I feel obliged to post something because otherwise people will think this was the dullest competition ever which it certainly wasn't.
The competition was held in what I think was a very nice location: the racing circuit of Monza. We were situated in one of the cubicles (!) next to the pit lanes. As you would expect from Italy at this time of the year, it was very hot in there but since the cubicle was open on both sides there was a nice breeze going through the room which made it bearable.
One of the first things that struck me was that this competition had one of the coolest posters ever:
English transcript: "The cube that puts you to the test."
There were about 15 of these hanging from the ceiling of the room and they're huge and made out of thick paper. On one occassion though, one of the posters in the waiting area got detached from the ceiling as Sven Gowal will remember (I hope you're okay, Sven
). I was lucky enough to got hold of one and take it back home.
As has become habit now people didn't recognize me the first time they shook hands with me and come and greet me a second time about half an hour later.
The organization was taken care of by Dave and Chris from Seventowns and Emanuele Scibilia. Everything went extremely smooth. At the end of the tournament they all looked exhausted having to work all day in this heat. Huge respect to them!
Since this competition was part of a bigger sports event held during the weekend, we got quite a few people dropping by to watch us, most notably girls in bikini that roller-skated their way through the room. I now wish I had brushed up my Italian a bit
One thing that was a bit disturbing was the fact that there was a speaker hanging in every box and from time to time some over-enthusiastic guy would make an anouncement through that speaker. This gave us a good laugh in between rounds but obviously not during the blindfolded event.
At the end I could almost cry for Stefan as he was clearly upset about his misfortune in the final after having performed magnificently all day. I hope to meet him at more competitions because he's a friendly guy and he looks to be very passionate about his cubing.
During the winners' ceremony the winners got a red racing style cap which led to some funny scenes: Stefan was always quickly trying to hide it behind his back, while the top 3x3x3 finishers were trying to impersonate a Formula 1 driver going through a big chicane.
After the competition we went to a Spanish (?!) restaurant where we cubed some more of course. Ton Dennenbroek and me had a friendly competition of eating-a-soup-biscuit-whilst-looking-sexy.
Giulio Chiminelli let me try his megaminx and he has the smoothest turning megaminx I've ever felt. And this is without making any adjustments to the springs or washers, just by turning it in and being patient. What's even more amazing is that he can get times like he does by solving one piece at a time, so without pairing corners and edges. He's developed a very peculiar technique where he puts the megaminx on his knee and that allows him to quickly rotate the puzzle and twist using both his hands.
After dinner we had some fun trying to get to our hotel. Giulio, who was our driver, asked at every corner to some people walking by how to get to the train station and every time they seemed to send us to a totally different direction. At the train station we then asked some people which train to take, which also led to a lot of confusion. After a while we just gave up on asking people any directions because no one seemed to have a clue
.
