Our short flight from Zurich to Berlin was uneventful, and full of napping. Aleksi parted ways with us at the Berlin airport, while the rest of us hopped onto our connecting flight to Gdansk and napped away again.
This was the first time that Juho and Evan got to experience the Happy Seven, and Caroline was really excited to give us the full experience. I was oddly happy to be staying in the hostel room because it was the first time we all got to sleep in one spot since the studio in Czech. For some reason, I found that nice, but maybe it was just the motherly-feels in me.
For the first week of being in Poland, we didn't really have anything planned aside from organize the Dzem Jam. Happily, this turned into a nice break for the guys. The weather was good, and we had a conveniently close, open, flat, sunny area by the river so they could play whenever they felt like it. A lot of this time was spent chilling out with Caroline, taking turns cooking meals, exploring the city, and playing footbag indoors and out. Halfway through the week, Mikko showed up for a visit, and we soon had quite a large footbag group collecting at the Happy Seven.
On one of these days, Caroline told us about the pirate ships that take tourists up and down the river. Everyone's interests were immediately piqued, and before we knew it, we were hopping onto the boat accompanied by sunshine and pirate drinking songs. The ship took us down the river that runs through Gdansk, by the shipyards where many large ships were being manufactured, and ultimately to Westerplatte, which apparently was the site of the beginning of WWII. We took a walk up to the monument there, took some cool shots, and managed to complete a 7-man(and woman) full hack before leaving. I got much better at casual kicking because of times like these.
Not long after Aleksi rejoined us, Mikko departed. The days slid by very easily, at this point. The nights were spent playing a lot of pool at a really neat pool/bowling hall nearby, eating sushi (on the days it was half price!), and having drinks at Caroline's bar beside the Hostel, while the days were spent playing footbag, taking video of footbag, and generally soaking up the sun.
On the days approaching the weekend of the Dzem Jam, the weather started getting cooler. More time was spent indoors (purposefully watching bad action movies), and doing the final organizing of the event coming up. Caroline had already acquired an indoor location, and she and Jay figured out a good schedule of events for the contests. While they did all of that, I chose to do the difficult task of making trophies for the event winners (and ended up conscripting Anssi to help). The results of our arts-and-crafts session, I think, turned out pretty well. (I recommend hiring The Accelerator anytime you have ribbons that need to be curled, just saying.)
On the day before the jam, Jay held a Team Request competition. He had the idea way before the tour had officially started to write a BAP-level request list for the people who joined, and I think he really enjoyed thinking up challenging links for the players he knew the strengths of. As well, the "team" aspect of it (at least one player had to hit the link before they could move forward) made it also interesting. I was really happy with how it went. The guys seemed to be really motivated to do it, and the "team" morale was pretty high by the end of it. I can't wait for everyone to get to see the full thing. (Though, there is no saying how long it will be before it will come out. You should see the lineup of videos Jay has on his plate right now...)
On Friday, the players started to filter in. Unsurprisingly, the hostel was soon filled with Polish footbaggers. Surprisingly, they all seemed to want to go immediately sightseeing. I guess I hadn't considered that no one had been to Gdansk before! Circle qualifications were held on this day (Where the BAP players were given a bye into semi-finals), as well as Request and Sick 3. Evan dominated the Request contest, and Anssi took the win in Sick 3.
That night, we all went to the pool/bowling place to play pool/bowl. This was an extremely fun night for me. Probably one of the best in our time in Poland. I got to beat Anssi in pool, watch Aleksi and Caroline wipe the floor with anyone who played against them, and hang out with Pawel and Filip, who I am glad I finally got to meet and party with for a while. Those Polish know how to enjoy themselves.
Saturday was circle semifinals and finals day. Jay suggested that it might be interesting if I was a guest judge for the three pools of semifinals (not to actually count my scores for anything), just to see what my rankings would be with my level of footbag knowledge. I thought this was an awesome idea, refused to let Jay or Anssi tell me anything about how you are actually supposed to judge, and got down to business. Happily, I can report that with no previous judging knowledge or experience, I ended up with similar (if not in some cases, the same) scores as the other guys, which I was way too proud of myself for.
The final circle results ended up as: Pawel in 4th, Aleksi in 3rd, Juho in 2nd, and Evan unsurprisingly taking 1st. Once the competition was over and the jam jars -- I mean, trophies -- were handed out, Caroline said a few words, thanking everyone for participating in her first Happy Seven footbag event, as well as read out a nice speech from Daniel Boyle regarding the conclusion of the Eurotour. Everyone was pumped, and stayed in the gym to shred until our time was up. That night we had some drinks at Caroline's bar, remenisced a little bit about the end of our tour, and hit the town for one last time.
On Sunday, we spent most of the day in the common room, saying goodbye to the players who joined us for the jam as they left one by one. We spent one last night together, eating and drinking at the bar until the wee hours of the morning.
Noon on Monday arrived before I knew it. It seemed as if we had picked up Juho and Anssi in Czech just moments before I was now standing in front of the Gdansk main train station with the Finns, waiting for their bus to the airport, and ultimately back home. I had tried to ignore the fact that this day was coming because I had gotten used to being around this ridiculously amazing group of guys on a daily basis, filling our days with fun things, taking fun photos, seeing fun sights, and experiencing so many fantastic things for the first time. It is interesting how you can feel something so conclusively ending with a simple thing like leaving a bus stop.
Evan, Jay, and Caroline had one last shred session before Jay and I packed up and said goodbye to them. I think I was too in my own head during those last moments that I never said good luck to Evan with his time staying at the Happy Seven with Caroline. Sorry about that, Evan. Hope everything is going well over there!
Ultimately, the tour is over, then. Jay and I are now back in our home and native land, sorting the months and months of built-up footage taken to make videos for you fine people to see a slice of what we got to do on this adventure.
I've never gotten to do something like this before, and I think the experience was absolutely unique. Thank you to Daniel Boyle, Honza, Klemens, Roman and our Austria hosts, Flavio, Sylvan and their parents, Rene, as well as Caroline and the entire staff of the Happy Seven and Degustatorina for making this whole thing possible for us. And, for the last time, thank you Jay, Juho, Anssi, Evan, and Aleksi for being amazing and for giving me a month that I will never forget.
