In Case I Didn't Think I was Back in Europe

Two great sightings in two consecutive days.

Thursday afternoon on the tram on the way to the migration office, I happened to see a father-son mullet parade...on scooters! Both of them riding in a row through downtown Zurich rocking mullets that would put early 90s Jaromir Jagr to shame. To top it off, the Dad was wearing the summer version of the Canadian Tuxedo. Yep, jean shorts and jean vest. Classic.

Second viewing was just down the street at the tram station. I looked across theto the platform for the other tracks and noticed a bird hanging out on one of the benches. I was immediately taken aback and looked closer to see it was a duck, but not a mallard, but a thin necked, black duck. Now I wasn't far from the Limmat River which runs through Zurich, but it seemed strange there would be only one hanging around. It was also not disturbed by people walking around the platform. I was thinking it was a bit weird, but it got weirder when the guy sitting next to him bent over and started talking to the duck. He then proceeded to pick up the duck by its neck and cuddle the duck, which I deduced by this point was a pet out for a walk...

These are also two ticks in the pro-column for having a cell phone with a camera on it, because unfrotunately I have no pics of either. But in case I didn't know I was back on the European (sub-) continent, these two instances pretty much confirmed it.

Thanks to everyone I saw in my two weeks back in Ottawa. It was nice to be back for a short visit.

Talampaya 2009 Recap

Sweet weekend. Just happy I finally had a chance to get back on the field for an ultimate tournament. The weather for the entire weekend was great (warm weather, no rain, a bit gusty at times) and the results were alright, but could have been better.

Camping next to the fields

As noted in the previous post, this was the 20th anniversary for the Talampaya (heard this means tequila, but couldn;t find any confirmation) tournament. 32 co-ed teams from 11 countries. My team, ZUF (Zuri Ultimate Flyers), finished 8th which was a bit of a letdown (I had a personal goal of making semis and we were really close, but in the end not close enough).

First of all, what a difference between a European ultimate tournament and one in Canada (granted I've never been to a huge co-ed tourny like Potlach)! We played 9 games over three days, which is pretty comparable to a tournament in Canada (say 7-8 games over 2 days). The big difference was the scheduling of those games. Games were capped at 50 minutes and then there was at least 2 byes between games (if not 3). Apparently this format is the standard in Europe (might be longer games, but the byes are always there). In fact the TD profusely apologized to a team because they had to play twice in a row. This compares with most college and open tournaments I played in North America where you would have a single bye during the day and would be playing the remainder of the time. I recall a tournament in Edinboro, PA when we played for 8 straight hours because there no byes and games were to 17 with a 2 hour cap. So needless to say, big differences (the biggest reason is the number of avilable fields, as there were 7 fields for 42 teams at this tournament) that require different physical (cooling down and warming up a number of times) and mental (bringing itensity to games again and again) approaches.

We had three games the first day and won all three against teams from Switzerland, France and Italy. The last game against Matrix (a team from Italy) was tight for a bit, but we pulled away when it mattered. Saturday night there was a party at the fields, but I wasn't feeling up to it so I hit bed after a few beers.

Sunday we moved into the upper pools (along with the top two finishers of each other pool) which meant increased competition. We won our first two games against a team from Germany and another team from Italy. Both were good solid wins with high pressure D, and patient O. In the second game I was voted the male MVP by the other team which was pretty sweet. The prize was some coffee flavoured liquor shot, which considering my history, was a piece of cake. At this point we had qualified for quarters and our thrid game was less important but meant an easier matchup in quarters if we could pull out a win. However, we got stomped. This team from Paris had a strange zone which with an increased cross-wind on the field completely confounded our entire team. Waaay too many drops to even come close. That set up a matchup with Sugar Mix a team from Germany. They were enormous. 5 of the guys had to be over 6'5". However, their zone was much less of a problem for us and we sliced and diced, but got a bit too eager near the endzone a couple of times near the end of the game and it cost us. We lost 8-6 and were in the 5-8 bracket the next day.

Sunday night was the infamous tournament party. The theme this year was burlesque (I think somethin along the lines of Moulin Rouge?) and some of the team costumes were impressive. Our team doesn't do the whole costume thing which was fine with me and I headed back to sleep around 2 AM. Monday morning we lost our first game against an Austrian team due to sloppy play and then got into a dogfight with another French team and lost a heartbreaker on universe point.

I stayed around to watch the finals of both divisions and saw a not-so-competitive game between the Bern Flying Angels and Basel Freespeed in the Open final, which Bern dominated from start to finish. Then watched Black Bonzai (a French based pickup team) play Disctractors (a Czech team that I had seen warming up on Sunday and noted how every member of their team were great throwers. One dude had all throws with both hands, he was sick). A very close game, that went to universe point that featured a ton of tunrovers. Disctractors eventually put in the final point and celebrated a well-earned victory.

#97 on the Disctractors. Best thrower I saw all weekend.

Personally I played pretty well and my throws in the wind are 100% better after this weekend. Despite it being my first tournament with ZUF I managed to get tons of play on both O and D and when games were on the line, they were putting me on the field. Nice.

Off to Ottawa on Monday, maybe we'll cross paths?

Sweet Weekend in Store

Off to Geneva this weekend for my first European ultimate tournament, Talampaya. Apparently this is one of the oldest co-ed tournament in Europe (this year is the 20th anniversary). 3 days of disc and camping because June 1st is a holiday. I'm playing with ZUF this season, which is the best Zürich team and although my preference would be to play open, there is no possibility in Zürich this year. However, this team is pretty good and they are serious about playing disc instead of drinking their faces off at tournaments. A good sign.

