Porro Open, Barcelona

I played the Porro Open hat tournament in Barcelona in mid-October. For those who don’t play ultimate, a hat tournament is where the teams are “drawn out of a hat”, although in reality teams are chosen subjectively by the organizers. It can be difficult to get a spot in Porro because it’s so popular and is known for having a great theme party on the Saturday night, so I was really lucky to get in.

Playing on the beach in Spain was a great way to end the season and my team even ended up winning the tournament! The theme of the party this year was “Rubik’s Cube”, where you had to come dressed in the 6 colours of the Rubik’s cube. (And believe me, no one looks very good dressed in 6 different colours including orange, green and yellow together). At one point in the evening, your team is assigned a colour and after a series of manic trading, you are one unified, crazy melange of other people’s stuff, albeit in one colour (see before and after pictures of my team below).

Because I couldn’t find cheap flights on Friday night or Sunday I also took two days vacation to check out the bizarre but fascinating Dali museum in Figures and to see some of renowned Barcelona architect Gaudi’s colourful creations.

The beautiful beach at Castelldefels, just outside of Barcelona.

A hat tournament always has a mix of skill/experience levels. This was Anna’s first tournament and here she’s about to catch her first point in the endzone at a tournament ever.

Rubik’s Cube: before and after

Lalo about to spray our celebratory champagne into the crowd.

Dali Museum, Figures

Gaudi’s Apartment on Paseo de Gracia, Barcelona

Gaudi’s Parc Güell, Barcelona

Prague, Czech Republic

Dev and I had a great time exploring this beautiful (although overly touristy) medieval city. Everywhere you look there are towering dark turrets and buildings from the 10^th to 18^th century (or even the 21^st….I enjoyed Frank Gehry’s “Fred and Ginger” building as well). Charles’ bridge (Karluv most) was beautiful despite being packed with tourists, and I still remember some of the scenes from Mission Impossible which was shot there (the bridge also has a long and glorious history of people being thrown off it by slightly peeved monarchy). I had no idea that Good King Wenceslas was actually Czech (and still have no idea how to really pronounce his name…Czech is a very difficult language for Westerners) although I found it amusing that the plural is [sometimes] formed with the letter ‘y’, for instance “cigarety” for cigarettes.

Cramped night train on the way there:

Confusing house numbers (this is actually quite normal):

Fred and Ginger (supposed to resemble the famous Fred Rogers and Ginger Astaire dancing) by Frank Gehry:

A poster from the Communist-era that I saw in a museum. It's adverstising the Czech immitation of Coke (the terrible capitalist beverage). I think it looks more like Metamucil…