Swedish Camp

This is a brief account of my recent trip to Sweden consisting of a satellite one-day competition which we took as a light start to the season followed by a five day camp with the Swedish and Estonian national teams. The competition was a bit of a disappointment with inconsistency in my performance resulting in my coming 31st out of 55, but also gaining good competition practice .

We arrived at the camp at what felt like midnight due to the early Scandinavian sunset and, seven Chinese buffet plates later (I had reason to commiserate), the five of us piled into our week's accommodation in the form of a log cabin made for three. Training with the Swedes (Estonians, a Kirghizstani and a Norwegian) was a fun affair of doing footwork drills to the rhythm of Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" and fencing to Metallica and Linkin Park.

Our free time was often spent in a (possibly, no I'm going to say highly likely) neo-Nazi cafe about a kilometre’s cold walk from the camp, in Uppsala as this was seemingly the only place for wifi and cheap hot chocolate. We also visited Uppsala Cathedral whose only significant feature to me was the St Lawrence door located in the East Wing.

All in all, the Swedish trip was a success, providing competition practise and increasing my confidence and fight for next time I come up against the six foot, blonde, gorgeous Swedish team.

P.S I am writing this in a Roman cafe and look forward to telling you aall about that too!