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The very first
French
Open
Memory
Championship
Saturday,
September 20th, 2008
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Maisons-Laffitte
l’Ermitage,
Ecole Internationale de France
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link to
official site
chronology:
trip
to Paris
Friday
competition
results
galadinner
trip home
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trip to
Paris
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My trip to France started from Munich's "Hauptbahnhof". And before the City
Night Line to Paris left at 20:53, there was still some time to look at the
attractive selection of goodies Munich's main station has to offer.
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The hearts made of gingerbread
are typically seen around "Oktoberfest"-time, which indeed starts every year
in September, and attracts lots and lots of people to our Bavarian capital.
But ohhh... I was more attracted
to leave to:
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Oui! |
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The train arrived at 06:49 at the "Gare de l'Est", and I was really blessed,
as the organizer of the championship, Françoise Thuillier picked me up right
at the platform.
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And guess what, the two of us had a nice breakfast inside of the station!
good choice, huh!?
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leaving the Gare de l'Est...
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on the way to the hotel:
l'Arc
de Triomphe du
Carrousel
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and all of a sudden
it
was in front of us...
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and then we were approaching...
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L'Arc de Triomphe
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and onwards to Maisons-Laffitte,
a town in the surroundings
of Paris, with its very own castle:
Château de
Maisons-Laffitte
straight ahead of you!
Shortly later we arrived at the hotel, and that is where my trip to France "ended".
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go back to chronology
or have fun scrolling on...
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Friday:
preparation day
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those that know me know how
fond I am of the Famous Five
by Enid Blyton.
Now on the way to a supermarket
in Maisons-Laffitte I met this
fellow who very much reminded
me of Famous Five member
TIMMY, THE DOG,
who quite looked like him.
And yes,
wished I could see him like...
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...every day.
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supermarket inside:
is this attractive or what?
v e r y much so!
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Back to the hotel with a good supply of
water this quiet garden invited for preparation of the championship.
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oh, my binaries...
I messed up with binary numbers
in several competitions so far,
not nearly getting to the amount I can do in training.
I had still not lost confidence in the memory route I used so far and
believed in a breakthrough...
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... which was not a drastic one,
but I managed to improve my best competition result from 318 digits to 387
digits in 5 minutes. And feel good about it. :-)
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And there was still time to play around
with the horsechestnuts in the hotel garden
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and to create a new location route which
ended up having 11 location points. Hm... I might use it to memorize the
next formation of the German soccer team.
See location point #3 here. Found this one to be the most special of all.
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around the hotel - Maisons-Laffite is close
to Paris, yet offers nature and quietness - ideal conditions for getting
prepared for a memory championship! |
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go back to chronology
or have fun scrolling on...
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Saturday:
competition
day
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The venue of the first French memory championship was:
l’Ermitage
Ecole Internationale de France
I liked this house from the
beginning, which became clear to me when we were walking in and saw a
classroom with the topic of the last lesson still being written at the board,
walking up
the wooden stairs, meeting Mr. Trevor King, director of the College, all
impressions made me think: Yes, this is a place where I would enjoy learning.
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Françoise Thuillier, the organizer of the
championship. She is a project manager, and I got impressed several times
about how she would react on new information by making such quick and sound decisions.
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Our competition classroom
See Idriz from Sweden on the left
and Ben from England on the right.
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Nice place to memorize at!
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Two members of the arbiter's team:
Phil Chambers, chief arbiter of the World
Memory Sports Council, and Françoise Thuillier
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And this is arbiter Dr. Warren Day from
England in the arbiter's room.
If I happened to forget an arbiter, please send me a note, my visitors, and
let me know as soon as possible!
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Is that a nice picture of Ben Pridmore?
You bet it is!
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I also like this one of
Idriz Zogaj from Sweden with memorizer's cap and ear protection.
Before we started off with the most sensitive discipline "spoken numbers" I
feared Idriz' special shoe soles might be heared in case he moved during the
memorisation phase. Do you know what he did? He put his shoes OFF!
These are the things you do not forget although you never memorize them.
Thank you, Idriz.
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These are (from left to
right) our french memory athletes Olivier Boucher and
François Farzaneh.
