Saturday, very early in the morning (around 8am), the group of 100 collectors was transported via coach to a secret location for a training camp for agents:

Each bus was accompagnied by an angry looking soldier dressed in black.  He told us to put on blindfolds during the bus ride so that we couldn't see where the coach was driving to.  We also were told to keep our blindfolds on when we left the bus.  It looked somewhat funny to see all these swatch collectors lining up like school children:

Finally, we were allowed to remove the blindfolds.  The building where we spent the day looked like a school, I later found out that we spent the day in Edgware, north-west London...  During the day, we had to give away our cameras and mobile phones, so I could only take some pictures afterwards.  The six groups (do you remember that my group was the pink one?) had to perform / compete at six different tasks. All points during the tasks were added, and the best team and the best single performer got a prize in the evening.  Each task lasted for about half an hour, no breaks in between.

The first task was something like an intelligence quiz (eg. "Many months have 30 or 31 days, how many months have 28 days?" Answer:  12; or "Which country has a 4th of July:  USA or UK?" Answer: both :-)  Another part of the quit was to decipher strange messages such as "7DIAW" (7 days in a week), this was not too easy.  During the quiz, a man crushed into the room, fired a number of shots, and shouted around.  Later we had to answer questions about this man... If you want to become an agent, you have to pay attention all the time!  The last part was a Tangram riddle, this was extremely difficult.

Next station was a life-size board game where we also had to solve some riddles, find clues in books etc.:

Next part of the contest was to fire a real pistol (with blanks of course!).  The soldiers explained every little detail about the pistol, how to load the cartridge, how to pull the trigger etc.  Later we had to go one by one in the room and prepare five shots on our own (under control of course).  Our performance was judged and points were given.  I had a pistol in my hands for the first time:  Pretty heavy!

Then we had to fire a real gun on a real target (with small pellets, completely safe even for beginners!).  Also those points were scored for our team.

Next station was another quiz, this time with questions about James Bond, the movies, the actors etc.  "Where does the name 'James Bond' come from?"  Some easy, some very difficult questions!

The last station was the funniest one.  We had to learn a small stunt fight.  Every little movement was explained.  No one was hurt :-)  Again, the performance of different members of each group was judged...

Then it was time for a nice barbequeue in the garden.  Everything was well prepared, the young agents were hungry, but there was enough for all of us!  The food was very good, so we enjoyed the lunch:

Then time for some photos with our instructors:

Doesn't he look somewhat like Sean?

Markus (my team leader) is always giving 110%!

A very relaxed atmosphere in the garden!

Click here for part 4:  dinner cruise!