3rd Südsee Cup, 23-24th May, 2008.
I knew I was in for a difficult time even as I started my journey north. 1st came a long ride in a night train to Zürich, and can I mention again, that the trains from Zürich to Innsbruck are very prone to delays? Anyway, I tried to sleep on the train, but somehow failed miserably, so I got to Zürich in the morning, really tired and this time, I fell asleep on the train from Zürich to Konstanz, but it meant that I only slept for about 1 and a half hrs. And so got to Konstanz, kinda glad that I was there before, coz at least I knew where the bus stop was and everything. And much to my misery, I got onto the wrong bus. Supposed to take Bus 4, but somehow, in my sleepiness, mistook Bus 14 to be 4, so I ended up at some strange place, and had to take another trip to the correct place. And the place was really tough to find, no idea where the fields and camping places were, and the map they provided sucked majorly. And so I arrived late and thank goodness, the 1st 2 people I met there was Claudia and Konstantin, who ended up to be my teammates! So with my good luck, I managed to put my stuff down in their tent and got all my Ultimate gear on and headed to breakfast and the games.
I can’t say a lot about Saturday games, except that 1st game, I was DEAD TIRED. It was the 1st time in a long time that I felt that deep fatigue in the bones, the kind I used to feel when I had had 5hrs of sleep every day of the week and had to go for track training. And we lost the 1st game, and all I remembered that I was so tired that I took the 2hr break to take a nice nap on the D of the track. And I think we won the next 2 and lost the last. So 2 wins out of 4, not bad. And I was still trying to get back into my Ultimate groove, and I think/hope that I played better and better throughout the day. I enjoyed playing with the Leipzig team, the Saxy Divers, they were a cool bunch, although we lost a couple of essential guys due to injury throughout the tournament.
We ordered pizza and had beers for dinner, and at the end of all that food, I was like OMG SO TIRED SO TIRED. We went to sit around and talk, and fatigue and alcohol is not conducive to understanding german, so I promptly fell asleep on one of those comfy portable chairs the germans bought along. And it was nice, coz that power nap was enough to keep me up till 5am! And so me, Claudia and Jan helped Saxy Divers win the party. Timo, the DJ, was actually very very lousy at DJing, with massive pauses between songs that kinda spoilt everything. Met some really really nice people at the party though. And everyone was trying to win the party, and at around 5am, there were about maybe 20 people still partying away. But apparently the music was too loud, and the police came along haha. And something happened at the party which kinda freaked me out, so I was really glad when we went back to the tents to take our much deserved sleep.
Sunday, we lost all our games, but we were up against the Südsee Cup winners for the 1st game, and I guess everyone was kinda tired. And also, us missing some guys from injury and miscellaneous stuff was not exactly winner material, but we all still had fun. Some of my best memories were from massively long points, where no team decided to call timeout and we were just running back and forth due to the turnover fest that was happening. But yeah! I survived the weekend, nothing majorly happened to my hip injury (I think it might even be getting much better!) and it was loads of fun with lots of nice people.
Managed to get a ride to the train station, and soon I was on my way back home. There was this japanese girl, called Yuka, who got onto the train too. She is doing a year abroad in the Uni of Colorado, and she is taking Eurail to travel, and I had a nice talk to her, and will be passing to her all the plans I made for all my Germany/Vienna/Prague trips so she can get suggestions. It was really nice talking to her, she has played Ultimate a bit in Colorado, and she comes from this really small uni in Japan, with only 600! undergrads all together. Really amazing. I hope she has a nice trip!
And yah! I got my camera back! Its all full of sand, the buttons are jammed up, but I got back my memory card, which is really really important, coz my photos are all inside. Will upload them soon soon.
Sometimes, I feel like I am threading on thin ice.
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