For those who don’t know it yet: One of my hobbies is RoboCup – robots that play football (Why not soccer? It is FOOTball, dammit!).
Between the 3rd and 12th July was the RoboCup World Championship in Istanbul, Turkey. Well it was a crazy tournament, to say the least. Our equipment, including our robots, arrived waaaaaaay to late. And we were not kicked out of the tournament just by good will of the other teams. A big “Thank you” to them. Anyway, we finished on rank seven… with some preparation time earlier we could have easily competed with the first four teams. The RoboCup god is a sadistic one! Some more information can be obtained from the Carpe Noctem team’s blog
For the city: Well… I did expect more! Some spots we wandered through reminded my of scenes from the movie “Robot Holocaust”, just awful. The inner city, with all the big sights was kind of like I hoped it to be. But being frequently bothered to buy something or to eat something when walking down a street is really wearing down after some hours. The bad thing: I had no opportunity to visit the inside of the Hagia Sophia. Apparently it is closed on Mondays and our only two days of sightseeing where the two Mondays. Also, the Blue Mosque and the Tokapi Palace where closed when we wanted to take a closer look. Anyways… impressive architecture to say the least!
Ok, thats about it for this short wrap-up.