A "Magic" Adventure - Legal Disclaimer: This is a fictional account of what happened. I never broke any law.

As some of you may know I just spent the last ten days in mainland Europe. I originally intended to spend much of my time playing Magic the Gathering but there were more than a few distractions in the end. This post is going to chronicle some of the finer elements of my journey and is in no way a "Fuck off non-magic player" section, that will come at later date.


Over the last few weeks I've had very few days off boozing like an alcoholic. It would appear that I'm not very good at going for "just one drink". "Just a couple" often ends up turning into a binge. Two Thursdays ago I decided to catch up with a friend for a couple of drinks before she went off to 2manyDJs, then I went to play some cards, intending to get some practice in. Then I went to catch up with a few more friends for a few more drinks, then a few more friends for a few more drinks then another friend for another few drinks. Basically it ended up like a one man pub crawl but knowing that I'd have buddies at each venue. It was no surprise then that I spent much of Friday with a hangover. Now hangovers as I'm sure you may be aware don't help too much when one has to do some flying. Especially if you have the breed of hangover that I have - one of those ones that start out fine then develop into a metric ball ache of badness. It meant I could sleep awkwardly on the plane between Belfast and London, then sit in a gelatinous like state in Stanstead before graduating on to the London to Gothenburg plane. The problem with that hangover was that I was carrying something on me that I really shouldn't have.

During the queue for security in Belfast city airport, I discovered a tiny bag of grass in my inside jean pocket. Just enough for a joint, nothing that I haven't been able to get through international airport security before and I figured, it was too late to turn out of the queue without looking deeply suspicious. I put all my belongings in the box, dumped my bag on the scanner belt and walked through the detector. *BEEP*

It's cool. I cracked a joke about swallowing a large lump of metal when I was a kid to the middle aged security guard. He laughed and explained that it was a random stop and search but my Transformers T-shirt was very cool and that he is a big fan of the movies. I agreed with this and put my arms out for the pat down. Nothing found. With one airport down, I figured the other two would be grand. Stanstead largely was. The last time that I had been through it my former friend set off a minor alert by forgetting that his "oregano" grinder was still in his luggage. It was only when I got to Gothenburg that it became a problem. The first thing that I saw soon when I got past the passport check was a sniffer dog Labrador. That was one smart looking labrador too, waiting for me with it's healthy golden fur and its bored looking trainers. I panic slightly, with the hangover in full swing, I'm just a tad paranoid. Nah fuck that, I'm sweating like a bitch in heat. I dive into the queue for the toilets which happen to be one cubicle unisex units, which is a long wait and a long time to look on edge and shifty right in front of the labradors and the Custom Agents. I finally get into the toilet, whip my dick out and start pissing, meanwhile unravelling the crap in my pocket to get the weed out and put it in the sanitary towel dispensary bin. Except I completely failed to do this, instead I dropped the weed in the toilet whilst I'm mid flow and have to reach in to swipe the baggie from the piss chamber before I can dispose of it. I washed my hands with a little extra soap and left to leave the airport.

"Excuse me sir, can you come with us?"

Hearing those words almost made me shit a brick. Nay, a high rise Singapore appartment complex. Where they allowed to put security cameras in toilets? I know it was an airport and all but surely we should be allowed some privacy.

I take a long drawn out but silent inhale through my nostrils to keep my composure and agree to the custom agent's demand. I'm asked about my reason for being in Sweden and they search my bag to verify whether or not I'm telling the truth. The cards confirm my reasons so they ask me for my passport. I check a few pockets and my mind begins to boggle. I'm now searching my entire inventory just for my passport. I run back into the toilet and grab it off the hand dryer.

"It was a good thing we stopped you sir, wasn't it?"

I nod and agree with a beaming smile and they let me go on my way.

I leave the airport, narrowly missing the bus into city centre. After that narrow escape I'm a little unphased, produce my book and wait for the next one.

"I think you have missed the last bus. Where are you going?"

I look up and it's the same two female custom agents that stopped me.

"City centre."

"Oh, that's where we are going, we can give you a lift into town"

I smile and hurry over to the car. They put the dog in the boot and I hop into the back seat. Minus one joint = plus one free taxi ride. Small fucking victories my friend.

