| Feelings afterwards.. |
[Aug. 2nd, 2007|12:33 am] |
The time has flied after the WRT Mockba trip - fast - very fast - too fast..
Many things has happened and certainly the special trip has changed our lives - for someone concretely.. ;)
One quote from Jutta concludes the WRT Mockba specifically (a free translation:)
"I made new friends with nine Finnish and one Australian and met appr. 100 Russian skaters, who all have understood the most important thing in their life: the ability to listen the child who lives inside ourselves!"
I think this is a really good observation! What is the life for? Only working - no! Getting stuck in unsatisfying life - no! The WRT Mockba was an experience - at least for me :) - to break out from the daily practices and throw myself to something unknown which gave just unforgettable feelings and experiences! Excellent!
I am happy!
Everyone participated the trip: you are welcome and invited to add your feelings to this blog. I am happy to hear what you experienced! :)
Thank you!
PS. More feelings from Moscow can be found in the following:
- Skaters & feelings: http://inline.konstantinkrylov.com/gallery/v/nk/20070706/
- Great faces: http://orangeudav.livejournal.com/120449.html
- Additional views: http://photofile.ru/users/s1d1/2853730/ |
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Trip Part 6: Moscow recovery |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:35 am] |
The wake-up around 12pm was in form of SMS ;)
"Petri! They called me from the flat service and asked that you should check out earlier from the flat at Leningradsky prospect, because some of your group shouted early in the morning and behaved undecently (naked). You should move to the other flat. Sorry."
Not long after this the land lord appeared and asked (in Russia) us to leave immediately - I do not understand Russia, but the message was clear enough..
The packing of all the things and staff was still effective.. Of course Russikiy Shampanskoe is a good way to start the day and it gives energy amazingly.. The gathering point was then the flat #1..
But the Kreml by Sunday afternoon was still to go. The way along Tverskaya to Kreml is an experience - slalom with human gates on the pavement.. :)
Feelings and views beside Kreml on Sunday afternoon..
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Trip Part 5: Serious Clubbing |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:34 am] |
After the catchskating it was time to relax and get more energy. I think all the Finnish players were really tired and all the muscles aching. It was not the time to rest on a fire, but to get shower and prepare for the last evening in Moscow and serious clubbing in Russian style...
The club to go was (fortunately) close to our flat near Belorusskaya - so we had more energy for the party..
So beautiful and gorgeous we were ;)
And of course it was time to enjoy Sambuca on the Russian style (thanks Oleg ;).. huh, crazy party..
The after party continued really long long long on the flat.. Even the Finnish masculine power was introduced outside front of flat during the morning - in form of wrestling.. ;) |
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Trip Part 4: Catchskating on Saturday |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:33 am] |
The saturday was again a new day with new opportunities. As the result of Friday Night Skating and the great picnic, the whole team was very very tired. The first group headed towards metro Park Popedy targeting 4PM and the rest group was still recovering from the previous 24 hours..
Credits: Ofelbaum, thanks for the catchskating pictures! :)
The day started again at the Metro Park Popedy. Ivan & co was there waiting for us and we skated through the park to the catchskating arena. The Koldunchik club seemed to have tagged the arena.. :)
And then we started for the first matches. The game is really cool for skaters liking fast speed and close contacts. I as an old ice-hockey player liked the game a LOT!!!
The idea as short is:
- there are two teams: a chaser team with 6 players is trying to catch the other chased team's 12 players
- when one player is caught, he/she must stop on the place and spread his arms as a sign that he is caught
- the team mates from the chased team should release the caught player by touching him
- the game ends when all the players from the chased team are caught or 5 minutes is passed
- one set contains two parts where both teams are chasing on their time the another
The game is great, like learning to walk as a child, learning steeper and steeper curves during the match all the time.. COOOL!
Some feelings along the match..
Thanks Ivan for organising the event, it was great fun..
Pjotr_skater on the speed.. :)
Luke was also with his unicycle on the place - unfortunately not able to participate the matches ;) but teaching catchskaters for a new way of moving.. :)
And giving an example how it goes..
Jutta was our guaranteed cheerleader!
The Finnish national catchskating team (powered by Russian visitors) having a serious team meeting before the next set. Good advises from the more experienced players were very much needed!!
The Finnish team in action..
The great national match is over and the feeling is highly cheerful! The both team happy and the Finnish team finished - very tired!
The official results from http://www.koldunchik.ru:
Формат: классическая товарищеская встреча, 6 на 12,
3 раунда по 2 игры (максимальная длительность - 5 мин), в каждом раунде определялся победитель.
RUS (д) - FIN(у) 1:25, FIN(д) - RUS(у) 5:00, RUS
RUS (д) - FIN(у) 5:00, FIN(д) - RUS(у) 3:35, FIN
RUS (д) - FIN(у) 1:40, FIN(д) - RUS(у) 5:00, RUS
The winner Russian team enjoying the champagne afterwards..
