Thank You Balkans & UK :P

Alright i have been home now for 2 weeks and its about time i said thank you to those that made this trip so friggin awesome , man i keep daydreaming about all the amazing people i met on this trip and really there are too many to thank for making this one of the best trips i have ever been on ... let's start with the person that picked me up at the airport in Skopje , Macedonia ... the crazy German ... Mr. Zoki ! Without Zoki i wouldn't have ended up there , he is the guy i was bugging to make sure this tournament fell in place so i could make this 3 tournament in 3 weeks trip . Zoki is also the first person i had drinks with on this trip and he's also the guy i pestered the most about my crazy sim card that probably still doesn't work LOL ... don't worry about in anymore Zoki ! Zoki also introduced me to everyone you can imagine while i was there including a former pro hockey player that i hung out with quite a bit named Jure Vnuk ... this guy really is a person that i definitely will meet up with again as their is no doubt that we became good friends . Check out Jure's stats http://eurohockey.com/player/7968-jure-vnuk.html ... impressive? yup ! He took me to my first handball game i have ever seen and then we both went from the handball game to an international soccer game together . It was one of the better nights i had on this trip ! Then there was Rainer LOL :P yup he was there hahaha, sleeping in the hotel elevator , i am mentioning this because i met the most amazing hotel employee i have ever met on all my travels that went above and beyond to make sure we had fun ... Kire Nadzinski worked nights while we were there and yeah he has some good stories to tell i'm sure he should start a blog of his own hahaha! Kire works at http://www.wiphotel.com.mk/ , if you are ever in Skopje which i gotta tell ya is a great place to go have a really cheap fun vacation ... its' not one of those hot tourist destinations but its definitely one of my favorites . It's gotta be because of the people i met ... i have to also thank the Macedonian Hockey Federation , thank you for having me there for your amazing event and best of luck to you guys in the future ... i will be watching you my friends ! 

Before i forget i gotta thank Iraklis Hockey Club from Thessaloniki,Greece for taking me in and letting me play for your team + i can't remember the night we had in Thessaloniki :P wow what a night LOL ! I hope you guys continue to get better at the game we all love and i hope you guys get a nice big indoor ice rink some day soon so i can visit you again , my stay in Thessaloniki was way too short :( i'll be back ! 

After Thessaloniki i made my way to Athens ... what can i say about Athens that hasn't been said before . It's unreal ! I stayed at Hotel Adrian and was kinda lonely there after the hangover wore off , its the first time i have done a hop on hop off tour alone and to be honest it was kinda weird being alone for those couple days . Regardless i did make some great friends with the help of Iosif Kapetanidis who is the owner of the Ice n Skate  rink http://icenskate.gr/  . Iosif hooked me up to skate with the Athens Warriors https://www.facebook.com/AthensWarriors and after the skate i hung out with him drinking beers talking hockey and that really meant a lot to me ... thanks for the free beer Iosif and thank you for doing what you do ! Owning a rink in Athens must be a crazy thing and i for one would like to thank you for that .... keep up the great work and also thanks for the skate with your Ice N Skate hockey club https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ice-n-Skate-hockey-club/574405839332565?fref=ts ... it was awesome seeing you strap the pads on even if it was the wrong way LOL ! 

After my few days in Greece i dragged my wet equipment onto my Aegean flight , thanks for not charging me overweight fees LOL ! I was on my way to Serbia ... there i was bugging this guy named Nebojsa Ivanov  who is one of the organizers of the tournament in Novi Sad . I took a bus over to Novi Sad from Belgrade as there is no airport in Novi Sad and when i arrived Nebojsa and the fat guy met me LOL ... wish i knew "the fat guys" name but it was hard to learn since everyone simply referred to him as the fat guy ! That's how funny and loose people are in Serbia , its all for fun and everyone knows it and that's what i experienced there and it made making friends so easy . I had the honour of playing for the local club which is also the host club ... GentlemeNS Hokej Klub https://www.facebook.com/groups/256881807703800/?fref=ts . Nebojsa and the rest of the locals went out of their way to make sure i didn't get lost but i still did and i swear next time i am there i won't get lost i promise guys :) HAHAHAHA!!!! We lost in the final and then i had that tear jerker moment when the fat guy presented me with a club jersey to take home and i almost burst ... in fact i am almost in tears now writing this .... i kissed the logo thinking nobody saw this but i think everyone did . Thanks guys ! I had a tv interview while i was there too which you can find attached to this article that Nebojsa wrote about me http://en.hkgentlemens.com/?p=425 hope you all get a good laugh ! One of the coolest guys i met at the tournament was the bartender .... can't forget you Strahinja as you were the last person i got to see in Novi Sad , thanks for the ride to the bus station ... i would have got lost without you LOL !

