Report from Trip to germany 2010

Hey everyone~

Sorry for not writing earlier, I'm such a bad blogger -.-*.
My 13days holiday from school was really relaxing and now I feel like I can return to school. I have only 2 months of school left anyways.

So Our epic trip to germany shortly:

We left with pessi (my 1 dan friend) 19th of november in the morning without having slept at all. The first tournament was very stressful, probably because we hadn't slept much and we weren't used to the really strange hahn-system. Pessi crushed many of his opponents and we made some new friends. This tournament for me was sooo embarassing >.< I almost lost to the koreans with 4 handicap... geez... At least I didn't loose to rankwise weaker players. Though my 20 kyu-move against Mr.Obenaus 5d shouldn't have happened... Go to innovation tournament was pretty much far from everything and there was nothing special to do there during the weekend. Afterwards we heard a rumour that most germans are also not used to that tournament. The tournament place had a small cafeteria with food,snacks and beverages available. On friday we had Gulash-soup there with some bread and german sausages :P,tasty! We got 50 and 75€ with pessi as prize money. Pessi got 15th place, I 7th.

During the week we didn't really have anything to do, since we didn't really know what is there to do in berlin. We tried shopping and some other stuff, but I think we should've had a personal tour-guide or something. I bought a shirt and socks, pessi too, but he barely changed his socks during the trip !!

The german language is pretty cool. I think it would be easy to learn it if I just lived in germany for sometime :). Maybe that could be somekinda plan-X for the future :]. No matter if it was food or ice-cream we ordered, we didn't have any problems^^ Thanks to my german skills yey.

On Wednesday Viktor Lin made a suprise visit to berlin. We were expecting it infact with Pessi, but had forgotten about it completely. It was nice to see Viktor again, he is such a nice guy. The next day I went to eat sushi+chinese buffet with Viktor, while pessi had to stay home and do some work for his university. The food in that buffet was pretty good, but I couldn't eat as much as I wanted because I got full. Afterwards we went to "a go-meeting" somewhere near Alexanders platz. We waited outside for like 20 minutes before I got bored of waiting for viktors friends... Well 5 minutes later we got to the underground space-station, called C-base! o.0 WTF! When I first saw the door I thought they might sell some weed there, which later proved to be partly correct :DDD. C-base must be the strangest Go-meeting place in europe... it was shocking... next to the Go-meeting somekinda moon-rover fanatics watched some crappy video about their moon-rover in moon (LOL). And it seems there people taught that the place was some underground space station on earth o.0 Geez.... I don't know how to explain it, it was so stunning, go see it yourself! I slept most of the Go-meeting on my chair. *yawns*. I left after getting enough of sleep, I had no choice, but leave my friend Vic behind :P.

Berliner Kranich -tournament on the second weekend suprised us. It was much more popular than Go to innovation. There were 175 participants!!! Holy crap, I didn't even know until now. Anyways this tournament was really well organiced, altough at first they wrote my name as Savolaiwew instead of Savolainen. Geez,do I look like somekinda polish person to you?
On saturday morning I was really tired... Because Pessi had talked to some girl until late with our laptop, the previous night. Most of you probably don't know what I'm like in the mornings... I can get really grumpy if I'm still sleepy!
Our hosts, which were really nice btw, seemed to be amused by my acting, while Pessi was really embarassed :D. I tend to make up silly reasons to continue sleeping and after 30 minutes of battle with the sleepy zergling Assu, I had to get up :(, we were late. Same happened on sunday morning...

On saturday morning I was really hungry, I took my lunch ticket before round 1 and went to get a plate of sushi from the japanese housewifes who were incharge of providing food for the Go-tournament participants. After eating, I was ready for my game!

My first game was against a german 5d, he had some weird cosmic opening, and soon we both had a weird cosmic game. My opening was infact quite bad, but I managed to turn the tables around completely by the end of middle game. Two huge group of his died and he resigned. Afterwards some really strange looking german guy started reviewing our game. After a while I figured out that he must be Christoph Gerlach 6d from germany! His ideas seemed to be interesting, he had a good grasp of the strategies of this game. However, I left for lunch after my opponent started showing dumb -sequences -.-*

Next game against Hwang inseong 7d... I felt this game went much better than 1 week before with 4 stones.

3rd round was against a german 4dan, who was probably a bit older than me. I made him resign in move 60!!! =D Happpyyyyyyyy~ His girlfriend brought some juice for me too :].


Same morning routines happened on sunday morning...
My 1st game was against my friend and rival Viktor "Chiakuan"(hint, you don't wanna call him by that) Lin 5 dan , The austrian small master. Well what is there to say... He kicked my ass, because I screwed up. I'm the master of screwing up. What is there to say, I played from my bowl in byo-yomi and that's why I just wanted to answer his move, while knowing I'm not taking the biggest point ;__;, after playing bad yose and 1 early-dame I lost by 2 points. I was expelled from Berlin, with the charge of sucking so much I drowned my self 2 days later....

But here I am! wuhuhuhuhuuuu~

This trip taught me a lot about Go. How to think of Go. Is there chances for succeeding in this game, etc.
I guess I've been having too high goals as what comes into Go. It could be affecting my flow for this game, which was quite bad in germany. Altough I didn't loose to any weaker players and I managed to boost my gors up a bit to 2453!!! yey~

I feel like I don't have what it takes to be a pro player. So in that sense a part of me really drowned back there *sniff*. But don't let this fool you. I'll still kick ur ass as the strongest 5d in europe!!!

It's nice to be back in Finland, not having to worry about insane Hwangs or Seok-bins. Infact, here everyone is only under 6 dan yeeeey~. That's why I'm looking forward to playing again.

Germanyyyyyy!!!!

Hello,

We arrived to berlin yesterday at 7AM. We hadn´t slept at all during the night and we were just taking small naps when could during the day. The weather here is like early autumn in finland, it´s quite warm. Germany is so weird, this place looks strange, the people are strange and the smell is different. After some few hours we reached the tournament place. Before that we wondered around what we expected to be an area of east-berlin. The houses looked old and abandoned and there were no restaurants anywhere!!! at noon we arrived to wulheide, a quiet place on the edge of berlin with lots of nature. The forest seemed really magical and they smelled like authentic fairytale forests :).

We soon reached the tournament place and we just slept some hours on the uncomfortable chairs. Not too many ppl here speak english. But we managed to survive with my german skills. at around 4pm people started appearing at the tournament place. I introduced myself to Oh Luis, who is a korean 6dan living in spain. Then I got to know some new guys like scurge. All the czech guys have a cute accent :P.
My first day started really horribly, I lost to Oh Luis and Obenaus dude. I made some 20 kyu move in the latter game -.-* and because of that my winning position was gone in an instance. I have only played go on the internet the past 2 months and I haven´t done too many life and death problems for a while and it shows.
We found a reallz good pizza place on our way home. The pizza was really good and costed just 2,50 euros.Our accomodators are really nice too and their appartment is nice. I forgot to mention that I´m here with my friend Pessi, he is 1d and won 2 games on friday. Today on saturday it was really hard for me to wake up. I had some weird dream where my eyes got crusified somehow o.0. We had 4 games today with egf A-class playing times. After the last round I wasn´t really sure if that had been the 3rd or 4th round...results from today 3d+,4d+,5d-,4d+. I´m rusty >:3... Pessi has had an opposite result than me every round.
We just arrived home and ate pizza again.
I hope to play better tommorrow.

Good night!!!!