Even the match was lost, the Finnish flag was up and waving! :)
The after-game and speculation: "if we had catched these players in time, we would have won.." ;)
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Very cool to play with you Russian players - thanks Ivan for organising the great session! The experience was brilliant, I think we have to start training the game in Helsinki as well and come back next year! ;)
The discussion continues.. http://forum.koldunchik.ru/ftopic4534.html |
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Trip Part 3: Friday Night Skating |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:25 am] |
The new day and new opportunities - I like to say so whenever feeling tired!! To start the day around 4PM is not always the easiest task.. On Friday we had the Friday Night Skating on the program.
Before the skating on the program was a Russian style dinner - and Shampanskoe of course. The core team managed to get into shop to buy Russian salads, vegetables, cucumber, salami and chocklad etc. Olga also joined us as she was our leader to join to the Friday Night Skating later in the evening. The good advise from Olga was not to drink too much Shampanskoe before the skating - otherwise we will be Alco-Drivers.. :)
We decided to take metro to Park Popedy, where the skating route had a break at 24.00. Our communication was based on the walkie-talkies and GSMs..
Olga informed us that it is not allowed to skate in the metro. All the WRT skaters didn't "believe" that and Tero and Petri were trying their skills in a metro car: the floor is slippery, moving metro makes keeping the balance more difficult, breaking should be done long before the car wall (and crash) and hand rails can cause damages to fingers...
We arrived to Metro Park Popedy and the whole WRT Mockba team was ready for the challenge:
- 7 skaters with skills varying from a very good life style skater to a beginner to skate more on this run than in total ever before
- 1 australian crazy unicycler ;) Luke
- 5 persons in the camera crew (thanks Dennis for driving!)
The atmosphere was amazing: 200 hundred skaters gathered in the mid night!!!! Only for this moment it would have been worth while to travel to Moscow!!
The signal "Pajeljahi" was shouted and it was time to skate! The Russian skaters disappeared fast. It was only Petri and Jutta, who were able to follow the tails of the Russian skaters. The walkie-talkie connection was lost quite soon and we had the 5 skaters and Luke coming somewhere behind.. After a while they lost the connection to the FNS group and also the camera crew was lost.. Great start for the FNS! :(
The route went along small roads towards the Kreml and Petri was able to get information from the FNS team leader where the next big stops are. Then we advised the camera crew and the rest skater group by metro to travel to Park Kulturiy where the skater team was suppose to be after half an hour! Then, seeing the whole WRT team again was really cool - we had survived on the first challenge..
The Friday Night Skating organisation was amazing! A couple of skaters were all the time skating before the main group and stopping the traffic. The organizers were communicating by walkie-talkies and also the slowest ones were collected by the scooter man, so no one was left beside the streets.. All the credits to organizers!
The feelings on the pit stops was really cool. Luke gathered always biggest cheers when he arrived with his unicycle to the pit stop - amazing guy unicycling appr. 25km during the night!
As the whole Finnish WRT team had the WRT T-shirts, we were recognised by the Russian skaters all the time and I think we were feeling a little bit famous - not least because we had printed on our backs "ARTIST"! ;) I guess everyone has a small portion of narcism in his sole that it feels good!!!! :)
(thanks someone for loaning the picture! ;)
And of course one of the most special experiences was skating along the Red Square in a queue of 200 skaters - COOOOL! Here is the famous symbol of Moscow Vasilinskiy Cathedral beside Red Square..
(thanks someone for loaning the picture! ;)
And the Kreml from the another side.. WOW!!!
Everything ends on it's time. I can say that the whole skating was like flying with extra portion of endorphin in the blood around the Moscow streets! I had not skated earlier during the night time and it is really cool! I have understood something more on the skating and life - or I hope so!!! The best feelings were the rising sun, the sky getting gradually more and more red from the Northeast along the empty streets, the tired legs (but not too) and the finish after couple of kilometres, but on the other wishing that this will never end.. The life isn't easy - sometimes paradoxical..
And what I may have learned from the life? These kind of feelings I felt during the FNS in Moscow are IMPORTANT! Whatever they are, but the give you so much enjoy, happiness and energy!! Too many people are stuck on their own comfortable environments and WORK! By doing something like Friday Night Skating in Moscow will give you so much MORE out of your life!!!!! :)
The experiences were to continue! The next thing was a picnic beside a small lake and of course we wanted to have Russkiy Shampanskoe to celebrate our special adventure..
What to think of more? Having Shampanskoe with our WRT team and our Russian friends during the sun rise! Life was good!!!!!! :)
The next amazing thing happened, when I was asked to join to the traditional Russian game "Elefant", I do not remember what was the game name in Russia.. The idea is shortly: There are two teams, one at the time is an elefant and the another tries to get the whole team riding on the elefant by jumping on top of it! When the whole team is riding, the idea for the elefant team is to give as long ride as possible and the riding team tries to get the elefant to fall down.. (Russian friends, please correct me if I got the rules wrong..)
