Carnivultimate

Welcome to Viareggio

Viareggio in Tuscany is where I just spend the last three days for my first ultimate tournament with the beloved Roma BID ultimate squad.  Since it was carnival weekend, which is a culturally enhanced parade with big floats and costumes, we had to arrive dressed for the occasion.  Our team dressed up in full body suits as an investigation department.  The Bunga Bunga Investigation Department (BID) to be exact.

We all met up at the Trestevere Station and packed up the cars full of sports bags and cleats.  The ten of us caravanned four hours to one of our teammate's hometown of Viareggio to dominate Italy's finest ulti players. We arrive at our unheated bungalow at midnight and woke up at 7:00am as a team of icicles.

 We were the first team to arrive at the fields, even though we were late, and indulged in our free breakfast of baguettes and nutella, pastries, bananas, and hot milk. Felt like we won already!  We played four games as a team and me and my other lady teammates picked up with another team for a fifth game since they didn't have any girls.

My god it felt amazing to push myself to the point of exhaustion. Such a reward to sit on the fields for a breather looking out at the beautiful Alps in the distance.  We were given free pasta lunch and dinner at a local restaurant.

Then it was time for Carnivale. We danced our asses off. As a team of course.

We woke up early Sunday ready to play and ended up getting third in the tournament.

(receiving prize)

I'm going to take away so much from this experience.  And the spirit circles we formed with the team we played against after every game.

At the end of the day we were tired, burnt, and bonded.

And drove home with a car full of new friends, strong connections, and a sense of belonging for the first time in my new home.

<3