Old Dog in Berlin

[donald grant]

Just a quick post to say that i've finally got round to signing up for the forum. Greetings to all and I'll try to contribute something more useful than "milking the cow" variations to the group.

I'm in Berlin playing at the Wintergarten variete until the 17th of July so if any of you find yourselves in the area, feel free to drop me a line.

All the best
Donald Grant

[Dave P]

...and about time too!

Good to have you here at last

[-Leo-]

Its good to have a legend on the forum.well we've got a couple now.

[Sean]

Welcome, great to have you signed up!

Wish I was in Berlin.

Thanks for contributing so greatly to the modern art of diabolo - particularly in the form of your books - they were my "diabolo bible" when starting out and remain an inspiration today... still haven't mastered all those tricks.

Any plans of adding to your current trilogy (in 5 parts)?

[Arjan]

Hey Donald, since you`re in Germany, any change you could pop by the Dutch Convention? It`s from 5 till 8 may (I`m so excited!!! )

You can find a link here: http://www.jongleerfestival.nl/index-en.php?inh=

It`s close to the German border.
Think about it, you will like it.

Ow, great to have you here!

[norbi]

Berlin eh? gunna have some time off to make it to Berlin convention at the end of the month? I'll be there if you happen to make it. Anyone else going for that matter?

[Arjan]

The convention in Berlin you mean?? hmmm... maybe.. I`m not sure.

[ronnie2tone]

Hi Donald, great to see you in here.

Your and Priam's renegade performance at the BJC went down a treat!    There's a couple of video's of some of it in the BJC thread

cheers

ronnie

[norbi]

http://www.circulum.de/convention/05/index.php?page=en

Is the Berlin convention link.

Anyone coming?

Nice to see you in here by the way Donald, dont think i've said that yet.

[Martijn]

Welcome at the forum!

I love the renegade video from the BJC

[barnesy]

Welcome to the forum, Donald.  It's good to see you on here!  I'll be at the Berlin convention.  Will hopefully see you there.

[donald grant]

Thanks for the warm welcome!  In response to some of the questions.....

- sorry can't make it to Holland for the convention, as I have shows every night except Tuesday.

- I WILL get to the Berlin convention, if only for the mornings and afternoons.  It's one of the best conventions anywhere.

- Sean, there ARE two more books written a while back (Suicidal Tendencies and Grante's Inferno).  I'll see what I can do about getting them out there somehow.

The BJC video?  You're all too kind!

Cheers for now

Donald Grant

Hanging out in Berlin with all the old dogs: me, Bruce Wilson and Jochen Schell!

[Spink]

Thankyou SOOO much for your books(and GbH's contribution).

The two hot to handle book has helped me out no end.

Much Respect

[norbi]

Well no-one seems to have written anything about this yet, so i guess i had better get it started.
It was awesome, so many amazing jugglers. groups of 12-17 year old girls doing tricks with 5 balls. they weren't really serious jugglers, just a few freinds that juggle together for fun. So many unheardof great jugglers/diablists. I met a guy called Miguel (sp?) who had a solid 3 low and was doing 522 with sunned 2's most times, solid 3 high with a few rounds of 441 and a 531 and pirouette thrown in, but no-one had heard of him becuase he doesnt post anything anywhere. I told him to join the forum hopefully he will. Right, so now on to the high-low-crush-goal-bane i guess.

high - seeing so much crazy stuff (5up 720s from 7 balls by Dietz for example) and there being almost no ring jugglers, so i looked pretty good , the gladiator tournament, the concentration of great people, the setting, the show (especially Thomas's act [if you were there you'll know, otherwise dont worry]) everything

low - hmmm, taking the whole convention to find the courage to talk to a certain lady. The amount of music acts in a juggling show! And they were all in German so all the jokes were wasted on me (and a lot of people). Not much, it was great.

crush - well it'd have to be ____* it took me a damn long time to finally get talking to her, but we stayed up all night (well until 7am) chatting, then after 2 hours sleep, got some breakfast and continued, awww how romantic  

goal - see if the convention lived up to it's name, and.... it was even better than i had expected. Everyone should go.

bane - well a lot of people complained about cold nights and hot mornings in their tent. Can i advise a really hot sleeping bag and a single layer tent, warm at night and cool in the morning    Oh and having to walk across a beach to get to the hall, all nice and good but it takes twice as much energy to get anywhere, but maybe i'm just being lazy

After the convention i went to the Winter Garten to see Donalds show, well worth a watch if you're in Germany before July, hung out in the town until early hours, having curry and ****tails, then missed the last train 'home' and had to get a taxi, oh well, everything is so cheap.
Visited (and practised in) the katakomben, great place, great people, great jugglers, and Sergey Sr was there teaching which was nice.

Over all awesome!

*dunno if i should disclose her name on the internet.

[Luke Burrage]

So many unheardof great jugglers/diablists. I met a guy called Miguel (sp?) who had a solid 3 low and was doing 522 with sunned 2's most times, solid 3 high with a few rounds of 441 and a 531 and pirouette thrown in, but no-one had heard of him becuase he doesnt post anything anywhere. I told him to join the forum hopefully he will.

He was from Chile, I think. Maybe Argentina. I know it was somewhere in South America. He was the best three diaboloist I've ever seen, literally with more 3 diabolo tricks than I've seen any others do before. And loads of cool ways to start three as well.

Anyway...

High: The whole convention was a high! I enjoyed performing on the open stage, winning the games, taking part in the 3 club combat Fight Club (and coming 4th), eating, hanging out with various people including various old dogs, swapping more bad tricks with Donald (I now have about 20 more ideas for trick of the week videos), Jay and me losing every match in the volleyclub tournament... Probably the highest high was playing in the swimming pool with an amazing floating thing! See photos at the albapasser.de site. It was great fun!

Low: Splitting my head open just minutes before I had to perform in the gala show. I was the last act on and did my routine with blood dripping into my left eye. Later strange things happened to my body and I started drooling and fainting and crying. It wasn't a good look.

Crush: My girlfriend will bite me if I don't put her name here. So... Pola.

Bane: The bastard who stole one of my diabolos! Now I only have two! Damn it!

Goal: To have a good time at the best juggling convention in the world. Tick! It was as good as last year. The show wasn't so good (it went on for over 4 hours) but that was made up for by the party in the swimming pool.



After the convention I stayed in Berlin for 4 days. I attended a workshop with the juggling legend that is Sergey Ignatov (Sr, not Jr)  who kicked my juggling into shape. Then on Wednesday night I went to see Donald in the Wintergarten variety show. That was pretty good fun too. I didn't understand most of the show due to my slightly lacking German language skills but I had a good time.


See you guys later