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Saturday 6th August 2011 – last practice day and opening party

The day started inside the cloud, I mean it felt like that with that foggy weather. Axel told that it was nice and sunny in Freudenstadt. Brian talked in the briefing to the pilots about safety, first he asked how many of them are flying in the world championships for the first time. I saw quite many hands rising up. Brian reminded everybody that even they are now flying in World Championships, it doesn’t mean that they have a mysterious new skill which would make them better pilots. That’s a good point actually.

In the Team captain meeting they decided that day starts at 10:00 with team captain briefing, the main briefing and grid closes at 10:30 and towings will start at 12:00. Today towings were first postponed to 12:30 and then again to 13:00.

13:30 we went flying with Axel on Dynamic, and saw our stage on Freudenstadt marketplace, also I took some photos of the grid. It was great to go flying, last time I flew to Vienna with airliner and before that in Räyskälä on HK-2 couple of weeks ago. I should go flying more often but sadly my license isn’t valid at the moment.

Towings then started at 14:00. Few gliders were towed but they all landed back. Tows were stopped for awhile but the day was cancelled after all and soon it started to rain. Let’s hope it will go over so we will have a nice opening party.

The Opening party

The party started around 19:00, the teams walked to the marketplace with their flags like in the Olympics, and people were cheering to everybody. Of course proper music was played on the background, such as the theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean, Learning to fly etc.

Then we heard few short(!) speeches and our Jury President Marina declared the championships officially opened. Right after the aerobatics show it started pouring rain and people disappeared to local bars and restaurants, I tried to stay dry under my small umbrella. It was only a short shower, but made everything so wet that people wouldn’t even mind if someone spilled beer on them, since they were wet already. Music was provided by the radio station SWR3, first we heard latest hits selected by DJ and after that the SWR3-band started. The atmosphere in front of the stage was absolutely great. I couldn’t anymore tell who was from which team, as pilots had exchanged t-shirts with each other and also flags weren’t anymore on the hands of the original owners. Most important thing was that the flag was higher than the others. Everybody danced together, and we felt ourselves just a big tight group. I saw couple of girls walking around in the crowd with the competition booklet and asking for the autographs from the pilots. Girls weren’t that old and everybody was nice to them and told where they could find the pilot whose autograph was still missing.

Dancing continued until sudden power cut. Other side of the Freudenstadt marketplace was totally dark and of course everybody cheered loudly. The band was good on improvising and they just continued singing without microphones and played acoustic guitar. After some time lights came back and dancing continued again. In some point I realized it’s getting late, as on other direction I saw guy crying and on other direction people were fighting. Perhaps wrong girl was talking to wrong boy or something like that…hopefully that won’t affect on anybody’s flying.

In some point rain started again and that wasn’t just a short shower but really pouring rain. And it kept raining and raining. Christof took me home at 00:30 with the van we have here for the organization.

Despite of the power cut and raining, this was really great party. Or perhaps the sudden darkness and rain made it special. Nah, it just was a Good Party (good thinking Axel). But if this is the opening party, what will be the closing party?

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