Gallivanting about Europe

Okay, here's a report of what I did and the stuff that happened while I was in Europe.

Well, technically I'll start with the day I left home, way back in late may. I flew over to Richmond, and learned that Delta in general, and the Atlanta airport in particular, should be avoided at all costs. Anyway, I finally arrived, and joined everyone at Josh's. Then we played some magic, I won a ruby with WTF, etc. After that, there was much rejoicing and much T4ing.

Then, I flew out to Denmark, to start my study abroad program. Briefly, my two classes were the european business environment and global business strategies. Both were easier than they sound. Classes were weekday mornings, with afternoons and evenings free--for homework. Until, that is, we figured out that most of the reading wasn't actually necessary. Then I got to do some sightseeing, and I got to spend some time with my cousin Daniel, who married a Danish woman (Thea), and moved to Copenhagen (thanks to my aunt--his mother--being born well before my father, and to her getting married sooner, he's actually about twice my age). I got to attend the 1st birthday party for their son Taus, which was very nice.

We did a few field trips, including one to Brussels, Belgium, which does indeed have truly superb waffles. And chocolate. Mmm.

Anyway, there were a couple of T1 events I attended in Copenhagen. In the first, I went something like 2-2-1 with WTF, losing to awful matchups like RGbeats. The next time I went 5-1 in the swiss with shop aggro, only to lose in the semis to scepter-chant. It was fun, though, and the Danish players are quite good (especially considering the collections some of them have to work with).

I was kind of sad when the end of the program started to approach, but then we had to start studying for exams, and I couldn't wait for it to be over.

I took the train to Paris (eurail flexipass--amazing), and met Matthieu, aka Toad, and Aurelia, aka Britanny. They have an awesome apartment which has amazing features like multiple rooms and a computer that crashes every couple of hours because the fan is broken. Oh, and an AZERTY keyboard. Those things are truly awful--google them if you don't believe me. We played a lot of Wagic, which was extremely fun, especially when Alexandre and sorry-I-forgot-your-name came over and we did team drafts. Matthieu and I managed to get on the same team both times, so winning wasn't too tough. The first match, I had a sweet black deck with a tiny red splash, and Matthieu had some u/g thing with all the other colors splashed. We lost one game to Akroma, but won the other two fairly handily. I even got Corpse Dance/Bottle Gnomes going at one point. The second draft, though, was ridiculous. I basically drafted my entire highlander deck: blue for card drawing (ancestral, fact, opportunity, etc), countermagic (drain, counterspell), meloku, crystal shard, mystic snake, and I forget what else. Green for survival, holistic wisdom, boa, mongrel, uktabi, tribe elder, some more mana fixing, etc. I got a couple of on-color moxes, Trike, SoFaI, and red for some X-spells (savage twister!), Fire/Ice and Grab the Reins. The deck was insanely sweet. Meanwhile, Matthieu had Recurring Nightmare, Kokusho, Yosei, and some other stuff, and he actually got that hard lock going at one point. Well, one opponent would never untap, and the b/r/g guy got one untap every other turn. I soon found an answer for their platinum angel, though (it was actually mystical, leading to this question: what's the most humiliating/best way to kill Plats? Savage Twister? Grab the Reins? Kaervek's Torch? I had some other options too, but they scooped before I could decide.

Oh, and also I saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, etc. Lots of pictures got taken. I'm such a tourist. And Matthieu is awesome.

Then I went to the Netherlands, and spent like 0 hours in Amsterdam before heading down to Bram's parent's house, which is insanely awesome, and strongly reminded me of the Reynolds mansion (pool table surrounded by star wars posters! millions of rooms and floors! etc.). Mmm sleep.

I met Bram and Hero and Rudy and Marco and some other people. We went to the Resistance/holocaust memorial, which was interesting and honestly quite moving.

Later, we played Kamigawa T4 and regular T4. I gave Bram a huge pile of stuff for his T4 stack, and signed and altered a Jayemdae Tome (Required reading for the Old School.) and an asian Kaervek's Torch (Moderated! Red text everywhere.), and I got some of my T4 cards signed and altered.

This brings me to the subject of my new T4 signature rules. I invented these on the train, I think:
1. You must draft a card you have signed over any card you haven't signed
2. You have protection from cards you have signed

Feel free to discuss those here or ask me to start a thread in casual about them.

Anyway, then I went back with Bram and we played pool (poorly) and talked about stuff well into the night. Then I got more sleep on their awesome guest bed. Best bed of the whole trip, by far.

After that, we did this bizarre legends/revised/champions booster draft. I knew I wanted to be in red, but I opened nothing. My first pick was Abomination or something. My early pickes included Raging Bull and Headless Horseman, both of which were surprisingly decent. I also picked up a Chain Lightning and a Disloyalty. In revised, I opened Disintegrate like a miser, and also got Bog Wraith and Orcish Artillery and some random creatures like Hill Giant. In Champions, my first three picks were Blind with Anger, Glacial Ray, and Blind again. How lucky! I ended up drafting a Kodama's Might and Hana Kami late to compliment my Arcane engine. I beat a bunch of people, lost to a monogreen deck, and lost to Bram, although Hana Kami dealt like 10 damage when he had greater realm of preservation in play. Then Disloyalty took Meloku and I made something like 8 tokens for the win. Unfortunately, I lost the other two games to Fireball and I think Air Elemental. That left me with four game losses and I think 10 game wins (seven people means I played six matches, and I think all my matches were 2-0 me except for the two 2-1 losses). That draft was great, and all the games and hanging out with the dutchies was extremely fun. Also, ISP is the TSB of europe, although they haven't switched to WoW yet.

After that, it was back to Copenhagen to meet my cousin Daniel again, and my dad. We took a night ferry up to Norway, through an awesome fjord (I'm pining!), and arrived at Oslo, where we hopped on the train to Bergen. After an extremely scenic ride, we disembarked at Finse, which was this tiny little town with about two dozen buildings, including the Finse hut (more of a lodge, really). We stayed there the first night. Our plan was to hike around the Hjardangervidda Glacier in three days, going first to Rhombus (Rhembolstadshutte), and then to Kjeldebu, then back to Finse.

I have like a billion stories from that trip, but I'll add them tomorrow, because it's getting late here. To be continued!