Let the games begin!

So now the real tournament games start. The first day of ten with serious tournament games to find out who the strongest player in Europe is, who will become European Champion.

It will not be me... I am still too weak. But I will do my best and try to win as many games as possible and hopefully I can go home after ten games and be a little stronger than when I first came here.

Usually the pairing is very late on big tournaments like this. It is not uncommon that the players must wait for several hours while the organizers are sweating blood while they work out a fair pairing with supergroup and all. This time they posted the wall list just a couple of minutes after 10 o'clock, when the games actually were supposed to start.

I was nervous when my opponent arrived and we started to play. I have played very bad during my latest tournaments and I have not practiced anything for the last year. No games played. I started making errors in my notes of the game and then I played a bad fuseki. But soon I fell into the meditation of the game and played some good moves. My opponent was quite good but was a bit timid and I was the one controlling the game. We made 176 moves until my opponent gave up. I won the first game!

I was sure I would not win anything the first week and then I was expecting to win more the second week. But now I started with a win and tomorrow I will get a harder opponent so it can go any way now.

After my game I went to Girlwings playing site and looked at the dan players games. Most of them had just finished the opening and was starting with middle game. At first I didn't see Girlwing and then I believed I did and walked there but when I came closer I saw it was a Korean girl. So embarrasing. But she had a top with the same color of one that Girlwing have and she have black hair and eye glasses. She even moves and have the same gestures as Girlwing. I had to search again and soon I saw my love waving to me. She was playing a japanese 5 dan and it was too early in the game for me to be able to see if she was ahead or behind in the game. While I waited for her to be done with the game I walked around and watched other players play. After a couple of hours the japanese finaly resigned. At that time I had counted and saw that he was behind with 8 points and it would be impossible for him to retake that so late in the game. Resign was the most noble thing to do. So Girlwing won! Yay!

By now we was very hungry so we went to the café to buy something to eat. Just when we arrived the chef sold his last sushi and had only sandwiches left, so we bought one cheese sandwich each. Not much but gave us energy for a while. Then we found out that there was a Korean BBQ Party on the other side of the river so we started walking there to get a bite. When we got there there were not so many there and there was no party. But we bought us some dinner and sat by the beautiful view and ate korean food. It was good food but I hope there will be more of a party at the other national theme days.

At the party area there are some beautiful old local houses. I really like old houses. They put a lot more love into the houses in the old days and decorated them in a nice way.