When I get into town I have a little bit of difficulty navigating the way to my friend's house. Adam, who I've got to say is a fairly brave individual for putting up a random magic player who he'd only ever spoke to a couple of times on the phone after playing him at Magic over the internet gives me a perfectly good set of directions and I end up going the wrong direction. Eventually I rectify this issue and get there just in time to watch some channelfireball, play some proxied vintage magic (this is where the cards in the deck are worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars so you print off copies of the cards and stick the picture to already existing, not as expensive cards), drink some Lipton ice tea and go to sleep. We head to the venue and have a long day of magic to get through.

Long story cut short with Magic (I'll explain what I got up to in a later post for the die hard followers of my Magic articles), I end up scrubbing out but making a few friends in the process. I gain a Serbian fan club over the two days and end up going drinking with a new found English friend. This generally just meant about four pints in a rather crap Gothenburg bar. I'm not really sure what proper Gothenburg night life is like but this place was a mediocre bar in terms of venue, speed of service and music played. On top of that we were supposed to pay 40 Swedish kroner (about £3.50) to get in but the guy at the door didn't have the change for a 50 kroner note so let me in anyway. I knock it on the head early as I don't really want to keep on spending money in a venue with a ratio of about 8 guys to 1 girl. Honestly we were both positive the place wasn't a Gay bar even with it's dumb name: Charlie's Anglars. So I knock it on the head and go to bed early so I can get up and play magic the next day. Sunday night I'm treated to a traditional Swedish meal by Adam's father of succulent roast pork and a vegetable mix that seems to comprise of carrot and turnip.

At this point in time, I'm reluctant to head home. Whilst I had a flight booked to return home on Monday, I wouldn't actually get home until about eight o'clock in the evening. Why bother flying back to Belfast only to have to fly out to Amsterdam on Thursday. It wasn't like I had anything important to do on Tuesday or Wednesday. I sit until about three o'clock in the morning on Adam's computer researching the alternatives to going home whilst leaving him in his room to sex talk his girlfriend over the phone in both Swedish and Spanish. After trying in vain to find alternatives to going home that don’t cost £140 I hit the hay. Despite setting an alarm, I do one of those half asleep “wake up and acknowledge I have to get up for something but chose to sleep in anyway” moments. When I’m finally up for real it’s 09:30 AM and I have half an hour to get from Adam’s house to the airport before check in closes. The hell I’m risking £30 for a taxi that might not even make it on time.

Adam and I book my next flight. Copenhagen to Amsterdam. We head into town and grab some sushi before I take the train from Sweden to Denmark and Adam heads to college.

The train between Goteborg and Copenhagen takes about four hours but it has to be done on a sunny day. Whilst admittedly I missed hours of sunshine on that journey and ended up getting into Denmark when it was pissing with rain, I got to see the beautiful Swedish countryside as it was coated in rays of gold.

When I got there, I got to catch up with Daniel, Josephine and Martin, smoke a joint and head off to make dinner. I spent the next two days with Martin, Jackob and Sigurd schmoking and drinking, getting my liver prepared for what was to be a tame by comparison Amsterdam.

This was genuinely an awesome experience, Freetown Christiania is the hippy commune I’ve spoke about in previous blogs that is as phenomenal the umpteenth time you visit it as it is the first time you visit it. Danish pilsner is as great as ever.

After a quick flight that I spent trying to chat up some average looking Dutch girl beside me whilst being fucked off my face on beer and weed, I rocked into Amsterdam, grabbed a slice of pizza and took the train into city centre. This bit all went pretty smoothly. I bought some blueberry in some average looking coffee shop, hit a bong then traversed the streets to the Italian restaurant where the Magic players resided. We topped up our beer levels then head off to see a sex show. This is one of those things that you know in your heart you will only ever do once.

I mean it’s 30 euros for two crap drinks and a chance to watch grown men go up on stage and eat banana’s out of a fat girl’s flange. Except it’s hilarious when its your friends that are those eating the banana out of that girl’s flange. Better still is whenever your mate has his shirt off and he’s lying on the stage with the girl writing ‘Bad boy’ using a pen protruding from her flaps. That is something that you have to see to believe.

Arguably the best thing about that sex show was that it gave me the opportunity for the most perfect one-liner. Right in the “live sex” portion of the show, the woman lay on her back with her legs around his head so he could have tongue to twat reach. Queue UFC reference

“And she catches him with a triangle choke hold! IT IS AAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL OVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR!”

After this we walked home, drinking tuborg and smoking joints along the way.

