (Damn those handsome devils.) I would recount what the shows were about, but honestly it was the latter third of the party when these took place and there were many songs before them and I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Overall the night was a success and even the dark lord, who made a surprise appearance, did not cause too much of a stir and thankfully no one gave up the hobbit, even at the after party.

These kinds of events are always interesting, because you end up meeting people from exotic locations like Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Vaasa and Oulu and slightly less exotic, but equally perplexing ones like Turku and Tampere. These people are well… strange when you get right down to it and that is a singularly wonderful thing. They are proof that no matter where you go in this country, although the madness that affected us to study English takes many forms and it drives us toward different goals, the level of strangeness remains the same. For me it was my first NMES and I can’t wait for the next one, because it really was a wonderful way to burst the insular, albeit rather large, bubble that we seem to get trapped in in our own universities and student organizations. It was wonderful to see that when our paths cross gloriousness ensues.