The European Armenian Easter games are held once a year and hosted by different european cities – we also have a similar version held in Australia but on a much smaller scale called the Navasartian Games, on at Christmas time
This year the EAG was held in Barcelona, Spain and there were 600 attendees & I was the only Aussie! And the only non-spanish referee… I got to referee both mens & womens basketball games and had the privilage to ref the mens semi-finals and finals
I proudly represented the London team (as London is my favourite city in the world…) ❤️
AND SO IT BEGINS…
The registrations for all athletes was at Barcelo Sants hotel between 9am-10pm a day before competition started
I was already in Barcelona a couple days before and on the day of arrival, the whole hotel reception area was buzzing with so many excited people throughout the day and so much laughter, hugging, chanting and drinking! Great energy!
I checked into my new hotel where ill be staying with the London team – Hotel Expo
The organised coaches were planned really well and made sure all the athletes made it from the hotels to the sporting venue for their games
Took around 20mins to get there through the city towards the beaches and we got to see a lot of the city along the way as well
There were so many great games over the 2 days
Awesome competition, it was all adults so there was some really good pushing and shoving going on which comes naturally to Armenians 🤣
I had the privilage to referee with some local Spanish refs and connecting using broken english and my non existent Spanish! – but Basketball is universal so the sign language was all we needed when refereeing the games
Mostly the calls on court are called in English and with my experience refereeing in a few different countries so far, its been the same, except the difference here in Barcelona was that “subs” was called “switch” so I had to get used to that which wasnt too difficult
I was on the last bus back to the hotel – my games on the first day went from 1pm and last game finished at 4:30pm – most people were already back and relaxing and getting ready for the Dance party on that night
Got ready with not much time to chill, which was ok as I was on a high anyway after the games and walked over to Barcelo Sants where the Dance Party was just starting…
The Armenian shrjapar (did i spell that right!? 🤷🏻♀️) is really popular and the Barcelonian Armenians have a specific dance teacher that teaches these moves to the students here. I even got dragged into a few rounds of dancing at the stadium once the games finished
Everyone couldnt wait to get up and dance and the dance floor was full the whole night!
GAME DAY 2 – THE FINALS
I had an early game at 9:35am so didnt want a late one and so finished around midnight and headed back to my hotel early for a decent sleep to be able to referee the games
I had a bit of a freak out moment as it was daylight saving so lost an hour of sleep but I wasnt sure if my phone changed the time automatically or not… and luckily after checking with reception… it had
The last night was the Gala Dinner & Live concert – held at Barcelo Sants Hotel with Vigen Hovsepyan & band entertainment
The following day was hard to say bye to new friends I’d met as people started leaving early that morning
I had to laugh at some of the conversations I was having as most people were complaining about a 1.5- 2 hour flight back to their cities in europe and here I am 25 hours away! 😩🙃 they stopped complaining once I told them this fact 🤣
A great experience! I love the European Armenian Games, this was my 4th one and Ive never been disappointed 🏀
The Wandering Passport 