Cookies and OT

On Sunday Megan, Michele and I decided to make Christmas cookies to get us into the holiday spirit! Most of you who know me really well know how much I love to cook and bake so when the girls agreed to a day dedicated to cooking I was more than thrilled to do it.

The one disappointing thing about baking here in Germany is that it never quite tastes the same as it does at home. The ingredients might be the same but the quality is different. Its neither good nor bad, as they tasted delicious, it’s just different and cooking times need to be altered so that you don’t over bake the cookies and brown up the bottoms a little too much! The one ingredient that I couldn’t find in the grocery store was light corn syrup so I had to make a substitution with beet syrup....to my delight it gave the butter squares a richer flavour and I rather enjoyed them. I think everyone else did too because they were eaten pretty fast!

We embarked on making 4 types of cookies. Michele and Megan did two of them and I was in charge of two of them.

The sugar cookies, made without cookie cutters and with fine ground sugar.

Michele and Megan's finished product

It was a fun afternoon even involving multiple flour fights, many phone calls home to try and figure out how bake cookies when you run out of flour and a lot of eating of icing and dough!!

After our afternoon we got ready to head to watch Megan’s boyfriend Jon play. The Schwenningen Wild Wings were having a rough go of it recently and didn’t start this game so hot either. They went down early but fought back early in the second period. The third period didn’t start so well for them either....again they went down, fought back and then went down again on a bogus penalty shot call. The game was all but over with 3 minutes left and a score of 6-4 for the visitors when something miraculous happened. They somehow turned the game around and were fore checking hard and cycling the puck well. Then it happened they scored with the goalie pulled with about 48 seconds left in the game. The fans that had started to leave their seats frantically ran back to their seats. Not 10 seconds later and before the public address announcer had even announced the first goal they won the opening face off and scored a goal that was identical to the previous goal. The fans began running back to their seats and the building had never been so loud.

You just had a feeling that they were going to win and everyone in the building could feel it too! Sure enough it happened about 2 minutes into overtime a defense man drove down the right boards and took it straight to the net putting the puck top shelf over the goalies shoulder.......and the crowd went crazy! Two goals in 10 or so seconds and the overtime winner early in the extra period, I had never seen anything like that it was amazing! The funniest part may have been after the game. After each victory the fans are thanked by the team with a cheer, except this time the Wild Wings decided to dance for the fans to show their thanks and appreciation. It was quite the sight, 20 hockey players dancing inside the blue zone to the hamster song! It brought a smile to my face and many others!

Megan and Michele doing the scarf song after the victory!

After a busy day it was nice to go home and eat some more cookies.....not that I hadn’t a few already that afternoon!

Game 8 vs Heidelberg

On Friday I had a very special visitor stop in to see me for the day! Haleigh, who is currently playing hockey in Berlin, was on her was to Bern for the weekend stopped in Villingen for a quick visit. She was supposed to arrive at 8am on the night train but an incident in Offenburg allowed her to take a little detour to Freiburg and back before she could board the train to Villingen. By incident I mean the train was too long for the platform and she was at the end of the train so she couldn’t get off! She was standing at the door waiting for it to open when the train just started moving again! Needless to say I was happy to get another 2 hours of sleep and Haleigh got a beautiful tour of Schwarzwald through the Black Forest. Once she finally arrived we embarked on the walking tour of Villingen and I took her to all the hot spots that I knew in the town. After an afternoon with bratwurst and gluhwein at our sponsoring event in town we took the schnell bus to Schwennigen to check out the Christmas Market and the hockey store.

Mmm, Gluhwein!

We eventually returned home and Haleigh made me this very tasty meal of kartoffele pasta with egg, magi seasoning and applesauce. The perfect pre-game meal and stick to your ribs meal after the long day of walking we did around the town! The next morning she had to leave for Bern but I was so happy that she popped in for a quick visit.....even if it was less than 24 hours!

After I left Haleigh at the train station we departed for our afternoon game in Heidelberg. We arrived at the gym and I was very surprised by the surroundings.....

Our locker room!

I have never seen so much graffiti in my life. The walls of the building were covered in it, and the inside of the change rooms were also covered. Every possible wall in the vicinity of the gym had graffiti on it sometimes even the ground did. Now to the game which we won 3-0 in about 65 minutes putting our team at 8-0 and in sole possession of first place going into the final week of league before Christmas!

