My return to Europe!!

So it is about that time again, time to start my blog. You may want to know what has been going on this summer with me. While I can tell you I worked approximately 40+ hours a week and when I wasn’t working I was coaching volleyball at Team BC tryouts or trying to enjoy my little free time I had.

So here’s where I’m at right now. I have headed to Slovenia again to go on tryouts with my agency because I was unable to get a job just from my video. It is unfortunate that I have to do this but it is the best way to get exposure and get coaches to watch me play. We have just had our first session and there were 12 or so coaches there and more are supposed to show up tomorrow. I hope I was able to put my best foot forward and impress a few of the coaches. I will hopefully know in the next couple of days if I will be headed somewhere!! As many of you may know my preference is to be in a German speaking country but at this point in time it will be where ever the job is. With the way the economy is right now you can’t afford to be picky. As much as that sucks; I am just happy to be here and eager to get a job for the upcoming season.

The session today was as expected. We hit a lot of ball and passed a few balls. The coaches here are looking for 2 things. They want you to pass and be able to hit the ball high and hard. Those were my two main focuses and if I am able to do those things well I should be able to get a job within the next few days. As I know more, you will know more!

Being back in Europe is amazing and I am questioning why I ever left. It was so great to get off the airport in Frankfurt and know where to go and actually understand a bit of what they were saying. I was so pumped to be back, even if I had just flown 10 hours across the ocean. Note to everyone looking to fly in the future, Condor airlines, great airline just the least amount of leg room ever. The was literally no space for me to stretch-out but I made it work and even managed to get approximately 4 hours of sleep! The second plane to Vienna was much better and I went for a little walk when I arrived. It was great to be able to go by places that I had been before. There is a certain comfort level you feel. I was able to relax before I headed to sleep for the night. In the morning I took the train to Maribor and arrived ready to play, but not before a little nap!! I will keep you updated with my progress here and hopefully have good news soon!!

League Champions

So this post is a little late but I figured better late than never!! Our season has been done in Villingen for a month now and I am just waiting to hear back for next year and what is going to happen. Hopefully I will know before I leave to come home on May 16th!

As for the season we were very lucky to finish it up at home! And even better was that we were able to get a win at home for the 1000+ fans that we had! Playing infront of a crowd so large is amazing and I got to do it all year. I don't think that there was a game this season that we had less than 800 people watching at home. On the road was a different story.....but that was everywhere in the league.

For our final game we played Wiesloch, a team who we went to 4 with in November when my uncle and my mom were here. This time we didn't have such a shaky start and we were able to win in 3. This team had one player we needed to worry about, and we were able to contain her for the whole match so it made our job much easier this time. I think the first time we played them she had 8 kills in the first 10 or so points of the game. This time our block and defense was much better.

The final scores were 25:17, 25:16, 26:24. In the third game it was a little too close for comfort as we were down throughout the whole set but there was never any doubt in my mind that we were going to win. The other nice thing about the third game was that they put in the original players from the beginning of the season meaning that I got to move back out to power. Although it wasn't my best attacking performance it was great to play defense in 6 again and pass! I definitely missed it but I was getting accustomed to right side so who knows for next year!

After the game it was time to thank the fans for all there support this season! The club made two huge sheets that read "Vielen Dank" meaning many thanks! We were fourtunate enough to get a standing ovation from the crowd for a couple minutes. It was nice to show them our appreciation for all their support this season.



After the usual press conference we recieved gifts from the club. They were photo boards with pictures from the newspaper and the season. It was such a great gift as half of the picture I hadn't even seen yet! I am super greatful for the present but not quite sure how I'm going to get it home since it rather large and is glass.

They also made us a cake with our team photo on it....by far the coolest thing that I had ever seen and it tasted pretty amazing too! Overall it was pretty sad that the season was over and we wouldn't be playing anymore this season. But it didn't mean that we didn't get to party hard for the championship.

