The Enchantment

Mere hours before the 2015 Handball World Cup Final, I clearly remember the day I truly fell in love with that beautiful, exciting, and spectacular sport. I missed out on the basketball and volleyball final tickets, and honestly couldn't believe why handball tickets were so incredibly cheap, so just went for it. And boy, did I get lucky!

Turns out handball is an amazing game where lightning speed meets lumberjack strength meets ballerina agility! Also - because of inexplicable lack of interest - you can watch action-packed games for little money, often from the first row.

As a starter, even though Hungary defeated Spain for 5th...

...fantastic Spanish fans cheered their team on till the very end!

Then, Croatia faced Germany in an Olympic Final nail-biter! I haven't decided in advance which team I was planning to support, but then the most remarkable thing happened. As usual, wanted some pictures together with the most colourful fans, so I stopped this Croatian family asking them to pose together. Not surprisingly, they agreed, so here I am with the two kids in a photo taken by their dad:

But the memorable moment came just after. After I wished them luck and we walked away in opposite directions looking for our designated seats, suddenly that same girl chases me down, smiles, and hands me a Croatia-themed baseball cap! From that moment on there was little doubt who I was going to support. A decade later, I still have the hat, while Croatia and Croatian occupy a special place in my heart!

The game itself was a real thriller: the Croatians, led by sharpshooter Mirza Džomba and superstar Ivano Balić, came back from trailing at half-time to defeat Germany 26:24 and claim their second set of Olympic gold medals after Atlanta '96. Obviously my support proved crucial ;-)

The Hill

Lykavitos definitely stands out (more like, sticks out) in otherwise flattish Athens. My beloved road cycling was the first event on my schedule, and of course I positioned myself on the steepest part of the loop, hoping for pure excitement. I would not be disappointed.

As the loops passed, there was plenty of time for a selfie with Jan Ullrich...

...and a great shot of Erik Zabel, one of my all-time favourites:

But the really magical moment came when I witnessed Paolo Bettini's explosive charge. Yes, one of the most decorated cyclists of all time, deciding the biggest race of his career before my own eyes.

Now you need to realize the eventual winner needed 5 hours and 41 minutes to complete the race, so to experience this very moment needed a combination of immaculate planning and incredible luck. Mostly the latter!

The Arrival

This might actually be one of those very few posts I'm better equipped to write right now than back then, for perspective is a powerful tool. It's a story of humble beginnings, and proves you don't need money, experience, or in fact any elaborate planning to make your dreams come true. If I can inspire a single adolescent somewhere out there, it will fully justify all this jibber-jabber.

The idea was born rather accidentally. Having spent the last two years studying in Germany, and so redonkulously stingy with my scholarship that I actually kept saving a bit of money during that entire period, decided together with an old primary school friend that our nation needed us on location.

The first flight of my life was scheduled to depart very early in the morning, from Katowice to Athens. That's mere 450km from my home town, so I took an excruciatingly long train ride the day before, then slept for a couple of hours right on these very chairs. Today my back hurts just from looking at them.

Despite the baggy eyes, somehow it felt appropriate to travel wrapped in my nation's colours. No comments.

The plane tickets murdered my laughable budget, but luckily we found hilariously cheap accommodation: belonging to a group of maybe 12-15 young people from all over Europe, we were allowed to stay for next-to-nothing inside a school building in a small town called Nea Makri. In exchange, every morning we'd spend approximately an hour cleaning the local beach. Which felt - and still does - more like a relaxing walk than an actual job. Sweet deal. Just look at this determined face. And this carefully engineered set. I meant business.

And yeah, I still own both those backpacks. And the sleeping pad. And the shorts, I fear. OMG. This blog is going to be chronicle of lame. Yay.

Anywhooo... all that triviality got swept away by a single man jogging through our little coastline town. The butterflies in my stomach were almost tangible, and wouldn't leave me for the three weeks to follow.

Why are we here?

Today is August 28, 2014. Just realized it's been exactly 10 years since my trip to the Olympic Games in Athens. Kinda changed my life actually. In other news, whatever you're planning for August 2044, unfortunately I won't be able to attend, as I'll be attending my 11th Games in a row.

Yesterday a friend told me not having any written memories from Athens is a huge dent in my otherwise impeccably nerdy blogging repertoire. She has a point. Not in the "put all those Olympics together et voila, a best-seller" cute-but-delusional sense she proposes, but in the more down-to-earth, anti-Alzheimer manner: While I have thousands of words (albeit in my slightly useless mother tongue) from Beijing followed by a decent collection of notes from London, Athens is just kept alive by the imperfect hamster between my ears. So even though the first full decade on my adult life passed between then and now, I'll make the hamster sweat in order to recover some semi-readable stories. Stay tuned.