The game was really great, masculine, full of testosteroine and sweat! ;)
How the game really looked like, see it in YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZSp7sOOalM0
Also our young charming team members Harri and Toffe were having good life..
The picnic after the Friday Night Skating was so unexpected and fashinating experience. The people were so nice, warm and wished us welcome all the time. I have known this already before, but now I certainly know how warm and friendly people Russians are!!!!!!
BIG THANK YOU for you all who made our FNS and picnic unforgettable!!!!'
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Trip Part 2: Arrival |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:24 am] |
We arrived to Moscow - tired, but happy. Most of us never been in Russia. It took a while to get everybody out from the train and gather all the belongings gathered.. Toffe looked quite poor when he jumped out from the train with only one shoe, but happily someone had rescued it. What we can say, it is happiness to own two shoes - especially in Moscow!
The street view is different on the Leningradskiy Voksal, the Russian style building wished the WRT team welcome to Moscow!!
The first thing was to find out something to eat and visit toilet, they are one of the basic primitives human has.. One Finnish writer has said that a human is happiest when something is put into him/her or taken out from him/her.. I agree..
Anyway, the Site Inspection in June was not so throughout that we would have known a place where to go straight through, but we found a good restaurant nearby which also served beer already in the morning.. :)
The next things was to check in our accommodation, which were 3 flats around Metro Belorusskaya. We took the metro there and have to say compared to Helsinki (or many many other cities in western Europe), metro in Moscow is an experience.
We met Olga, our very nice Russian friend, on the station and it was time to share the team into groups of 4-4-3. Originally the share was:
- Flat 1: PetriF, Harri, Toffe,
- Flat 2: Jutta, Piia, Penny and Petri
- Flat 3: Tero, Jari, Marko, Luke..
or I guess something like that.. Later on the share was re-organised for some mysterious reasons.. ;)
The trip to Moscow had taken the energy - nearly from everyone of us.. We were due to travel to see the gigantic market near Izmailovo hotels, but as democratic decision, we chose to rest and sleep. If I remember correctly Tero was skating during the afternoon somewhere?!? |
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Trip Part 1: Train to Moscow |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:22 am] |
We started on Helsinki railway station towards Moscow on 5th July 18.27. The adventure was to begin!
The trip from Helsinki to Moscow is looong, 13 hours. The most of the group didn't know each other beforehand - actually it was only me, who (somehow) knew all the participants.. So, we had a good opportunity to have dinner and drink (also Vodka) and to understand who is who and why in the train participating the special trip..
In order not to be boring and having control on how to introduce ourselves, the introduction was done by the closest friend telling a short story of person in turn. All the dirty details are only kept inside the cabin - sorry if you missed the trip! ;)
We also visited the train restaurant for the official WRT Mockba Russian trip dinner: Shampanskoe, solyanka, blinis, caviar etc. Njam! As I have been many times in Russia, it was not new for me, but guaranteed enjoy! As seeing the new-timers reactions, the food was goood - especially Russkiy Shampanskoe!! Life was good!
During the train trip personal interviews of each participant were shot! Harri - our journalist - was asking hard questions. The bad thing is that all the interviews are on the film - let's see what stories and secret they will reveal.. ;)
The train trip in Russian train cabins is something to compare to ferry trips between Finland and Sweden.. For me the trip gave many flashbacks to the teenage trips, when having the party and drinking beer in the ferry cabin.. COOL. I wonder why not more Finnish people are travelling by train e.g. to St.Pete to having the same effect.. Actually, ferry is so clean and easy, but Russia is more adventure - and FUN!!!! |
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Site Inspection June 2007 |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:14 am] |
Related to a working trip me and my two friends visited Moscow in June and we met already so many nice people! I was so sure the WRT trip will be a success!
Already the trip beginning on Sheremetevo airport was interesting as always anything can happen.. The taxi bargain to hotel started from 6000RUB. I said NO, the next price was 3000RUB. I said NO, because I know we can get taxi on 1500RUB from the airport.. Looking for better options for a while, then I saw bus arriving with sign "Reznoy Voksal". OK, let's take the bus on the price 20RUB and Metro from there on toward hotel. The taxi drivers recognize us leaving, then the prize negotiation was so easy, 1500RUB without questions... :)
The Site Inspection Trip was hard working during the days - days full of meetings. But, in the evenings were happy to meet Russian skaters - especially Olga and Marina. Also my close friends Dennis and Oleg!
The best skating experience was in Park Popedy - I had never seen before some many skaters in Russia before that! Different styles: fitness, freestyle slalom, aggressive etc. COOL! Then I knew that our WRT Mockba trip will succeed!!!!! |
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| WRT Mockba 2007 - Great Russian web community |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|09:14 am] |
During the spring I was googling tens of Russian roll skating web sites and I found out how many roll skaters are live and kicking in Moscow (and Russia). Cool!
Special thanks go to many people, especially Kid Butters, Dennis, Ivan, Oleg, Alexey... |
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w_r_t
thankful