Swedish Ping Pong aka Pingis is Weird But

Germany Trumps that with Headis

When I was teaching in Stockholm, my students introduced me to Swedish ping pong, known locally as Pingis. It’s the ping pong equivalent of drinking brännvin (alcohol distilled from fermented potatoes or grain) while eating a Swede favorite, maybe pickled herring, and dancing around a flowered maypole at Midsommar. It’s loopy, it’s done in a group, it’s fun, plus it gives Swedes a needed excuse to break loose from a society that for 364 days each year demands personal restraint, personal space, personal modesty and social tranquility.

Anyway, here is pingis–

Now you can compare it with a German version, headis–

Not to be completely outdone, when my family and I are at Red Pine Camp on Golden Lake Ontario every summer, we play outdoor ping pong–

@ profbruce @ quantum_entity

postscript: Bloomberg Businessweek reports–

Ping pong is going upscale.

Long a mainstay of garages, basements and dives, the game is springing up at high-end bars, restaurants and hotels around the world.

…

Ping pong is one of the world’s most popular sports, played by some 300 million people, according to the International Table Tennis Federation in Lausanne, Switzerland. A record 330 million TV viewers watched the world championship in China that ended May 3, up a third from the previous year, the ITTF said.

“More people are playing, more people are taking interest; there’s the trend of all these table-tennis bars,” said Matthew Pound, promotion and media manager in Singapore for the federation.

Sales at Chicago-based Killerspin, which offers tables on its website priced from $269 to $4,999, have doubled annually the past three years, said founder Robert Blackwell Jr., a former professional player.

Read more at, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-22/ping-pong-goes-from-basement-to-big-business-with-hipster-help