"A memorable trade: my Dortmund Safari experience"

#PokemonGO: Last night I came home from an incredible weekend at the Dortmund Safari zone. The event gave me the chance to meet up with a lot of Silph Road people. One meeting made a particularly deep impression on me and I would like to share it.On both days I participated in The Silph Road scavenger hunt. On Sunday around noon I was at one of the locations, but unfortunately I always had mobile internet connection issues at that particular spot so my Silph Scope wasn't working. Luckily, there were some other Silph Road folks nearby. We wanted to handshake, but my connection was so bad that I couldn't even get the website to load (let alone generate a handshake code). The others had perfectly fine internet connection and one of the guys was so kind to let me on his wifi hotspot. Afterwards he asked if he could get a pokemon from Belgium. I said yes, starting the negotiations for my first serious Pokémon Go trade.His approach to trading was very interesting to me. He wanted a pokémon he would keep, e.g. a Mudkip as it's his favorite pokémon. Furthermore, he really wanted to give me a pokémon I would keep. That was a very tough question: what would be worth enough for me to keep forever, regardless of IVs and no matter what I would catch in the future? I never thought of that question before. New pokédex entries, shinies and legendaries were basically out because of the large stardust cost at low friendship levels, so what else was there?Only one true answer came to mind: Shadow Claw Gengar. I already had two, but it's my favorite Pokémon (already since the original Pokémon Blue game) and I love using them for special raids (like Focus Blast Alakazam and Mewtwo). I had always wanted to have more than two and I would keep any Shadow Claw Gengar, regardless of IVs or level. They are glassy, but they have the highest neutral DPS in the game. I almost didn't dare asking for it since they are special, legacy and in demand, but I did anyway. To my big surprise, he had one he wanted to trade. But obviously a Shadow Claw Gengar is a trade of a different level than a Mudkip trade. So next, we looked if I had something that was acceptable to him in return. First he asked if I had a Dragon Breath Dragonite. I do, but I would have really regretted parting with it. However, it turned out he was a legacy moveset collector, so next we searched if I had a pokémon with legacy moves he didn't have yet. I discovered that I had a double legacy Ice Shard - Dragon Pulse Lapras. I didn't know it was legacy and I honestly don't care about it, as I was never going to use it in battle. I only kept it because I have the habit of keeping different movesets in case they ever get usefull, otherwise I would have transferred it already. But to him the Ice Shard - Dragon Pulse Lapras was just as special as the Shadow Claw Gengar was to me.We agreed on the trade, but we didn't just trade pokémon. Afterwards I kept talking with him and his friend, sharing a lot of our Pokémon Go experiences. For all three of us, the Pokémon Go game helped us overcome very hard personal problems and obstacles: social anxiety, shyness, depression, ... The game transformed our lives, with positive consequences far outside of the game. It helped us make important changes in our life and it has become our lifestyle. The stories were moving, uplifting, empowering and interesting. This was far more than a normal trade, and it shaped my view on trades.Later that day, I did several other trades. With each trade, I had to learn what the other person liked to have. Each person has their own view of trading and people trade for many reasons. One person wanted a pokémon representing me in return for a pokémon representing them, as a memento. Other people wanted trade kilometers for their trading distance badge. Still others wanted to trade for candy, or for legacy moves, or for personal favorites. Some people keep a lot of extra pokémon they could offer up for trade, others are very selective in which pokémon they keep so they didn't have much to offer. While searching for a common ground to trade, we also exchanged our ideas of how we view and play the game. The Dortmund Safari event brought us all together and the trading allowed us to connect on a much deeper level than what was possible before.While the gameplay was far from perfect during the event, the event itself felt perfect to me because I got so much more out of it than I could ever have dreamt of experiencing. It's very moving to find so much common ground with basically strangers who got brought together through the game and through the Silph Road handshake system. I would like to thank everyone I met this weekend for contributing to this incredible event experience. Niantic created the game and the event that brought us together, but we create our own event experience by meeting up and interacting with each other. And that's what I will remember and bring home with me. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2lR8YAR