It was their very first memory championship experience and I hope they
already got as addicted to memory sport as the rest of us. Would love to see
them again at the next French Open in January!
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Olivier
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François
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And on the right:
Mr. Trevor King,
the director of the college
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getting ready for lunch
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And here we are all reading menu cards.
From the expressions on the faces... can you guess which language we are
trying to read?
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"Olivier, lend me (Gaby)
your French
vocabulary
for a minute!" |
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A ray of light for all of us that are
not really fluent in French was this part of the menu.
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...until this man with the winning
smile on the left...
...caused some Burger confusion, or, like Ben put it:
bacon/Schinken/chicken confusion.
But we got over it, and this is what the folks in my neighborhood ended up
with:
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Phil
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Françoise
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Idriz and Griselda
(yes, both had their own dish, but I thought one photo was enough)
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myself
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Olivier
I'm still impressed by these beautifully arranged dishes. Ah, if we could
replace abstract images by food images, I'd do better, I promise...
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I messed up with both trials speed cards and gained myself 0 points for that
last discipline. Had also trouble with my favorite discipline "historic/future
dates" with 37 dates in 5 minutes compared to 61 at the UK Open.
Yes, could feel disappointment on my way home to the hotel.
But several things lifted my spirit.
The first one was the shop window of this bakery.
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The second one was this display
of flowers of a flower shop.
And the third one... is a little bit of a
secret. It has to do with the word "grace" though.
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go back to chronology
or have fun scrolling on...
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results:
1. Ben Pridmore, 5499 points
2. Gaby Kappus, 4255 points
3. Idriz Zogaj, 1882 points
4. François Farzaneh, 1058 points
5. Olivier Boucher 267 points
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go back to chronology
or have fun scrolling on...
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still Saturday:
galadinner
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07:15 pm, footwalk to a restaurant that is specialised on
crepes.
François and Olivier had already
had to leave, what was sad.
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Griselda and Idriz from Sweden.
I got to know Griselda as an expert on and lover of both Espresso and double
Espresso. :-)
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Idriz needed my internet adress,
but I had
no cards with me.
There came Ben's surprise.
He took out at least 30 cards (probably
more) that he collected through the years and found one of mine among them
and gave it to Idriz.
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best playing card memorizer in the world!
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inside of the Creperie
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Now this is Norwegian Salmon in a crepe
with Creme Fraiche and lemon. Just in case you wonder where the Salmon is...
I must confess I first thought it might me part of the dough...
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Here it is, just wrapped, and incredibly
tasty!
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yeah, this is my dessert with
Nutella inside! Sooo good! |
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Warren's dessert
flambé!
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and this one belongs to Françoise.
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Françoise's dessert in action
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prize giving ceremony:
Phil Chambers is reading
the results, starting here with Olivier, and we
applauded both him and François and wished they could have been there with
us as they would surely have enjoyed this evening. Well there is a next
time!
:-) |
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Idriz getting a fine bottle of Jurancon, 2004, for ranking
3rd place |
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For 2nd place I got a bottle of this fine wine and this
beautiful trophy of a dragonfly, or in French:
une libellule.
I very much like my libellule! |
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photographing the winner...
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...who got a bottle of Jurancon
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...and this beautiful trophy
of an elephant.
(photo taken by Phil Chambers) |
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He did get one more trophy, which is the
winner trophy of the UK Open he won last month. Phil brought it to France,
and so Ben blessed us with even more smiles.
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I mean, you can really take good fotos of Zoomy!
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go back to chronology
or have fun scrolling on...
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Sunday:
my trip home
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Physically I was not in best shape this weekend, which you might realize
looking at that Sunday morning photo. Therefore I was more than glad that
Françoise offered to take me from the hotel
to the Gare de L'Est. I am still thankful for this and many other things
that she helped me with.
Thank you, Françoise!
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We ended the weekend like we started it
with:
a cup of Espresso for Françoise
and a cup of Cappuccino for me.
Even went to the same
coffee shop. :-)
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And this starts my first time ever TGV
experience. 320 km/hour and only 3,5 hours from Paris to Stuttgart!
Au revoir la France!
J'ai savourée le weekend.
Et je veux améliorer
mes
connaissances
en
langue!
A bientôt.
En Janvier!
Gaby.
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