Tallinn, Estonia

I went to Tallinn for an Ultimate tournament called Kick in de Kök, which means "peak in the kitchen" in Swedish and is the name of one of the fortifications around the city, with the Swedish Fish, the women's team here in Stockholm. It was my first time going to eastern Europe for more than a few hours and also my first time captaining a team.

One of Tallinn's watchtowers, Tall Herman. The other is named Fat Margret. 

Tallinn old town skyline.

A friend from the squad and I went early Friday morning, so we could see some of Tallinn before the tourney. I didn't take many photos, but the old town was really cute and there is a fantastic pancake place called Kompressor that I would highly recommend (but only order one, they are really big). After a day of exploring, we met up with the rest of our team and a men's team from Stockholm called GRID for dinner followed by a medieval-ish tavern with delicious cinnamon beer and a sportspub to watch the end of one of Sweden's Euro qualifiers (they lost).

We went as a team that was there to have fun. As a club, there are mentalities of the Swedish Fish: the speedy, well oiled machine and the team that comes to have fun. There is a lot of overlap, but we brought a fun-oriented squad! This has a tendency to confuse our opponents. One remarked in the spirit circle, "We expected more from you." OUCH! We came in 7th out of 9th and had some hard fought games, but also some where we were trampled. It was a little disheartening, but we were a mix of fish teams past and present, 4 fishies, a fishie who had moved back to Germany, her twin sister and a girl who plays on another team in the Stockholm suburbs who has just come to cheer on their men's team, but we convinced to play since one of our handlers got sick and couldn't make the trip.

This haunted-looking liquor store was (luckily?) closed.

Our "intense it's defence-time" faces! and party winning leis!

We were the team that sang and danced on the sidelines (to a Swedish children's song about fish), the team that chanted really loudly, basically the team that I never in a million years would have thought I would have been part of. This was in stark contrast to the men's team from sthlm, who went to win (spoiler alert: they lost in the finals for like the fifth year in a row).

It was kind of weird, they kept stats for goals and assists. Apparently I threw 15 scores and caught one. I only remember throwing about 3.

We won the party with our sick dance moves and made up theme (there was none given, so we went with something approximately equivalent with "On a Boat" in preparation for our upcoming cruise). I still have the prize, a bottle of the local liquor (nobody really likes it).

We took a boat back from Tallinn (my first non-river cruise), which allowed for saunaing, more dancing, and an impressive stop at the duty free shop in preparation for our upcoming fundraiser party.