Munich: Beers, Brots, Bikes, and Stecklefisch!!!

July 13, 2010
After Prague, we arranged to stay with frisbee friends from Munich. Rü and Mel welcomed us into their apartment and also lent us their bikes and maps to freely tour the city. Munich, like Berlin, is flat and very bike friendly. The weather was perfect for riding, sightseeing, swimming, and biergartens! Huge thanks to Rü and Mel for their hospitality, we are sure to see you again on the field, but hopefully we'll see you in Austin as well.

On day one Cara and I visited Marienplatz, the main square of Munich. A beautiful space of buildings and fountains. Our next stop was the infamous Hofbrauhaus biergarten. We enjoyed a beer each and shared a pretzel. Bavarian beer is by far my favorite. Brewers are not allowed to use any preservatives our flavors in their beers, only the raw ingredients: water, hops, and barley-malt. Furthermore, wheat or rye beers must be top-fermented. Not sure what this means but it amounts to delicous beer!

While at the Haufbrau, we stopped to take a photo with Munchen pensioners enjoying beer out of their own steins which are kept at the biergarten. After the photo, my new friend insisted I chug the rest of his beer before returning it to him. After finishing the beer (rather quickly by my standards) they asked if I was from Australia. Aussie friends be proud, your drinking prowess has reached Bavaria.

With smiles on our faces, we checked out the TeddyBear Museum next. This unfortunately did not live up to our expectations, but we did get some good photos of some unique bears. We then hopped back on our bikes and pedaled for the Englishgarten, a massive park in the city with canals and green fields perfect for swimming and sunbathing. Here we saw canal surfers, went for a swim, and then stopped at our second biergarten near the lake. That night we attended Munich Ultimate practice in Sauerlach, the home of the Woodies and Ru's family.

On day two we spent the morning planning our upcoming trip to Turkey before an afternoon bike ride to the BMW experience, olympic park, the Nymphenburg Castle, and the Hirschgarten. This biergarten was recommended to us by Rü for their beer, steckelfisch, and deer watching. We had an early night to prepare for our upcoming Bavaraian roadtrip starting the next morning.





Marienplatz



more beautiful Marienplatz



Our first biergarten experience at the Houfbrauhaus. Cara loved the Bavarian wheat beer or weisbier.



Local pensioners enjoying an afternoon in the biergarten. Not a bad way to spend your retirement.



Teddybears!



X-rayed Teddy



Surfing on the River Isar (not Cara), while this is supposed to be illegal it is thankfully not enforced.



Contemplating Earth Sciences and how I can better teach weathering and erosion to my kids. 30 minutes playing with and studying the smooth rocks on a river bank would go a long way towards understanding how powerful flowing water is.



Nymphenburg Castle



Hirschgarten. The beer, steckelfisch, and deer did not dissapoint.



There really were deer...a lot of them.

Kutna Hora: Czech Republic Day Trip

July 12, 2010
Following Worlds, we stayed with Amanda, Scotty, Ashley, Hanna, Salad, Kiran, KG, Crystal, and Casi in an apartment in dt Prague for two nights. We decided to take a day trip and see what the Czech Republic has to offer outside their major city. We found a church filled with human bones arranged artisticly and a water park all in one day! We also experienced and lived the Czech culture of not having to wear your shirt...anywhere. Having beer and chips in a pub at 2pm with no shirt on is what Czech is all about, if only we could have ordered goulash as well.

Special thanks to Scotty, Amanda, and KG for putting in the online research to find our apartment in Prague.




Bones!



Tank, Ashley, Cara waterslide train. Just behind us out of frame is Amanda followed by Scotty and Kiran. Our plan to go six at once didn't quite workout. After splashdown, the lifeguard gave us a whistle and a thumbs up. We weren't quite sure what this meant. Good times had, no harm done.



Bone chandelier



There were 4 pyramids of bones within the church. This is Casi, Cara, Amanda, and Ashley enjoying one of them.



St. Barbara Church (not the Bone Church), but this is a Unesco World Heritage



Still trying to guess our famous person, plastered to our forehead, on our way back to the train station

Czech it out!

Prague's beauty was no lie. It was an amazing city to just walk or paddle boat around in. Cara and I arrived a couple days before the tournament began to get in a few sites. On our first day, we couldn't pass up taking an evening paddle boat in the Vltava River.

Day two, we took a walking tour of the city to learn some Czech history and about the historic buildings. We learned about the "Velvet Revolution", the Czech Republic's non-violent separation from Communism in 1989. That night we met our frisbee friends for dinner.

The next day we checked into our accomodations for the week-long tournament, WUCC 2010. Frisbee for a week!




Pre-Worlds paddle boating in the Vltava River



We really liked this sign!



Prague from the river



Prague castle on the hill, which overlooks the city



View from Charles Bridge



the infamous astronomical clock of Prague. Every hour it does a little underwhelming song and dance that attracks a huge mass of tourists.



posing in front of the Church of our Lady Before Tyn, a dominating gothic church in the Old Town Square



Cara straddling the 50th parallel. The lattitude line that covers the most landmass on Earth, mostly because it runs through all of Eurasia and North America.



Clock on the Jewish Town Hall with hands that run backwards because Hebrew is read from right to left.







Prague skyline



Showdown team dinner



Hanna, Nat, Fran, and Tina throwing "Ps" on the shuttle bus



World Ultimate Club Championships (WUCC 2010)
Doublewide Recap:
DW entered the tournament ranked #6. In our initial pool play games we beat Cotarica (Italy), CUUP (China), and Euforia (Columbia) as we tried to find our rhythm. Next we were seeded into a "Powerpool" of 6 teams in which the top 2 would advance to the quarterfinals. Our first loss came against #1 seeded Chain Lightning (USA), our South Region rival. Our next game against Skogs (Sweden) was rained out. On day 4, we won on ultimate point against Skogs and then beat Freespeed (Switzerland) and Mephisto (Canada). This set us up to play Viksjöfors (Sweden) in the game to decide who advances to the quarterfinals. Although we were heavily favored in this game, we lost a heartbreaking ultimate point game to ViF who played well. Our run to break seed was over. After a night of celebrating AmandaB's upcoming birthday and drowning our sorrows a bit with plenty of Czech beer we still had two games to play the next day. We won our first game in the morning against Karhukopla (Finland) and then beat Clapham (England) in a brutally hot game on the turf to finish the weekend 8 - 2, in 9th place. Although different from Perth, WUCC 2010 was still an amazing experience. I hope DW can put the work in to qualify for the next worlds in 2014.

Showdown Recap:
Showdown entered the tournament as the 7th seed. After a strong start to the weekend, Showdown lost in the pre-quarters to the Woodchicas (Germany) and finished the weekend 6 - 4, in 15th place. Not the result they were hoping for, but the fall season is right around the corner!