Euro Tour 25: Part One

In which the iron-willed Joel Strickland vanlifes around the Eurowilderness, rig in hand

By Joel Strickland

Across much of western Europe, it is the small details that separate adjacent skydiving experiences. Climbing into and jumping out of a Caravan or a Porter doesn’t change a lot between places, and the sky is the sky everywhere. Planning a boogie tour well means planning a route that limits the seemingly endless lengths of road between dropzones, making the space to spend less time commuting and more time enjoying. With a plan like that, it’s the shifting and oozing of cultures that resonates as you hop between locations, far enough apart for different experiences, but not too far.

Dropzone Denmark
The rules for paying beer fines vary between operations as much as between countries. Here, one must ring the big bell, causing a stampede from every single person on the dropzone. Beers (or excellent local chocolate milk) are distributed and recorded until there are no more empty hands, which on party night for their 10th anniversary can become a spendy affair. The Danes will then all sing an adorable song – probably to do with windmills or something – and you must clink bottles with every last one of them.

They have a sauna at Dropzone Denmark now, a collective club expense to celebrate a decade of operation, inexplicably delivered by lorry late on Friday evening. This was already well into party time, and served to efficiently separate those who get involved in operational tasks from those definitely-not-getting-involved. Then add seven brand-new students to proceedings, who all look excited and confused in equal measure as they file directly out of the ground school and into the bar.

 

Skydive Aros
Spending time in the north means adjusting to the different sauna cultures of our Scandinavian friends. For the British, being bare ass naked in or near to the sauna takes a minute, but not as long as you might think. This is normally limited to the hot room itself, or the immediate surroundings where one showers or plunges and whatnot. In Sweden, the normalised proximity of being gloriously clothing-free extends to the campground, the barbecue area, the bonfire, and sometimes the kitchen.

For the beer process here, your task is to carry a full case to a convenient open area and place it on the ground. Prepared as such, you then yell “case” or “beers” or anything similar and prepare for the rush of Swedes who will grab a beer, hug you thoroughly and bound off back to whatever they were doing. The trick is to choose
your moment carefully and minimise the number of naked dropzone weirdos involved.

Skydive Hildesheim
Skydiving is a niche sport that much of the outside world doesn’t understand very well. Whenever there is some kind of circumstantial shift (like Brexit, or the Covid-19 pandemic), it can take time for the handful of companies that offer realistic insurance options to catch up. For a few years, I’ve been using a single adventure package for both medical and liability concerns, suitable for life-flight repatriation if required, plus any third-party catastrophe across all relevant countries and appropriate sports. As of the moment, there is no single option I can find that offers the requisite 3 million for Germany (bumped up by total turbine aircraft costs), leaving the only option to buy into their €55 local national sign-up on top of already two personal policies (one for liability and one for medical).

While generally not a fan of gender-based exclusivity, skydiving is such a dude-fest that I think female-only skydiving events should be a thing. This is partly from occupying a position inside the industry as it presents an opportunity for some great media, and I get to go anyway. Turns out that all you have to do is up the female percentage to 100 and I will wear face glitter and temporary tattoos at the party, thus wilfully abandoning all of my British reserve.

Skydive Teuge
Every single person you care to ask pronounces Teuge differently. I have given up trying to get it right and am convinced the Dutch do this as some kind of pompous cryptic jest over their mastery of many languages. As a good Briton should, I have left behind feeling sheepish about negligible additional language skills in a world of English. One does try here and there, but skydiving culture is anchored to internationalism more than most. It is maybe one conversation in a hundred that contains any real barrier to communication when you can build on the framework, phraseology and vernacular of a niche sport.

Now and then, we lose an event to the weather, reduced to huddling in the event tents through howling wind or driving rain or both. Only the brave then enter the tents, as they have become a den of coaches and staff hiding from the overcrowded indoor spaces – a troll cave of fancy people being intimidating with their insouciance. This is not the reality, but it could be without care and professionalism.

Teuge will host the freefall elements of the World Cup later this year, and while they expressed a bit of nervousness when asked, I am sure
it will go well. Self-awareness is step one to getting a big event right. We are happy to be returning there later to support them with another go.

YUU Skydive
YUU Skydive is in the north of Germany, and with Hamburg just down the road, it attracts the city folk. This means the crowd are somewhat younger and the vehicles in the camping area are a little bit fancier than some more rural spots. This used to be an occupied airfield, but following the rebuilding of Germany, when everyone eventually went home, skydivers moved into the old fire station, which provides a solid base of operations for a dropzone with a good kitchen and spacious bunk rooms.

Ballageddon leans hip, as much as the nerdfest that is skydiving ever does. Ceaseless techno oozes from a sound system dance tent mobile truck assembly, dished out by some hairy scenesters. Luckily, this is the least offended I have been by dropzone music in living memory. Hats off, hipsters. I draw the line at a tiny dance party in the bit next to the sauna though, as there is already enough to deal with without learning another set of rules.

Skydive Flying Devil
Bex is one of two Flying Devil locations (with Ecuvillens) squirrelled away in the French part of the High Alps. The kind of place with a 360-degree view of snowy mountains that the posh kids at school went on holiday to. Back in 2020, we promised to attend their 25th anniversary celebrations, but like much else for pretty much everyone, this didn’t pan out. Supporting events requires notice, but not nearly as much front-end work as the boogie itself. Now, 30 years have rolled around, and we pushed out the extra miles to be there this time.

Switzerland is proportionately expensive compared to how good the view is. It is getting on for twice as much to jump here as the more affordable skydiving locations Europe can offer. Don’t let that put you off, though, as if you visit somewhere as pretty as this and only jump half as much, you will leave satisfied. Plus, if they like you, they might let you fly the mountain, or they might feed you a giant bubbling cauldron of cheese after jumping into a field a couple of thousand feet up the valley. These kinds of experiences in skydiving are sought after and treasured, but dropzones are faced with the eternal balance of factors to keep something accessible and special, or risk it getting mobbed and possibly compromised.

Next is a British hiatus. Last year, we planned a bunch of events at home in the early part of the season, but the terrible weather ruined almost everything. This time we are in jolly old Britain for a chunk of real proper Summer. This means we can support the UK folks in a way we largely missed out on in 2024, before returning to Europe for round two.

See you out there somewhere.