Playing in the Sun


Verena and Nis playing in the sun.

Summer has somehow already arrived in Copenhagen, so we moved over weekly thursday session outside yesterday. I as usually arrived right on time and Mathias Blau was there waiting. FootbagDenmark is not good at being on time. After playing 15 minutes Verena showed up and joined our circle. 15 minutes later Nis showed up and him and Verena made their own circle. I played really bad especially in the beginning – at the end I found my groove a little bit. Mathias was also not having his best day. I liked this drill from him though: Pixie Muted Swirl > Gyro Mirage [rpt]. I did not have any highlights worth mentioning.

There is only one week left on my t-shirt campaign. You should buy one – maybe even two. They will never be printed again after the campaign ends. You can buy them here.

Big Session and Plans for the Summer

We had a big turnout to yesterday’s session since today is a national holiday in Denmark. Verena, Jan, Frederik, Nis, Kim, Peder, Mathias Blau and I all played. Jasper, Rasmus and even Mads Hole came on rollerblades and hung out.

I had the pleasure of playing for an hour just with Mathias Blau and he was really going hard. Apparently his last session had been bad, so he wanted to go all in. I saw him do a bunch of furious and downtime double dex stuff and gave him two challenges that he hit. The first one was Blink > Terrage > Pixie Muted Swirl [bsos] and the second one was Phasing Gyro Mirage.

I did not play well and had no real highlights, but it still was a lot of fun.


Here is a terrible group photo. Jasper didn’t make it in time and you can’t see Nis in the back. There is a long and proud tradition of group photos in FootbagDenmark.

Afterwards about half of us went to a local bar called “Stjernen” (The Star) and had too many beers and the legendary FootbagDenmark shot. In every bar in Denmark you can buy a shot made from pomegranate flavored liquorice and vodka. The FootbagDenmark way is to add a few dashes of tabasco on top. Since you probably can’t buy pomegranate flavored liquorice and vodka where you are at, here is a simple recipe to make it at home:

  • Crush up between 300 and 500 grams of hard strong salty liquorice
  • Add the crushed up liquorice to a bottle of vodka and let it stand overnight in your fridge
  • Add 100% pomegranate juice  to the mixture (I have no idea how much. Taste it and find out how you like it). Shake the bottle and let it stand for one more night.
  • Shake the bottle again and filter it if you feel it is necessary.
  • Fill a shot glass with the mixture and add from two drops to a few dashes of tabasco.
  • Enjoy!


I have decided that I will not be going to Worlds. I could maybe find the money, but when you have your own apartment and live alone, you need to have some money as a buffer if something unexpected happens. It simply wouldn’t be responsible of me to do it as this point. It sucks but it is what it is.

This summer I will instead visit the homies in Berlin (Matthias Lino Schmidt, Angelo Rendon etc.) and afterwards me and Matthias will go to some electronic music festival in the north of Germany. Should be good times.


Angelo, Matze and me in Frankfurt during Euros last year.

Next international footbag tournament I will go to will probably be Swiss Open in late October. I have a great relationship with a lot of the Swiss players, but I have never been to Switzerland. So this seem like an obvious choice.

2004 – THE BEGINNING #TBT

Once a month I am gonna take  you down memory lane and tell my story in footbag. Each post is gonna focus on a different year in chronological order. Here is the first one.

It’s 2004 and I am sitting in my room in my parents basement in a small town in the south of Denmark. A message pops up on MSN Messenger. It is from a boy in Copenhagen, I have never met him but we have messaged back and forth on a danish youth site. He sends me a link to a video and tells me that what they do in the video is called footbag.

The video was Kampa Park, named after where the video takes place – The legendary Kampa Park in Prague. It was filmed in 2003 and edited by Mads Hole and Mads Neuhard. I watch the video in awe and when I saw Vasek do Neutron Smasher > Toe Barrage > Toe Symp Whirl > Rev Swirl > Pincher I knew I had to start playing. I got my first footbag soon after that.


My first footbag was a Dirtbag. I hit my first ATW with that and then I lost it. I was heartbroken. My next footbag I bought from the legend Torben Wigger. My third bag was an actual professional 32 panel made by Mads Neuhard. Here is a photo of how it looks today:


I loved that bag

 

My First Danish Champs

Later that year I went to my first Danish Footbag Championships. Me, Mathias Blau, Søren Nøhr and two other young cats Kevin and Thomas all stayed at the boy (Phillip) who showed me footbags place. I also met the rest of FootbagDenmark for the first time. The first one I met other than Phillip was Frederik Mens. I went into a small shop to get some candy on the way to the event site and this grown ass man stopped me and was really excited to finally meet me. That felt really cool for a young boy traveling to Copenhagen for the first time on his own. I still think about this every time I bike by the shop.


Phillip and Me

I still remember many things from this weekend quite clearly. I remember hitting my first Legover, just before I did my routine and hitting one during it. I remember Søren Nøhr (14 years old at the time) beating Jan Birkel (35 at the time) in the “Intermediate” division. I remember walking along the train tracks to Phillip’s stepdads place, where we were gonna sleep. I remember the Chili Con Carne on saturday night. I remember Nikolai Lorenzen becoming Danish Champion.

I don’t think I would have stayed around as long as I have, if it wasn’t was this weekend in Copenhagen. So a big shout out to the FootbagDenmark family.