The game started off a little shaky for us as once again we didn’t know much about our opponent. But after the honeymoon period was over we were able to build a big lead thanks to our strong serving. We let our lead slip away a little bit and they were able to get a little too close for comfort but we were eventually able to finish them off with the final score being 25-19.

Game 2 was not our strongest game as we struggled passing and putting the ball away. Heidelberg did a pretty good job of digging our straight cross court attacks and we were struggling finding other ways to score. But again thanks in part to a couple of serving runs we were able to come back and win the second game 25-19.

You could see in game 3 that we just wanted to finish the match and head back to Villingen. We played with more purpose and were much better through the early part of the game. But again we struggled a bit to close out the match and let Heidelberg feed off of a few good plays and some real stinkers from us. They were able to get close but we eventually finished them off winning 25-22 in the third.

We were exceptionally happy to have won so fast as we were hoping to get back to Villingen to watch a bit of the Men’s basketball game. It was their biggest game of the season and turn out it was also their best game of the season too. We showed up at the start of the fourth quarter and they were up by 5 or so. They went on a tear with 3’s pushing their lead to over 15 points and the other team was never able to recover. The fans were crazy, so intense that there was almost a fight between the opposing fans and the Schwenningen faithful. There was a lot of screaming, yelling and finger pointing.....at one point the referees had to stop the game because the fans were getting so out of control.

Celebrating the basketball victory and ours!

It was a very busy two days and I was ready to head home for a good night’s sleep because we had a big day coming up on Sunday..........baking Christmas cookies!!

Family Vacation: Part II

For the second day of our trip we headed towards the tiny town of Mittenwald, but not without a stop in Munich for a couple of hours. We arrived with no idea of what we were going to do, so my mom pipped up and decided that we should go to see the Olympic site. So off we headed only with a map, from the early 90's that didn't even have the new autobahns on it!! We'd been reading this map the whole trip which was a big change from the past couple of trips that we'd been on with trusty Tom Tom with us. Thankfully there was signs leading us toward Olympic park and we made it there without getting lost! The park itself was beautiful. They tried to get all the buildings in one area with the Olympic village close by. The buildings themselves were beautiful and very different architecturally, especially for being constructed in the late 60's. With this Olympic park it is the 6th one that I have been to including some of the new facilities that have been put up in Vancouver! The Swimming Hall on the Right and Olympic Hall in the distance

The old Stadium where Bayern Munich used to play and some of the games from World Cup 2006 were played here

The Olympic Berg was built on the rubble from the building that were destroyed in World War II. It has the most beautiful views of the city and of the entire Olympic Park.

A very foggy view of Munich!

So after our tour of the Olympic Park we hopped into the car to drive south to Mittenwald but first we had to get some food. My uncle being the expert traveler that he is said we'll just pick and exit and we'll find an amazing little restaurant......sure enough we did. The food was fantastic, the setting was amazing, the beer was good and he was an award winning chef. We couldn't have stumbled on a better place! So after our tummies were full we headed off to Mittenwald to see the Chyzowski's. I was so excited to see them again, and I think Lucia was excited to see me to because she ran down the hallway and jumped on me giving me a huge hug! She is so adorable! They also have 2 sons, Benedict is 2 months old and Christopher is 6 1/2. We just hung out chatting the next morning as Ron used to live across the alley from my mom and uncle back when he was younger in Edmonton. It was nice for everyone to catch up and chat.....plus I got to walk Christopher to school in the morning, he was very pleased with that.

After our morning in Mittenwald we departed to Basel to visit a friend of my uncles. What should have taken us about 4 hours to drive took 5.5 hours because the weather was awful and it was snowing for the first half of the drive. We finally arrived in Basel and Bettina had prepared a light meal for us and there was lots of wine! The food was great and the company was fantastic.....I could tell my Uncle was very glad that we had made it there. The next day would be the last of our little trip and we decided on Freiburg as the final destination because it was close for me to take the train to practice and close for my mom and uncle to head back to Frankfurt. We got to Freiburg, walked around the Christmas Market and lunch and just like that it was time for my mom and uncle to leave to go back to Canada. I was very sad to see them go but so happy that they came!! So after 3 days of travelling, over 1000 km of driving and many failed German lessons I hoped on a train back to Villingen for practice. I couldn't have had asked for a better surprise visit from them and I had a blast travelling with them!

