Woke up early Saturday and had breakfast at 7:00am. Walked the 1.5 kilometres to the township of Veldhoven. Well when I walked out of the hotel I was regretting not bringing my ski gear OK I don't own any but wished at that point that I did and it was here. The temperature must have been about 3 to 5 degrees as my breath vapourised in front of me.
The architecture in the residential houses, the village atmosphere and everything about Veldhoven is very appealing. The town is new but everything is tasteful and seems to be "Dutch modern" if there such a thing.
The delicatessen in town is amazingly well stocked and I buy a selection of dips, biscuits and top up with blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants and raspberries from the local supermarket.
I walk back to the hotel in the now slightly warmer weather. Oh I should say that the sun has been out but hasn't warmed things up.
On my return I bat my eyelids and ask if a small fridge could be lobbed into my room fully expecting a no but lo and behold two hours later it arrives.
I spend the rest of the day mooching around, meeting and greeting friends and watching the tournament being set up. Logistically it is a large tournament with 22 teams in each of Open, Women's and Seniors and another 150 teams arriving for the Transnational Teams a week later.
I ready myself in a suit for the opening ceremony which is normally a dry and boring affair - not here though. The host is an incredibly good magician with a wicked sense of humour who punctuated the various welcome speeches. His four 20 something children have formed a magic troupe who perform in what I would regard as a top class magic act.
The 1.5 hour ceremony is followed by a buffet dinner where I talk to a number of people and then off to bed for an early night. I get to sleep at 23:30 only to wake at 02:30 where I fart around for 2.5 hours, take half a sleeping pill and wake at.....09:25. Shit have to start work at 10:30 so I race to ready myself and charge off to breakfast which, by the way, is an incredibly good buffet including smoked salmon and freshly baked bread.
The first match I commentate is the Open match between the Netherlands (traditional to have the hosts) and South Africa while the second one is between USA 1 and China. I have the third match off but am drawn to watching Italy vs Bulgaria which, by happenstance, is first playing second.
The Australian Teams have performed very average (does anybody know an adverb for average) on day 1.
Open
14-16 vs a good Israeli Team
17-13 vs a fancied but not best strength Polish Team
14-16 vs New Zealand which would have made neither team very happy
Womens
7-23 vs Egypt
13-17 vs Brazil
19-11 vs a fancied USA2
Seniors
9-21 vs Pakistan
16-14 vs Bulgaria
16-14 vs USA 1 - a good result
I join the Aussie Seniors for dinner at Romano, an Italian Restaurant. I order a prawn pizza but they found this too hard offering me prawns and a pizza and I could simply put them on top. Something about the prawns being too big - clearly knives are unknown here - so I cancel this and have a nice mushroom instead.
Back to the hotel and a broken 6 hours sleep. I only have one session today which will be Bulgaria (a team expected to do reasonably well) and Poland (usually well fancied but perhaps slightly under strength this year)
Anyway shower and breakfast and off to "work"
I believe it is getting warmer in Sydney which will hopefully good for the forthcoming wedding.
XD
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