The joy of watching European ballroom champions!

A day I've been waiting for all month!  The 2012 European 10-Dance Championships are in Salzburg this year.  I scooped up a ticket as soon as the first posters went up.

Before today, I had always thought that ballroom dancers at this level were so polished, so impossibly perfect, as to be indistinguishable to all but the judges; that judges alone could spot the split-second differences in foot work, floor craft, angles and timing that separate 1st place from 6th.  But watching from the bleachers, I am delighted to see that this is not so.  As the semi-finalists, and then the finalists, are announced, I find that my own preferences matched the judges' 90% of the time!  Meaning, they could just have well have given me a judge's clipboard and gotten similar results — and for a lot cheaper, too.

Like the Olympics, each country in Europe sends its top couple to represent them.  But what makes this event especially fun for me is that I personally know the Austrian couple.  (They run the monthly dance socials I've been attending.)  They are the home-crowd favourites, and each section of the bleachers screams for them and calls out their number "ZWANZIG!" whenever they dance past.  And these two are wallowing in the celebrity attention.  They play to the audience at every turn, sparkling with smiles a mile wide.   The judges mark them in 5th place out of a pool of 18.

I feel sorry for the spectators who paid 1400 euros for a floor-side VIP table and the six-course meal; from their ground-level view, they have, ironically, the worst view in the house because of the foot-high placard ads that surround the dance floor.  My cheapskate 85-euro seat in the bleachers gives me a far better view.

Even so, the best  view of the dancers is off stage where the dancers warm up before their heat.  I sneak under the bleachers to watch them.  They are literally within arms' reach of me.   Their precision, their incredible speed and the intricacy of their choreography hits me full in the face.  If they weren't right before my eyes, I'd have sworn it was enhanced by CGI effects!

Saint Therese, meanwhile, in a noble act of magnanimous adult sacrifice, has taken the children to the kiddy-rides carnival — for the whole day —  so that I may enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Marry well, people. It is my number-one advice to young adults today.  Marry well.