Family Vacation

Last week I got a great surprise when my mom and Uncle Doug decided that they were going to fly to Germany to come watch a game and see some sights! I was really excited they were coming because my mom has never been to Germany and I was excited to get away from Villingen for a few days to hang out with family.

My mom and uncle arrived on Thursday in Frankfurt and drove down to Villingen that evening. There was one problem, my uncle’s European cell phone had gone on emergency mode and they didn’t have my 11 digit phone number and he was unable to make phone calls. After some searching they were able to get in touch with me and I met them after practice at the Jager house just up the street from my place. There we mapped out our very busy weekend!

On Friday my mom and uncle got acclimatized and battled off jet lag while I had practice and coaching. We did a driving tour of both Villingen and Schwenningen and then headed home to bed as we had a very busy day ahead of us! I got home and went to try and open my door when snap went my key! I was so furious because I was tired and wanted to go to bed and no one was home to let me into the house. Luckily Jana was down the street and I went to get here. She, being the smart girl she is, went into the bar next door and asked Saki if he knew anyone who could help us get in.......and it just so happened that one of his friends who is a locksmith was there! So we headed up to our house with needle nose pliers in hand where he proceeded to pull the key out and we were able to get in!! I knew that I needed to get to bed right away as the next day was going to be a busy one!

Day 1:

My mom, uncle and I departed around 11am for our first day of our trip. We headed to Metzingen to the outlets where my uncle did very well at Hugo Boss and we picked up a few things for my brother and father. After that we drove to Bad Wimphen to check out the town and the Christmas Market! I was very excited as the markets here mean one of my favourite things in all of Germany......Gluhwein!!! Gluhwein the best warm drink ever invented, hot red wine with orange and cloves and cinnamon and a variety of other spices. The best part about it is that they serve it in mugs and you can purchase the mugs to bring home with you after. The market was filled with tons and tons of little booths having everything from desserts to hand-crafted toys, Christmas decorations, candles and many more! This Christmas market was very unique because everything in it had to be handmade and couldn’t have plastic in the final product. All the booths were so fun to look at! So after a cup of Gluhwein and a bratwurst my uncle, mom and I headed on the road back to Weisloch for my game.

As you read before we won the game in 4!! The girls all headed back on the bus and we set out to find a hotel and something to eat. The hotel was easy to find the food, not so much. We drove around for probably 30 minutes until we could find something open in the town. Finally we found a little bar/restaurant that served food and it was still open! We filled up with a good meal because we knew that we would have a big day of travel ahead of us as we were heading east to Munich and then to Garmish to visit some family friends. Overall a good first day of travel but I was excited to go to Garmish to see the Chyzowski’s and their beautiful children!

Game in Weisloch

This weekend the team traveled to Weisloch for our 7th game of the season....coincidentally it was also our 7th win of the season too! All that we were told about our opponents before we got there was that their outside hitter was their key player getting the majority of the sets and she was good because she played in the 2nd league when she was younger. After the whole team arrived we tried to figure out who she was to watch her during warm up. We eventually located her........you couldn’t miss her, she had a shoulder tattoo and was about 6’2” and overall a pretty intimidating individual. She definitely scared some of the younger girls on the team as they were scared to block her and step in to dig the ball. I was interested to see how we would start the game.....

Game 1: You could visibly see the effect that the big girl was having on our team as our block parted on the first 4 balls of the game giving her 4 kills and her team a 4-0 lead. We fought back hard to get within 2 points at 16-14 but the big girl was unstoppable and no one from our team was trying to stop her. A couple of times we even had a ½ of a block against her, making it very difficult to dig the ball from the back row. Our coaches also has this crazy theory that we should just get the ball in the court when the big girl was in the back row......meaning no service errors.....to hopefully keep her in the back row longer. Needless to say their plan wasn’t very good and we were serving up lollipops for them to pass and they were able to side out first time. We eventually lost 25-19, the first time that we had lost the first game of a match. We needed to rebound fast!

