So we arrived in Liberec, which is in the former Sudetenland, so it's up by Germany and Poland. They have a beautiful town hall and some really pretty, colorful streets. We found a nice lunch place that had really comfy couches, although the service was a little bit too Czech for me... meaning, the waiter seemed to do everything else in the restaurant except wait on our table. But we were warm, so it was fine. We bought matching fleeces with the event logo and headed up to the mountain.
I think Yael put it best when she said... this event would never happen in the US. Not because it's such a funny sport (and they do have it in the US) but because of the way it was set up. The tram to the event dropped us off at the bottom of the mountain, so we had to walk up the mountain. I've never been to an outdoor winter sporting event in the US, so I guess it's possible that they make the crowd walk up an icy path for about 20 minutes and then walk up several hundred stairs, but I can't really see that happening. It was quite a workout.
Oh so I should probably mention the biggest disappointment of the day. The night before we went, I noticed on the tickets that it said that you would not be allowed to bring a camera in and if you did, you would be expelled from the event. So I took that to mean, "Don't bring a camera." And as soon as we got there, we found out that everyone else took that to mean, "You really should bring your camera." So I don't have any pictures from the day, but here's one of a ski jumper from the place we were at, and you can see how amazing of a view we had of the town:
For those of you who haven't seen ski jumping on tv, or even if you have, I'm going to try and explain it. Pretty much, there is a sloped track really high up, where a guy on skis sits and then slides down, picking up speed and reaching about 60 mph. Then, the slope levels off and he lifts his skis up and flies with them in a V, and his upper body parallel to the skis, and flies as far as he can. A good jump is over 125 meters, and the farthest we saw was 136 meters. The hill that they land on is really steep, and our seats were on the side of the track, at the base of the hill. And I should mention that this is the first year they've had women's ski jumping world championships. The best girls are about 13, which is scary.
The event itself was a lot of fun. It was the Men's Team Championships, and each country had 4 jumpers. Each of them jumped at least twice (trial round and first round) and then jumped again if their team made the final (8 teams did). All of the teams were European except Japan. The good seats were dominated by German fans, and the higher seats (where we were) were dominated by really loud Czechs. People had all sorts of noise makers, from Purim groggers to those annoying plastic hand-clap things that you shake, and they made noise for every single jump.
The announcer for the event surprisingly spoke primarily English, and he was incredibly entertaining. He didn't have the greatest command of the language, but he tried really hard. They blasted American hits from the last three decades (I think Bon Jovi got the most play), and it was definitely amusing to see middle aged Czech women dancing to "I Kissed a Girl." There were also cheerleaders on the side for almost the entire event, stepping back and forth to the beat, and I have no idea why.
In the end, the Austrians came out on top (by a lot), with Norway coming in second and Japan finishing a distant third. The Czechs were 5th, which was a good result for them, and the Germans didn't even make the final round, which probably made the Czech fans happy.
Japan=#3
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