I headed back to Belgrade and remember i was there for a night already , it was nothing eventful aside from getting lost on the way back to my hotel which i decided not to stay at again and opted for something nicer . Over the last 2 tournaments there were a couple familiar faces that i knew , particularly Uros Banovic and Aleksandar Mijuskovic who both lived in Belgrade unfortunately Uros had to take off for business but Aleksandar took the time to show me around Belgrade and explain a lot about the city to me which was pretty awesome , thanks ! My nightlife manager was Jovan Popov who i met in Novi Sad where we became good friends the first night we met . Jovan came out both nights to hang out in Belgrade even though he had to work in the mornings and that is tough but he is still young ! When i left Serbia i remember telling a Serb that Serbians are amazing people and he was surprised and said that only 20% are maybe good .... i told him well i must be really lucky because 100% of the Serbians i met were amazing ... honestly Serbia and in particular Novi Sad is one of my favorite places in the world , i would highly suggest that everyone visits as its cheap , historic and the people if you ask me are genuine ... thanks to all those i met in Serbia that i didn't mention especially those that organize and are members of the GentlemeNS Hokej Klub . 

Budapest , Hungary was next ... back with Rainer . I got there a day early to see a bit of the city and start my search for Attila Ambrus and without the help of Zoltan Sos i would never be able to cross meeting The Whiskey Robber off my bucket list . Zoli met me through Hockey Community hockey-community.com and is the HC ambassador in Hungary as i am the HC ambassador in Toronto ... we are in an ambassadors group on Facebook and met through there . Zoli made sure to greet me properly as he was always on time and quite the gentleman . As i said this trip would not have been as awesome as it was without the people i met and this guy is really the reason i smile when i think about Budapest ... he showed me the rink at Hero's Square the first night then the next morning picked me up and took me there for a skate which i keep daydreaming about ... what an awesome feeling that was ! But to top it all he drove me to Kecskemet ,Hungary to search for and find Attila Ambrus !!!!! Thank you Zoli for being such an amazing host and i hope to see you in Toronto some day ? I gotta thank Rainer for getting me on 2 teams for this tournament and i know some people like Stefan Jager took it so hard that i didn't play their 3rd game that he took me off Facebook but really people like that aren't the reason i am travelling and spending thousands of dollars to meet and experience .... no i'm not harping on Stefan but really why would you take me off Facebook ? I was playing for another team that i was booked to play for from the get go and they were going to the playoffs and your team wasn't and we had another goalie that i told to play that game but didn't show ... to top it all off i bought a round of beers for the team after the game and brought it personally to the room myself ... in fact i even put one in your hand Stefan , so i guess i should say you're welcome :P Can't forget to mention that i had a TV interview in Budapest also which you can see by following this link .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJ0q9-tqIo&feature=youtu.be&list=UUws9VCaMBHRLuawlhYkGWzg . Before i finish talking about Hungary i want to thank Rainer for organizing everything and the rest of the Rainman Allstars , also want to thank my Slovakian Bulldogs team mates for playing so amazing and making it to the semi-finals and i want to thank the tournament organizers for putting together a nice tournament in a really nice rink . Oh yeah i can't forget the psychopaths called the Norwegian Penguins https://www.facebook.com/pages/Norwegian-Penguins-Hockey/382717818558668?fref=ts , its always great meeting up with Bjorn aka the Drunken Goalie and Thomas aka i want to be Rainer when i grow up LOL ! hope to see you guys in Tachov this spring :) 

Things got messy after Hungary and i gotta thank Lufthansa for going on strike and messing everything up for me and Rainer !!! I've said it before and i'll say it again , flying just ain't what it used to be :( I ended up in the UK alone ... well i'm never really alone LOL ! I gotta thank the Kidderminster Lions club for sorting me out with tickets to 2 Aston Villa games ... the usual suspects were there ... Paul , Elvis and Gary thanks guys for making both games memorable , yes beer helps my memory :P It wasn't all about football of course i made my way to Cardiff , Wales to meet Anton Rimko who was a super host letting me stay with his family for the night and organizing my ice time with his friends there . Thanks to all the guys out in Cardiff that i met , hope to see you guys in Windsor at the CARHA World Cup in 2016 :) Gotta thank Anton for getting his brother Andrej to drive me out to meet Nick Onslow  in Gloucester and i gotta thank Nick for getting me up to Sheffield . More then anything i gotta thank Darren aka Dazza for organizing my place to stay , hockey and all the entertainment one can offer when visiting one's city ! Can't forget Mark , Lisa and Sarah for being gracious hosts also .... i'm sure you guys are permanently scarred by the flashing of my Christmas jumper LMAO ! Sorry i was so wiped out by the time i got there , travelling for 5 weeks is tough ...especially when you travel with me .  

I hope i didn't miss anyone important and that is not to say that anyone i didn't mention wasn't important its just that i could write a novel if i thanked every single person i interacted with on this trip ... honestly there is well over 100 people that i am thinking of as i write this and if you are thinking about me then that means more to me then writing about it ... don't try to understand what i just said just know its as genuine as the people i mentioned in this blog .... Thank you everyone !!!