We decided to make the most amazing tshirts ever. It was a great bonding experience for the team, even if it was the end of the season and a lot of fun too! We had everyone sign the shirts as a momento for the season. Then we got the managers and the coaching staff into it and even some of the fans too! Another bonous with winning was the ridiculous amount of alcohol that they gave us. We ended up with 2 cases of beer at our house and 14 or so bottles of perseco give or take a few! It was obnoxious and clearly we didn't drink it all that night but it did make for a very fun after party at our house. We left Saki's at 3am when it closed and then headed up to our flat with the managers and some of our friends for a party that continued until 5 am or so before daylight savings kicked in.

All in all it was a great way to finish off the season

Wins 15 and 16

So shortly after Kurz came to visit I was privileged enough to have Shelley Chalmers come up for the weekend from Bern! It couldn't have worked out any better as we were playing in Freiburg and she was able to take the train there to watch the game and then come back with me to Villingen for a quick visit!! We had a very busy weekend as we arrived back in Villingen and decided to make the most amazing tacos ever created! The only sad part was how pathetic our guacamole was. Note to everyone, don't try to make it with unriped avacodos! Then that evening I took her to the Kraftwerk party at an abandoned power plant in Rotweil. It is the craziest thing....there is over 1000 people in these 2 giant rooms with DJ's at one end and stages all throughout the dance floor! We definitely had a bit of fun since it was our first TBird reunion in Europe!! The next day we went to the spa baths for some relaxation time and recovery from the previous night. Then she unfortunately had to hop right back on the train to Bern as she had her own training on Monday morning. Although it was a short visit it was still so great to see her!! The best part is we are meeting in Venice on May 1st for some travels and I can't wait for that to come!

But onto the game. We played in Freiburg and we looking for our 15th win of the season and getting one match closer to clinching the league title! Because the game was on the road we didn't have many fans but it was okay as the few that did come with our team were loud and rowdy the whole game!!

As for the specifics of the game we didn't start the match so well as they aced us to start the game but after that it was smooth sailing for the remainder of the match. It was our best blocking match of the season as I had 3 blocks to start game 2 and Michele and Jana had a couple in Game 3. We were able to easily dispose of them in 3 with the scores being 25-19, 25-14 and 25-21. It was nice to get another win and be one step closer to winning the league and heading up for the next season!

Next week were were on the road in Offenburg. This game was supposed to be our last of the season however they had to move it up because Barack Oboma was staying at the army base in Offenburg and the whole city would be shut down. I believe there was NATO meetings in Strasbourg that week. Kinda bizarre but we were all happy to have the game earlier as it meant we were done a week earlier and we got to finish the season off at home!

Again the game was not very eventful as they were the last place team in our league and it is sometimes hard to motivate yourself for those matches. But the main motivation for everyone was that we could clinch the league this week! And that is exactly what we did!! Although we didn't play very well we were able to win the match fairly easily in 3 with the scores being 25-23, 25-18, and 25-12. I actually got a break for half of the match as the coaches decided to make a few subs towards the end of the second and third game. It was a change but everyone knows I am super competitive and would have much rather been out there than watching!



Now we have one game left at home! It is a relief that we have clinched the league and can relax and enjoy the last game of the season but it definietly needs to be a win as no one likes to finish the season on a loss!

Kurzy comes to Villingen and another victory

This weekend was critical for us as we needed to rebound after our loss to Mannheim. It was also nice to be back at home and playing in front of 1000+ fans again! But the best part of the weekend was having Steph Kurz come to visit!! Kurz was lucky enough to have the whole weekend off from games so she decided to make the trek from East Germany to the beautiful south! I was so excited that she was coming because I hadn’t seen her in person since the summer!

She arrived Saturday afternoon just in time for our game! After I gave her a quick tour of the town so she could get oriented it was time to head off to the game! We were playing Heidelberg this week, a team whom we had won against twice this year and it was essential that we got another victory this weekend.

Kurz is here!!

And get a victory is exactly what we did. It was a very well played match by us......overall we passed well and it made attacking very easy. I can’t count the number of times that our attackers had one block because we actually passed well for over ¾ of the match. We won the first set easily 25-13 with very few errors on our side. The set was over before I could blink it went so fast. The second set was much the same with the final score being 25-11. This set I finally got into it offensively as Ramona was able to distribute the ball around as we continued to pass well! It was nice to get a few kills and hit the crap out of the ball. The third game didn’t start as well as our passing broke down a little bit and we were allowing them to stay with us early. But eventually we picked it up and dug all the tips and junk they were throwing at us. We finished up the third set strongly and blew them away again 25-15. It was a very fast match lasting only 68 minutes and we were more than happy to get the victory.

