Yesterday evening we got the command that we have to leave the competition hall at 6 pm. Everything will be searched and nothing that we would need tomorrow was allowed to be taken to the hotel this day. The rease was a so called “highly important person”. That was a major problem for every team. Especially the laptops were needed to keep working at the hotels. We decided to leave the robots and three laptops there and take the rest of the laptops with us.

To be safe, we asked Neda, one of the translators, who we met at the beginning if it was adequate to buy other cloth for our female team members. This question got positive response. Our cloth was ok she said but for such a VIP it would be better to wear traditional iran clothing. As soon as the hall closed at 7:30 pm we drove to the center of the city (we live at the suburbs) and bought new headscarfs as well as a Manteau each. This is a form of coat but looks rather like a blouse going down to the knees. Neda, our female translator is very helpfull. She is fast end effective in helping us to organize vegetarian food or cloth. From our point of view the women here are much more pragmatic and can enforce themselves better than the men. About Teheran we will talk another time when we visit it. The evening was quiet despite the try of Timon to fix the broken shower, which was a metalic hose without the rubber. Duck tape didn’t do the trick so we need to find a better solution. It is kind of a tradition to fix at least one broken thing at the hotel where the Hamburg Bit-Bots are staying.

This morning we arrived at the hall in time and were allowed to take our laptops back in after they passed a control at the metal detector! The VIP was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president and still the third person in the country next to the fact that he is the richest.

After he circled with his cortege through the hall the IranOpen where started with big green-white-red smoke and firework. All with the lovley sound of the fire alarm.
It seems that there is a big fan base for robots here, the hall is full and the mood reminds us of carneval. We were already filmed and iterviewed several times.

Our first game was today against the Bassets. Until last year they played at the teen-size-league but due to rule changing they are now allowed to participate in both leagues. Even with our robots facing the enemy fearlessly we lost the game with 0:2. But we are plesant with this result. Our robots were fully functional and didn’t made any mistakes.

The one hard action was when Tamara tried to hold a ball that was kicked by one of the enemy players which were three times higher than the darwins resulting in a falling robot by the impact of the ball.

In comparision with the other teams we need definitly not to hide and our next game will be tomorrow at 9 am against the Bolt Hearts.