This article is submitted by Lisa and Sasha (Pashy Cosplay).

It’s this time of the year again. The snow melts, it’s getting warmer outside and all of us are preparing our next cosplays. Of course we were really happy, when they announced the next date for OOT-Oldenburger Otaku Treff.

As cosplayers, there is nothing more comfortable as a local cosplay meet-up. You don’t have to travel very long or prepare a hotel room and don’t have to worry about getting home too late for work or school the next day. And that’s all what the “OOT” stands for: you can meet and get to know people from all over the city and neighboring towns, sit together, draw in each other’s “Con-Hons” (Small Books you hand over to your friends so they can create drawings and texts as memories of the day for you) and do photoshoots.

The monthly meet-up just announced in February the end of their winter break and the beginning of Oldenburg’s colorful cosplay year 2015 started on the 21. March for us!

OOT’s usually start with us cosplayers meeting on a Saturday, 01:00 pm at the station in Oldenburg. We’re usually around 200, half of us in cosplays or kigurumis, but also fans of the Japanese fashion, music or culture are welcome as well as everyone who is interested. After waiting for 30 minutes, all of us walk together to the local park (Schlossgarten Oldenburg). Even after doing this for long over a year – people always give us funny looks. We never get insulted though. On the contrary, the people of Oldenburg are always happy to see us and never stop giving us compliments for our costumes and wish us a great day.

This month we were surprised by the bad weather. It was 7°C (44.6°F) and the rain would only stop for short periods. But, as you guys know, cosplayers are tough! So we kept going and did our photoshoot anyway – even if we didn’t manage to take as many pictures as we wanted. Since our cameras are not waterproof, we had to stop after some time.

In the park, we met Semara Cosplay, who did a genderbent Natsu as well as a really cute Wolf Furry and quite a few more.

Sasha was cosplaying as Sayaka Miki while Pashy took the role of Kyoko Sakura (both are from Puella Magi Madoka Magica). We don’t have to mention how cold it was in these outfits, do we?

When the rain started to get heavier, we quickly collected our stuff and fled to our local anime, manga & merchandise store and partner of the OOT, Wolfpack. We had fun there, too. The store was full of people dressed up in all the colors you can imagine. We stayed there to play the Pokemon TCG and 3DS.

Even when the weather wasn’t the best, we enjoyed putting on a costume after the long winter break. Meeting all these nice people and having fun with them will always make us happy.

So, if you are a cosplayer, anime fan, gamer or a fan of one of those and want to enjoy a nice day with the local crazy ones, we really recommend checking if your city has a similar local cosplay meet-up.You won’t regret it!