But mostly I was happy to have Kurzy there! It is so weird to me that we can be in Germany and visit each other. Sometimes I still forget that I live in Germany and it is so great when I get to see someone from home. We had a very relaxing weekend catching up and planning my visit to Chemnitz in April. I gave her the token tour of the town and then we went for a walk up to McDonald’s for lunch since it was such a beautiful day out. Unfortunately she had to leave on Monday morning because she had practice and it takes about 5 hours for her to get home. I wish she could have stayed longer but I am happy that I will get see her again soon!!

Thirteen and One

So I am a little behind on my posting and we have played a few games since I wrote about the last one. I will try to keep each of these short and give you the gist of what has happened.

Unfortunately I have to start off the first of these three blogs talking about a loss. Yes, it’s true we did lose and I think it shook us up a little bit.
We traveled to Mannheim to play in the biggest game of the season for us. Had we won this game we would have had one more victory to clinch the league and get every Monday off for the rest of the season. We had a minor setback the week before the game as our starting setter tore a ligament in her thumb and would be out for the rest of the season. That meant that our 17 year old back up setter had now become our starting setter, and it would be the first match that she had ever started. You could see a bit of nerves in everyone and that we were anxious to get the game started and go for victory 14.

Game 1 started off well, a little shaky but we were able to get into a groove passing relatively well and Ramona was getting good comfortable setting to the outside but our powers weren’t able to put the ball away as often as normal. This lead for the game to be closer than it needed to be but we eventually pulled out the win 25-21 in 24 or so minutes!

Game 2 was a different story as we couldn’t pass to save our lives and we were very lucky to even be in the match early on. One rotation killed us and Mannheim was able to pull away a bit. We had some huge plays late in the game but we were never able to have the final push to overtake them. The game finished on a Mannheim ace, score was 26-24, and we seemed a little dejected, we needed to rebound for game three!

Rebound is what we did in game 3. We came out all guns firing and were digging more balls and finally putting some serving runs together. We had two early serving runs and ran away with the game. They had used both time outs by the time we had reached 12 points. The connection between Ramona and the hitters was much better largely because our passing was much better. The final score was 25-16 and I was feeling confident going into the 4th game!

That confidence was quickly shattered as we got aced on the first few points and passing never recovered after that. We made it very tough on Ramona for setting and it showed when she was called for ball handling 3 times in 8 or so plays. This game was a lost cause and we just needed to build some momentum going into the 5th set. The final score was 16-25 for Mannheim although it could have been much worse had we not made a push at the end.

Game 5 was tough. We were neck and neck until the change at 8 and then one rotation killed us again. It was setter in position one and we were actually passing well for once but we weren’t putting the balls away. Ramona was trying her best to distribute the ball but she always seemed to be setting into a double block which is never fun for a hitter. Eventually out of system I was able to get a kill and we were finally out of that rotation. But a missed serve and traded side outs lead to me on the service line with Mannheim on match point. I made a good serve but their opposite got the game winning kill off our floating middle blockers hands. It was all over 15-12 for Mannheim, our first loss of the season. It will make it a little tougher to clinch the league and we have to practice every Monday so that was sad too. So now we have to win 3 more matches in order to clinch the league or win 2 more and hope that Mannheim loses to Sinsheim in two weeks. Either way we need to win and go up!!

Karneval

Every year in South and West Germany they have a week long festival called Fasching or Fastnacht. It runs from the Thursday before the start of the Lenten season to Ash Wednesday. It is a tradition catholic festival with many nights of partying, parades and a variety of traditions throughout the town.

I was lucky to live in an area that takes Karneval very seriously. Before the week started I had talked to friends whom are living in East Germany and France and they had never heard of this holiday. What a shame for them!

