At the lobby we were greeted by an automated gun turret which we barely managed to sneak past, only to get ambushed, caught and forced into a meeting room full of indie developers and a few Valve employees. The morning after the arrival we went to the Valve headquarters, situated at a 15 minute or so walk from the hotel. I digress though, enough of our troubles and on with the fun stuff! And as if that was not enough I also managed to blow my left eardrum, forcing me into the weird habit of turning my right ear to face whoever spoke to me. Added to this is a nine hour jet lag, that caused us to lie fully awake in the middle of the night (sleepless in Seattle, har har.). Needless to say it is quite an exhausting trip. Seattle (or Bellevue to be more exact) lies at the western American coast and it takes about 24 hours of travel, from door to door, for us Swedes. And thus, Jens and I were ready to cross the Atlantic! Luckily, it turned out that that as soon as you pay for your visa, you are free to go. Remembering the trouble we had with visas for our trip to Moscow, we feared that we would not receive them in time. Two years earlier it had become mandatory to have a visa in order to enter the US. Having come to this decision we were not sure if we would be able to travel though.
However, after a few minutes of deep introspection, we thought "what the heck" and decided to go. We were of course intrigued, but at the same time a bit reluctant as we had to travel, a not short journey, in only a few days. The only thing we knew was that it had to do with Portal 2 and that it might involve other game developers. The email in question was an invite from Valve, asking us to visit them on the 17th, merely 6 days away, for reasons that were quite obscure. On Saturday morning, the 11th December, I came across a strange mail as I did my early inbox checking.