The best Invasion yet
A commentary on Eurolanche’s twelfth trip to the US.Since I’ve taken part in 11 of 12 trips to Colorado, I can objectively rate each of them. Three years ago, the Eurolanche Invasion IX captured the metaphorical first place among all Invasions. It was quite a paradox. Although we’ve suffered through seven losses out of seven visited games during the Avalanche’s worst season to date, the trip brought together a group of great people, who enjoyed a great program and an awesome road trip across California, which overshadowed all the negatives.
The following two Invasions weren’t bad by any means. Both included interesting trips away from Colorado and a solid portion of Avs games. And even a winning record! But both still lacked something, maybe a thing or two, which would help them dethrone the ninth Invasion. Invasion XII finally did it.
We had an interesting group of people – some of them have already been to Denver, some visited the Mile High City for the first time. The schedule was loaded, we had something planned almost 90 percent of our time and were glad that we had the remaining ten to catch our breath. We almost followed it from A to Z and only missed our cross-country skiing trip to Aspen because we unexpectedly made it to the Avs’ outdoor practice. Everything else went smooth as butter. We had a lot of fun, had some bizarre experiences and capped everything off with the Vengaboys’ Shalala.
A big factor of the success of the most recent Invasion was the fact that despite the trip being Eurolanche’s twelfth overall, it brought a lot of things none of the previous trips had. The entire trip from Los Angeles to Denver was an entirely new experience for Eurolanche. We also spent more time in LA and Mexico compared to past Invasions and also visited some new lookout spots in the Grand Canyon. We also made our debut in Grand Junction.
We attended eight games for the second Invasion in row and once again finished the trip with the same winning record as the year before – 5-2-1. We also managed to meet Joe Sakic, something we didn’t manage to do last year, which further underlined the success of this year’s Invasion.
The return back to reality will be difficult, just like after every single Invasion in the past. Two and a half weeks on the move from morning until noon certainly leaves its mark on a person… Although I was looking forward to coming home, I’m already missing Colorado. We’ll see whether we’ll go back next year, or if we’ll take a break and return to Denver two years from now. In any case, I’m glad that Invasion XII unfolded the way it did, that it had an awesome program and group of fans, which will certainly meet again at another Eurolanche event. One of the participants will do an overall review of the trip in the near future. Stay tuned!
Translation by Michal Hezely
Basic information about the Eurolanche Invasion project, as well as information about the previous eleven trips are available at Invasion.Eurolanche.com. If you’re considering taking part in a future Invasion and have any questions, please send them to us via eurolanche@eurolanche.com. Registration will be made available at a later date and every Fan Club member, who provided his email address in the signup form, will be notified via the provided email address.
David Puchovsky, Slovakia, eurolanche@eurolanche.com
04/03/2020 - 07:30
