Last weekend I visted Germany for the 4th Darmstadt hockey bash. Its an unusual european hockey event becaseone registers as an individual and is assigned to a team. Great effort is taken to ensure that the teams contain a mix of experience, and a mix of nationalities, they also try to make sure you will play with people you havn’t played with before. Teams have to make it work very fast and develop as a team over the w/end. All teams get the same number of games and all teams get a medal at the end. Pretty cool tounament all round.
My vist started with an evening in Frankfurt, I visted the Christmas market before heading to the university sports halls to join Radlos for their friday night hockey session. As I arrived early I ended up joining in with the juggling club for an hour first which was fun. When looking for unicyclists, jugglers are always worth asking, even if they don’t know the answer.
Every time I go to play in Germany I am amazed by the scale of theor sports halls. typically twice the size of the equivilalent hall in the UK. It seems to make the game more flowing, more about passing and less scrapy than the Uk game.
I wasn’t very good on friday night, and consoled my self with the thought that I hadn’t played ANY hockey since Unicon! ( I was too busy at the uni meet:-( ).
MAny thanks must go to Tobias, who as well as having me to stay over night and giving me a lift to Darmstadt also had 4 other players taking up all his floor space. Sorry I was soo tired, my german language skills didn’t survive my tiredness too well.
On to the tourny itself. Once again the Darmstadt riders had come up trumps with food and facilities, both superb. Day one , the teams were split into groups A & B and played a round robin in the group. My team ( Frodo) ended up at the bottom of our group, oops. Stus team (Mona) did likewise in their group. Saturday night after dinner , which was included for all players in teh tourny fee along with breakfast both days, the Uk bunch went into town to vist the Darmstadt Christmas market. It was bigger and better than Frankfurts! Top fun, hot spiced wine in boot shaped mugs, greasy fried food and chesy iced greetings on gingerbread. we reveled in the tourist tat of it all and had a great time.
Hockey was played late into the night along with beer drinking and other one wheeled stuff. Or one could crash out on a gym mat in the small hall and sleep the sleep of the extreamly tired.
Sundays games mixed up the teams with the best 5 from saturday forming a top group and fighting it out for places 1-5 while us also rans slugged it out for 6-10 in the B league. Frodo finally won a game when we played Mona, sorry Stu, it was a good game tho. I forget who won over all, but every body was presented with a gingerbread medal, the Americans got an extra one each for coming so far, and Chris and Stephan were honoured as the youngest and oldest players. After the ceremony a last scratch game was played amoung those who didn’t have to rush away and then we all departed to make our weary ways home.
Once again the Darmstadt team put together a most enjoyable weekend. If your a unicycle hockey player its worth going to if they do it again. And as an international player its extremley good value for money. I think I paid a total of 11Euros for the hockey AND all my food over the weekend.
Sarah