Casual heroics

There was no blog post last week. This is because on Saturday I went paintballing and then spent Sunday recovering. And so, of course, I’m going to tell you about paintballing now.

First things first – yes, being hit by a paintball hurts. Though not as much as I thought it would. Don’t get me wrong, I’m bruised all over and going up and down stairs on Sunday was difficult. But once I’d been hit once, it wasn’t so scary and I charged headlong into battle.

Photo credit: GO Paintball London                                                                                                                  

Look at those war faces.

We went to Go Paintball London which is in South London. A friend had a voucher which is why we went so far south. It involved a delayed train the night before, a surprisingly nice hotel and navigating the tube while half asleep.

When we got there, we got geared up. Camouflage body suit, visor and an ammo belt. Ammo was, of course, extra but from what I understand that’s pretty de rigueur with paintball. Before we were allowed guns, there was a safety talk by the owner of paintball and then we were divided into teams.

Instead of just playing with the people we’d come with, we had masses of strangers on our teams. And we were on opposing teams. Great in theory because you get to shoot your friends. But in practice, it was difficult to spot your friends when you had a visor on and paintballs were flying.

We played four maps, two of which were essentially capture the flag. Stockpile meant trying to capture three flags, Wasteland had us protecting one flag and trying to steal another. Then Stronghold you either stormed or protected a castle and in Bunker you were trying to secure both a nuclear reactor and (shockingly) a nuclear bunker for your team.

Discussion later revealed that each of our favourite maps were where we got to do some thrilling heroics. So for me it was Wasteland, where, having run out of ammo, I made a desperate run to try and capture the flag. I did not succeed. But I tried and that’s what counts, right?

It was a really fun day, especially when I figured out that my talents lay in providing cover and not in attempting to run anywhere. I’d go paintballing again, thought maybe not before any important events because I am still very bruised, several days later. And while Go Paintball was a great experience, it’s kind of far away. And I’m not sure how good the day was makes up for the expense.

Suhl’s Cool

In my last post, I mentioned that Suhl (a town in Thüringen) has a weapons museum. This is because Suhl was initially a base for metal processing, which led naturally into gunsmithing, armoury and cannon making. It was very important for the German weapon industry, which is a covert way of saying it was one of the centres of weapon production during World War Two. Nowadays, it has Germany’s only school for armourers and, I believe, still produces rifles etc for sport and hunting.

I’m a huge weapon fangirl. Not so much for the damage that they can cause, but the mechanics and intricacies of them. Swords, guns, crossbows. You name it, I’ve probably fangirled over it at some point. I think my parents took me to too many historical re-enactments as a kid. The main reason I want to go to New York is the Arms and Armour exhibit at The Met. (All contributions to my ‘Kat goes to New York’ fund are gratefully received.) So yes, me plus a weaponry museum equals kid in a sweet shop.

So to the weaponry museum. It cost me €5 for entry and the privilege of taking photos. The bottom floor is a display about the geology and history of Suhl, which basically explains how it makes perfect sense for Suhl to have been an industrial town based around metal working. I did not read most of it.

A pistol and knuckledusters. What more could you want?

The first floor is much more interesting. It’s a display of many different kinds of guns, from teeny tiny pistols to ones taller than me. They’re arranged by use, so there’s a section for hunting, a section for sporting activities including a subsection on the Olympics, and a section on war. There were a couple of other sections as well, but they weren’t as interesting.

Actual swords hidden in canes.

I spent most of my time skipping (not literally) from display to display case, getting weird looks from middle ages men and taking all of the photos. I also got to shoot an electronic rifle. There’s a tiny shooting range. You have the choice of two rifles and I naturally picked the biggest. It was super heavy, but I still managed to score fairly highly. The woman in charge thought I’d shot before. Which thinking about it, yes I have. But I sucked at clay pigeon shooting and that was…oooh, 7 years ago. So yeah. She also asked where I came from and said my German was good. I like people who tell me my German is good.

Guns from WW2. I have no wisecracks.

 After hitting up the weapons museum gift shop – no, I did not buy a gun, yes, I did by alcohol billed as weaponry oil – I met up with one of my colleagues and her husband, whose name I believe is Dettcliff. He’s a blacksmith in Suhl, and works at a forge, naturally enough. The forge has been there for at least 150 years, and the main part of it is now a museum. But I got to see the actual workshop as well. It was all kinds of cool, though trying to follow an explanation of the smithing process in German was super difficult.

My hosts – Maidlin and Dettcliff

Once we’d had the full tour, we headed to their house, for coffee and cake. Well, tea and cake in my case. I met their middle daughter who was all kinds of lovely, and we generally chatted and it was really nice.Then me, Maidlin and Dettcliff went on a walk up a frankly gigantic hill, to the ruin of celtic settlement. The sun was setting and the light was phenomenal. It was definitely worth the effort, though I haven’t climbed a hill that big since I finished Duke of Edinburgh.

Dat panorama.

To round off the day in a truly German fashion, we had bratwurst, beer and potato salad. Basically, it was a fantastic day. I can’t sum it up better than that. Yay for lovely people and decent places.