Tuesday, 30 April 2002

Internet!

I'm back from my hermitage. Actually I didn't miss internet or email once. Well that's not totally true. When we played "Stephensons Rocket" I would have loved to have internet to be able to find some errata or FAQ on this game. I didn't like the game all that much. But I think this was mainly due to the fact that it had absolutely crappy rules. We fought about some situation that probably doesn't happen very often and was not explained in the rules. In the end we wished we would have filmed us playing that game. I'm sure watching it again would have been very funny.

Puerto Rico was THE game during the weekend. Some people literally played it non-stop. This hasn't happened with a new game since Settlers of Catan. The game is great. There's almost no luck involved (actually the only thing that has to do with luck is determining who gets to go first). The really good thing about the game is that there's tons of different strategies you can try. And there's not one perfect strategy. It all depends on what your opponents do. It was a good thing that we brought our copy of the game. One copy wouldn't have been enough...

We played a couple of other games we hadn't played before but as always not nearly enough. Trans America sounds like a railroad game to you? Well it is. If you think 18xx now you're wrong though. The game is rather astonishing. Explaining the rules takes about 60 seconds (if you're slow) and playing the game takes about 15 minutes with 5 players. First time you read the rules you think: "Gawd, sounds boring". But playing it is actually quite fun. There's lots of luck involved though but we've already tried ways to reduce that a little. It's a fun and fast little game you can play to relax in between bigger games. Or you can play it for three hours straight until 7am (tweaking it to reduce luck) like we did.

First night there we did not sleep much because we had a heavy snorer in our room. The next two nights we stuffed tissues in our ears and it was perfect :) We didn't sleep more than 5 hours per night anyhow but at least the snoring didn't bother us anymore... On the first day we had great weather so we played Pétanque and Kubb. It was a great weekend. I only wish it would last longer. I also wish I would get to see my old friends more often. I only see them on those gaming weekend and maybe once or twice inbetween. I'm always sad when I have to leave them again...

On our way there we stopped at a French McDonalds. This is where I got my first French Euro coins. Yay! The French 2 Euro coin is quite nice. I was shocked by how bad my French had gotten. I mean, I learned French in school for 7 years. 7 freaking years! And I had problems ordering a Big Mac. Well it was only because the the girl couldn't remember the burger I had ordered and asked me if that was the right burger and I thought she wanted to give me a choice between several types of Big Mac or something. Well in the end I managed. But I was truly devastated by how little I could talk. Understanding still works quite well if they speak slowly but if I have to talk French I often slide into English. Maybe I should think about staying in France for a couple of months. I don't want to lose all my French.

Gotta go back to work now. I'll do the Friday (..err Tuesday) Five tonight...

  Posted by Edda at 13:57 CET