Thursday was largely spent being hung over, chomping on the breakfast buffet and having a nap. What followed was a spot of magic and a trip into town, drinking in a few bars. These were generally pretty sweet, I had a good eye for ones we could just chill out and grab a few pints of Bavaria. We even hit up a shisha bar with the fittest Scottish barmaid I’ve seen in quite some time. Whilst this was all cool and all, we kind of hit a little bit of a hurdle: most of the bars seemed to close at 1 and without knowledge of where the night clubs are, it’s quite easy to get distracted and put off partying for another night. You kind of end up just going back and guzzling the remainder of the beers purchased from the local supermarket. That’s kind of what happened for the remainder of our trip, we spent a lot of time getting pie-eyed in hotel rooms and seeing some bars. If not it was getting absolutely wankered at our hostel’s happy hour. 2 for 1 on pints of lager whilst we’re playing the best drunken foosball or mental magic we’ve ever engaged in.

A couple of the other guys had just that idea, taking a free tour of the zottay brewery, an 8% beer that tasted like it was about four. Not much to my liking, it kind of had a musty taste to it and when you’re filled with a hangover and ribs, you’re not going to be able to handle much in the way of musty beer.

We also went on the “Heiniken experience”, which wasn’t actually a tour of the brewery but a mueseum of Heiniken/a building of advertisement for the company. Whilst the people working here were pretty cool, I’d recommend hoofing a big bong before you even step foot in this building as fifteen Euros will only get you two free pints of Heiniken and that’s provided you answer the questions of the fit bar maids correctly. Hint: the head on Heiniken is designed to stop oxygen from getting and CO2 from getting out.

After the Heiniken trip, we had one little Sweedish problem. Outside the hostel, four of us were playing a card game called "9 Card Brag", basically a quick and easy to gamble on card game, that doesn't require any major skill. About half way through the game, a Swedish guy came and asked us about what we were playing. He seemed friendly enough but then he started into a rant about a Swedish card game that we should have been playing.

"Yes, it is called nigger and president"

Now I'd find this awkward at the best of times but there was a crowd of African students gathered by the picnic tables around us. Niall quite rightly suggested he didn't use that word and the guy dropped it. About three minutes later, he brings it up again.

"Yes, card game Nigger and President"

"Dude.."

"Yes, I know but I did not give the name to the game, it is a very popular game in Sweden, it is funny because the nigger can be the president at the same time.."

At this point we froze him out of our conversation. I'm inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and say that the guy wasn't racist but I wasn't prepared to deal with his stupidity. You don't loudly say a word that is discriminatory around the group it is likely to offend.



My tolerance to stupidity can be pretty low.

To soothe the munchies, I would recommend all you can eat ribs for twelve euro, where you can get a plate “ribbed for your pleasure”. I can’t remember the name of the place in town that did this deal but it was an Argentinan restraunt. The service could have been a little better but I wasn’t going to kick up too much of a fuss when I was stuffing myself with their ribs. Pretty good I have to say.

Sunday though was the God of all days. After playing Magic semi-successfully I joined the other eleven Northern Irish magic players for the best activity known to man: boating on Amsterdam canals. For three hours we bombed around on motor boats barbequing, drinking beer and smoking thick pre-rolled joints. I think even the people in Amsterdam were slightly confused to see us gnashing huge chunks of chicken clean off the bone that was fresh cooked on foil instant barbeques. There were some hilarious moments on that boating expedition too. Take for instance the “Zattay drop” a competition where contestants have to set a bottle of zattay perfectly upright on an Amsterdam houseboat for maximum points or trying to schmooze attractive women who were in boats along side us. The boat rental guys didn’t look too happy with us when we returned the boats with a live and smoking barbeque still going.

Sadly whilst we were all finally in the mood for going out and sleazing on some Dutch girls, the old “no where is open past 1” conundrum really applies on a Sunday. We made up for the problem by chomping our way through some seriously good kebabs and I collapsed in my half assed made hostel bed covered in beer sweat.

I want to thank everyone who made this trip what it was, in particular, Adam for letting me stay in his beautiful family home, Martin for letting me stay in his gaff. Dog and Gar get a shout out for organizing the boat trip.



Ratings (out of 5)
Swedish hospitality: *****
Danish Hospitality: *****
Scrubbing out at magic: *** (At least I learned a few things and made a few friends)
Christiania: ****
Heiniken Experience: **
Eating ribs: ***
Beer: *****
Renting boats: ***********************************************************
Some idiot outside a hostel: