Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Sunday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Today was more about Stuttgart than beards, the flight was cheaper on a Monday than a Sunday so we decided to take an extra day to do some sight seeing around the city. It was a pretty late start to the morning with dull heads and I had a wry smile, waking in the knowledge that I had the tenth best full freestyle beard in the world! THE WORLD! Once we had showered and dressed ourselves we headed to the train station and headed for the city centre. we got the admin task of printing boarding passes out the way first, before finding coffee and pastry based breakfast in a local cafe.

We then spent some time just wondering around the town checking out the local civic buildings and public art, some of which had to be mounted for the camera. I'm not saying we are seasoned subtle travellers, and we are not quite the 'Brits abroad'. We are somewhere in-between. We had walked around the majority of the city before we decided it was time for coffee and cake and found a lovely little theatre cafe, which served great cakes and coffee, the only problem was that we had sat in the smoking part of the cafe, which was a bit of a pain.

After our second cafe stop we went out in search of geocaches and postcards for my gran. Once these tasks were out of the way we were full on culture vultures and went to the Stuttgart fine art and contemporary art gallery, which was huge and had some very interesting art. fine art has never really excited me, but it was a nice way to spend an hour or so. We then headed to the bar were we had arranged to meet a fellow competitor and his mates.

We'll just have a couple of jars as I hate travelling with a hangover.

Well.

That plan didn't last long. Even though it was early November we all stood outside the bar and drank beer, drank wine, ate pizza and with one of the Irish crew pulling out a guitar we formed the 'Smoking elbows'. We sang and drank for hours any passer bys were impromptu-ally serenaded, and frequently joined in the revelry. We partied until the bar closed around midnight and we slowly wondered back to catch the last train back to our hotel.

Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Saturday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

It was a thick head and dry mouth that welcomed me to Saturday morning. But a shower and toothbrush soon sorted me out. I started my beard and moustache grooming with curlers and a hair drier to give it the basic shape, neatened and stiffened it up with a little hair 'clay' and moustache wax, before getting my costume on and then heading to Aldi for breakfast and supplies for the day.

If was over whelming at the Filldehalle with bearded chaps wondering around all over the place speaking dozens of different languages, I had no idea what queue to join or where to stand. I found the wonderful gentlemen of the The British Beard Club, who helped point me in the right direction. It took about 40 minutes of queues and forms and being prejudged. "Yes, you have a beard, please continue". It took a while but I was officially entered, registered and qualified to compete. No sooner was I done with the admin side of the day, and the parade started. We where organised by our country and paraded around main hall to the cheers and applause of the spectators and press.

The competition then started. It was running late, but it didn't matter. The first competitions were for those with moustaches. It was great to such an array of different moustache styles, sizes and colours. Everyone was cheering and supporting the more elegant and distinguished of the hairy brotherhood. It was a slow moving procession but great fun to be a part of. Having German beer also helped make things run a little quicker for the spectators. Some of the people i got chatting to were just brilliant fun. not only did they grow their moustache, but they took on the moustaches entire character. I met this wonderful Finnish chap who was robbed of a top three position in the Dali moustache category. He wasn't shy of the camera.

After moustache categories came the partial beard categories, including fu-man-chu, goatee and partial freestyle. The big guns were starting to come out. I also managed to meet one of my bearded heroes, Mr Willi Chevalier who has an incredible white triple loop moustache and beard. Makes my scruffy attempt look rather amateurish. He was a nice chap who didn't speak much, but was happy to a few photos. Once the partial beards had been judged they moved on to the full beards. This was the real deal, with giant beards and some extravagant costumes. It was late in the afternoon now and the beers were slowly taking their toll, it was getting closer to my category so I was drinking more beers and making more trips to the toilets to work in more and more wax.

When it finally came to my category it was touching on 10 pm, the audience were nicely rowdy, with the Swiss supports going crazy with giant cow bells and the loudest cheering. But they were closely followed in the loudest cheering by the Hungarians who shouted loudly and flashed their sabres (not a euphemism) in encouragement to their favourites and countrymen. It was pretty nerve racking standing amongst the greatest beards in the world, but it was also great fun. When I was invited forward to present my beard to the judges and audience I took the opportunity to jump down form the stage and shake each and every hand of the judges as they had had the longest day of everyone here. I small hat trick for the audience and I took my place back in line and cheered and clapped on my fellow competitors.

The scores were read out, and I was not in last place and definitely outside the top three, so I was very happy we watched the closing ceremony with the winners posing on stage for photos and being handed their trophies. It was close to midnight when we started rolling out the conference centre, and someone had left a trophy on the table so I posed for a quick photo. It was too late in the suburbs to find an open bar to celebrate in, so we headed back to the hotel to wash the wax out of the beard and get some well earned shut eye.

This has been an incredible day and i met some incredible people many thanks to all the teams and organisers involved

http://www.worldmoustachechampion.com/neueSeiten/bart/WM%202013%20LE/welcome.html
http://www.wbma.info/
http://thebritishbeardclub.org/

Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Friday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Me and my 2 pals flew over to Stuttgart on the Friday early evening arriving in Stuttgart around 8 pm local time. The passport control staff at airports are usually stern faced and give nothing away. But they have been faced with dozens of hairy travellers who, like me have probably grown their beards since having their passport photos taken. Once through customs it was only a couple of stops on the S-Bahn to our hotel, were we dropped off our kit and headed towards the welcoming party at the venue of tomorrows competition.

We had only walked 10mins before we came across a small bar with the football on, so we wondered in, sat down, and waited to be waited on. The bar maid quickly took our order and it was only a minute before we had our hands on a great pint (500 ml) of cold crisp German Pils. Prost! Stuttgart's football team wasn't doing to well and the bar went deadly quite during the game, so we finished our beer and slipped out nice and quite and paid our tab. It wasn't long before we were at the venue with a new beer in our hand sitting around watching fellow beardy types potter about and talk about curlers, straighteners, waxes, gels and hairsprays. IT was fun but we were starving, and the evening was starting to come to an end here.

We headed off in search of food and found a small Greek bar / restaurant which told us they had stopped serving food but could do a salad for us. This was perfect, we had a salad and a few bowls of French fries washed down with Irish beer and then another German Pils. Once we had our fill we headed back to the hotel to crash out, it had been a long day.