Game 2: Rebound we did! We served much better and were able to get a better block up against the big girl so we could at least play defense around it. There were still a few times that we let them get back into the game but we were able to hold them off winning 25-19. The big girl was slowly starting to get tired, which was very good for us!

Game 3: This game our setter served them off the court in the middle part of the game to secure us the victory. It was a good thing that she served so well because she is injured and was struggling with consistency of her sets making it very difficult as hitters to get a good attack away. As hitters there were a few too many errors in this set mainly because of the lack of consistency in setting. But despite that we were able to pull off another 25-19 victory.

Game 4: This game was a must win as no one wanted to play 5 sets and with the pain our setter was in I don’t think she could have made it to the 5th game. This set we actually started to get some blocks on the big girl as she was really tired and we were able to convert some defensive transition. We passed much better and our serving was again very strong! We won the set 25-22 giving us our 7th win of the season!

This was personally not my best game of the season; I struggled in the different skills of the game at different points during the game. I might have been a little nervous my coach said because my Mom and Uncle were there watching!! That definitely had an impact on it as my Mother hasn’t see me play a full match in a couple of years.....and I really wanted to play well. I played okay but not amazing, maybe next time in the spring when both my parents come!

A German Thanksgiving

Maybe one of my favourite holiday’s is Thanksgiving.....not the last Thursday of every November like they have in the US but the Canadian Version which falls on the second Monday of the month of October. This year was the first year that I was unable to celebrate Thanksgiving because I had just returned back from my Grandfather’s funeral and wasn’t fully prepared to do the whole cooking a turkey and making the side dishes. However when American Thanksgiving came around I was more than pumped to cook! All we needed was a venue and some dinner guests!! Megan and Jon stepped in to be the hosts and my roommates plus a handful of the hockey players were the guests! Therefore on Wednesday night it was decided that at Megan and Jon’s would be the multicultural thanksgiving.....even more perfect because it was our day off.

Thanksgiving is so important to me because it was always the holiday at my house that everyone enjoyed....it didn’t drag out over a couple of days so it was fast and relatively painless! Also the true definition of Thanksgiving to me is being able to celebrate all the successes of the previous year and be thankful for all of the advantages I had in the previous year. But more it was about appreciating those around me in my family, something that I am truly thankful for now that I am older and away from home. I have a pretty amazing family and I couldn’t be prouder to have them!

The preparations started at 2pm in the afternoon. Megan, Michele and I headed out to do the grocery shopping but more we were in search of a turkey!! We were able to find one there was only one problem.....it was frozen into a solid rock! After our shop we headed home to Jon’s negative attitude that we weren’t going to be able to cook a turkey from frozen.....I was out to prove him wrong! The finished product, success!

We flash defrosted it for 2 hours in the sink in cold water and then put it in the oven after I had to pry open the legs to remove the neck and the gizzards. Then it was into the oven when I crossed my fingers hoping that I wouldn’t mess it up. In the mean time we prepared all the side dishes while I continued to watch the turkey with a keen eye! At 8pm I removed the turkey to let it rest....praying that it was cooked but wasn’t over cooked. Luckily it was done to perfection and our Thanksgiving was ready to begin.

Our Spread!!

Our Thanksgiving in Germany was a little unorthodox but it included all the regular foods, turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies, the dreaded brussel sprouts plus stuffing flown in from Canada and good company so that’s what made it fun. We had 3 first timers (2 German Guys and our Czech roommate), 2 American and 5 Canadians.....it was quite the cultural experience.

The whole group minus Jana

We had to explain to Jana (our roommate) the importance of stuffing yourself until you couldn’t even move. Typically Thanksgiving is the one day of the year where you can eat so much food and not feel guilty about doing it. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around that concept and only had one plate of food compared to the two full plates that the rest of us had.

The Perfect Well Balanced Plate

As a group we were able to plough through most of the food (minus the veggies) and everyone could barely move but I hope they were all happily full and in the Turkey comma!! After the eating we left the dishes for the guys to finish and headed to the Banhof for a little dancing in an attempt to even burn off a few of the calories!

I couldn’t have been happier to cook and am happy that the cooking of my first Thanksgiving dinner alone went relatively easily.....good thing there was a few of us helping each other yet! Next year I will be sure to buy the turkey they day in advance and defrost it overnight!!