12eme Footbag Euros in Brussels
I am in Europe again and thus I had to compete in the European Footbag Championships in Brussels last weekend. I had nearly no time to prepare and my last year in Canada wasn’t really helping my progress in Footbag, but I seriously wanted to meet all those beautiful people which play Footbag in Europe and beyond again. Discover my impressions and some one-hundred different beer colors!
Brussels is awesome expensive, a meal starts with 10eur, however, I lived quite cheap there, for I used mum-pasta served from the footbag crew and the beer in le supermarché is not too expensive. But it is also aweful nice, with all those old buildings, rich emporer castles and kings houses from the midage and big modern buildings like the European Parliament and Commission from the now and here. This city somehow is loved by the upper-class governmental people for ages. Despite this beauty there is this big discrepancy of the official languages Belgium has – Flemish and French, and nearly separates this tiny country into two tinier ones, with Brussels as a French language-island in the middle of Flemish speaking countryside. Bus-lines and Metros are often signed in 4 different languages, I would go crazy!
After a little social-demographic lesson I focus on the more exciting part: Footbag Euros! It took me two days to (un)prepare myself for this event. The week ago I was out with Emily and showed her Austria, which didn’t allow and motivate me to train, but I couldn’t have gone to Euros and just hanging around with no competition at all, so I took a funny music and after two days hard training I had some routine compiled, not to good though, but at least I’d not blame myself.
The best moments in this Euros were when I was shredding in a circle with Anssi Sundberg and in another circle with David Clavens. Anssi started with Nemesis to Nemesis followed by Genesis to Genesis in the same run and my jaw just dropped to the floor. I thanked him that I could see such a combo life and tried to play as good as I poorly can and once he gave me ‘props’ I was in heaven for a minute. The circle with David was really pushing myself, because he always fevered with you in the run and added a happy “yes” during a run, if he saw you hit something harder. But he was simply outstanding, did tricks from 5 to 6 to 7 and more and more adds and once again my jaw dropped and I rubbed my eyes to believe its the truth and also was super proud to be in this same circle! Shortly after he hit 24 rip-warrior, he stopped shredding and we thought he couldn’t even kick a bag no more, but he still had to play in the finals his 2min routines in 3/4hrs. We were just settling down and resting our feet which were just tardy and then watching his awesome routine he played like the freshest fella ever, after Honza just showed us an amazing dropless routine. I got goosebumps while watching, David won this competition besides Circle Contest and Request Contest.
The Austrian Team was represented by Alex Trenner, Armin Moayad, Dominik Knoll, Bernhard Leiner and Julian. We not only competed on the playground, but also in the city, where we tested at least 15 different beers in a bar called Delirium, which is right next to the pissing lady (Jeanneken Pis). We didn’t find the pissing dog, Tuuka asked for directions though, but took pictures of Manneken Pis and had super expensive waffels. Of course, Alex and me competed, although both of us hadn’t the consistence in routines, dropped a few times and thus didn’t really achieve good results. Alex would have so much potential, but somehow he drops really often in front of audience. He did 204pts in Shred30 on video, but only about 150pts life…
All in all it was a very pleasant stay in Brussels with some awesome footbag impressions. Had some nice talks to Tuuka, Matt Bailey and Paloma, some more nice Shred with Tina Aeberli, Matus Samuel and Michal Biarda. Too bad I can’t go to Worlds, it will be a very exciting finals and awesome to see US and Canadian players again.
