St. Nikolaus Tournament, Nasenbären, Bayreuth

This is a short entry about an indoor tournament I played in December. It was a fun tournament, and I think in the end we seemed to put more effort into our costumes than our play, but it was a nice break from playing super-serious European championships and qualifiers! We went as the Bavarian “Nasenbären” a whole species I had no idea about until this December. In English they are “coati”, a small bear species who lives in Central/South America .

So no, I’m guessing you’ve never heard of them either, although they sure are cute. But basically calling someone a Nasenbär is the same as a “silly goose”. We decided to be extra silly and paint our noses with the chequered Bavarian flag pattern to match our jerseys. I have to say I think they look pretty sharp, although they’re not really meant to be worn while doing heavy physical exercise.

Sandra demonstrates the in-play style of wearing the nose to avoid passing out from toxic paint fumes and lack of breathing holes.



As part of the fun, one team stole another’s mascot on the Saturday evening. Hoping to profit, we wrote a ransom note (demanding tequila and beer) pretending to be the perpetrators. I was pretty impressed with what we came up with using a printout of directions to the tournament and random train/movie tickets people had in their wallets. For glue we used free lollipops from the restaurant where we were having dinner:


In the middle of the day on the Saturday we had a huge break in the afternoon, so we decided to check out the Christmas market in downtown Bayreuth. It’s actually pretty picturesque, although a little chilly and wet on the day we went. Nothing that a little mulled wine at “Santa’s house” (below) couldn’t solve though!

And finally some sans-nose pictures where you can actually see people’s faces!

Hiking near Salzburg, Austria

Happy new year everyone! As usual I’m a little behind here, but I’ll start with a hike I did at the beginning of December near Salzburg with a Munich hiking group. There was surprisingly little snow and we managed to do pretty well without any fancy gear.


The entire day there was fog in the valley which created some beautiful effects from above:


I’d have to say the most disappointing part of the day was cresting the top just before lunch time, coming up over the last hill to see….. a parking lot. All that work and people can just drive up! The good news is because it’s possible to drive there, there was a well-stocked alpine hut with BEvErages and hot cider.


On the way back down we saw this funny sign. “Warning! Tame wild animals!”.

We were also treated to a fiery pink sunset. And to warm ourselves up before heading on the train home we stopped off at the Christmas market for some mulled wine and did a little window shopping. Christmas markets are probably my favourite thing in Germany in December. They are what all those North American malls try to unsuccessfully emulate.



While at the Christmas market we also caught sight of Krampus, Santa’s nasty counterpart in the Alps. Kids in Austria who are bad don’t just get coal in their stockings. They get threatened with being shoved in a bag and carted off by these scary guys (according to some...wikipedia has other versions as well). A whole gang of them were out in force on that evening. They remain totally silent but have big heavy chains which rattle when they walk. If I were six years old I’d be pretty freaked out. Heck, I was scared when I saw them milling around before the parade on the other side of some police tape.