I mean if you only have a one word name for the tournament, it must be epic, right? Updates next week.

Weekend in Italy

Slowly chalking up European countries. Actually considering I'm been here three months and I've already been to Slovenia, Germany (for a day), and now Italy, I'm not doing too bad. I figure I've got three years so I can afford to take my time.

This trip has been in the works for about a month and a half, but didn't really come together until two weeks ago as my MSc supervisor, found out that he didn't end up getting permits from the NWT in time for research this month, and decided to come to Italy to give a talk at a university in Milan and see a stage of the Giro D'Italia.

Since I am somewhat constrained by conducting weekly field visits (hiking in the Swiss Alps is such a drag...) I took a train directly from my field site to Milan. We stayed in Milan (just out of the core) with a former professor from the Geography Department at Carleton, which was great. Took the train to Venice on Thursday morning and spent two days there, staying at a bed and breakfast. Went back to Milan on Saturday, walked around a bit that afternoon and then watched Stage 9 of the Giro. Headed back to Zurich on Monday morning and then went dirctly back to my field site in the Loeschental for more sampling.

My shorts thoughts on my trip along with some photos and a link to more photos on my Facebook page.

Venice

• Amazing, beautiful city. Almost entirely car free on the island. Although very expensive (especially in high season (which by my calculations is about 51 weeks a year), but if you make that one week low season, look out!

Venice!!!

• Most tourists actually only spend a day and arrive at the train station and beeline for San Marco square, take a gondola ride, have a gelato and then get back on the train, so the afternoons could be busy in the main areas, but the evenings and later nights were great.

San Marco Square at night

• Spent a lot of time walking the city and the spots away from the main squares (which are very nice) are amazingly calm and beautiful.
• The city is a maze of streets and canals and streets that end in canals. Did a lot of backtracking.
• One of my favourite things to do in any city is to go to the market and Venice didn't disappoint with it's fresh seasfood.
  
• Randomly there was an extreme Catamaran race on Friday afternoon. It was pretty cool to sit on the waterfront (despite less than sunny weather) and watch some sailing.

Milan

• Nice to visit, wouldn't want to live here. To begin with I'm not a huge fan of big cities, but it was overly busy and very dirty (although living in Switzerland I guess everywhere is dirty compared). Overall, not a fan.
• Spent a bit of time walking around the core. The Duomo Cathedral was very impressive (I guess any building that takes 200+ years to finish will be) and the first indoor mall (The Galleria) was nice, although I'm not sure how anyone affords anything sold there.

The Cathedral from the front. Amazing detail up close.

• There is a nice castle in the middle of the city which houses a couple of mueums and is surrounded by a great central park.

Giro

• Great to finally have a chance to see a cycling race in the flesh. Obviously my goal was to see Lance. Mission: accomplished. Also saw lots of other top riders.
  

Lance out of the saddle

• Cool stage because it was 11 different laps around the city which allowed us to see racers more than once. Managed to slowly walk across the city and see the racers in a few different places.
• This will however be known as the stage that wasn't. The riders weren't very impressed with the safety of the course and they staged a protest that involved stopping 3 laps in and addressing the crowd and taking a lesiurely ride around the course. Race officials caved and said that no changes in the GC would take place. So despite a Mark Cavendish sprint to the finish, everyone was awarded the same time.

Cavendish sprinting for the finish in Milan

Lots of other photos of my trip here.

All in all, a great trip. Italy is big though and I plan on going back. However, next time I hope to hit the Dolomites (perhaps with a MTB) and southern Italy (Pompeii and Mount Etna). Next big trip is back to Ottawa from June 9th to the 21st. See you then...?

World Hockey Championship in Bern

Apologies for this post being so late, Windows Life Writer seems to have given up.

Not sure how many of you are hockey fans (shame on you if you’re Canadian…), but this year the World Hockey Championship was played in Switzerland, splitting time between Zurich and Bern. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get a ticket (or afford one!), but fortunately the Swiss aren’t as excited about hockey as football. That meant that I was able to go and see a quarter-final game at pretty much the last minute.

I went to the game with Ben Mueller (who I met because of an introduction from Mr. Hobson) and his wife Cornelia. They live in Bern and although they aren’t huge hockey fans (although Ben mentioned he had seen a Mooseheads game when he was in Halifax) they decided to give it a try (perhaps on my account).

We bought tickets before the matchups were decided and hoped for the best. The game ended up being USA v. Finland, which although not Canada, was a great matchup with lots of history. I had also heard great things about the Finnish hockey faithful.

Each ticket included return transportation from anywhere in Switzerland, so I took a train from Zurich and met Ben at the station in Bern. We then went back to his place for a quick dinner and then took the tram to the game. We had standing room tickets, but the view was great:

View from our “seats”

Team Finland pre-game warmup

The game was good and it was hard not to cheer for Finland when their fans were awesome (lots of noise throughout the game with many SU-O-MI (Finland) chants).

Lots of Finnish flags

All of the scoring took place in the second period with the Finns opening the scoring and then the States scoring 2 and then taking the lead (for good) with an odd-man rush near the end of the period. I think the Finns played better, but Robert Esche was played outstanding.

As you might be able to see, the place wasn’t even close to being full. Perhaps this was because it was only a quarter-final, but a huge factor was the price of tickets (I paid 77 CHF for a standing room ticket, the price to sit down was 129 CHF). I heard the IIHF was disappointed about the prices. One thinks they might have mentioned that to the Swiss organizers before the tournament started…

All-in-all, a great experience. I just heard that the Blackhawks will be playing a game against the Zurich Lions in the Victoria Cup next September, so that may be my next in-person hockey experience.