They had the traditional Wednesday night bell walking through the town to start off the festivities.
A massive group of people all wearing bells steals the Karneval key from the Rathaus and parades it around the streets of the town to signify the start of Fasching!

The Thursday marks the first of many parades through the city and it is the first real night of partying!
The traditional purpose of Fasching is to scare away winter, welcoming spring and prepare for the fasting that occurs during the Lenten season. But truthfully I think the Germans use it as a free week of partying!!

Each morning throughout Karneval we were awakened in the am by either a small parade or a band marching the street or the bell walkers dancing up and down the road. It was loud and I definitely had a hard time sleeping that week but well worth being awake to be able to experience something so cool!

As for the partying we did a little of that too! We had no matches this weekend but we did have practice early Friday, Saturday and late Sunday. Jana and I started the week of by participating in ladies night, thursday, with a few of the girls from my team. We had all the ladies over for some drinking and then prepared to take to the street. Within 20 minutes we had lost them and were alone for the rest of the evening. In Villingen we don't have any clubs but every restaurant and bar was converted into a mini night club and you could barely move more than 5 feet once you got inside anywhere. So we bar hopped so that we didn't have to deal with the crowds. We also got to dress up as it is like Halloween here......Jana was the Queen of Darkness and I was the Devil! Which after I thought about it wasn't the best choice for a catholic holiday but oh well!

The street the first night!

Jana and I in our finished costumes

We took Friday night off and had a ladies night in as we had 10 am practice for 3 hours. We took in one of the parades on the street and enjoyed all the music and lively festivities around the city during the afternoon.

Saturday night was the biggest party night for us. We had the pre-party at our place again with some of the hockey players and their wives as well as the girls from our team. There was about 20 + people drinking and partying in our little flat! This night also marked a new costume for the festivities. There was everything from 80s workout girls to Spanish ladies to Lady Bugs, German Beer Girl, Punk Rockers, Clowns and Hot Bayrish men or was it a women? I can't quite remember! The street was crazy that night as every bar/restaurant was bumping and we spent most of the night losing each other, trying to stop from getting into a fight with a girl who was burning a friend of mine with her cigarette, wandering around aimlessly trying to find everyone, watching a friend try to punch his way out of the back of the bar, dance parties back at home, sphagetti throwing contests at our ceiling and 4am Doner Kehbab! All in all it was a great night and I think that everyone had fun, at least they seemed like they were!

Roomies in our finished costumes night 2!

Monday was our final night of partying and typically the busiest night of the week and the latest night of partying. We started the night off a little later than usual by creating our costumes with whatever we had in our house and then hit the street again this night meeting up with the basketball team.

Night 3: Third costume of the week

Although it wasn't the latest night for us we did have a lot of fun and finished the week off of partying off right.

Tuesday, aka Shrove Tuesday, and the final day of festivities had the longest parade of the week. This three hour parade was like Halloween....the people in the parade toss out candy, pretzels and best of all booze into the crowd!! There was a variety of floats, costumes and phrases you needed to say in order to get them to throw candy towards you. Good thing we had a German girl with us to tell us what to say or else we wouldn't have gathered our backpack full of goodies!

Some pictures from the parade!

Tuesday night finished with the returning of the key to the city and thus ending the festivities and starting the Lenten season. After the key was returned the people that were gathered started swaying and singing the town song as a huge bonfire was lit to signify the end of week and the start of the fasting season.They best shot I could get of the enormous key!

All in all a crazy week and a nice break before our last 5 matches of the season!

#13 and Weekend in Frankfurt

So I am a little behind on my postings, but I am going to attempt to catch everyone up to speed in 2 blogs!

It has been a very busy three weeks full of many ups and downs and a variety of emotions.........

We had our 13^th game of the season against Sinsheim at home. We played them in November and beat them 3-0 quit handily in Sinsheim. We started the match off really strong. Sinsheim wasn’t quite ready for the ass whooping we were going to lay on them in game 1. We came out all guns blazing, serving hard and blocking a lot of balls. We finished the first game in less than 20 minutes with the final score being 25-11.

The second game was a different story. We had a little breakdown on passing and were struggling to get the ball to the setter to get any attacks off. The game just kind of finished and we hadn’t really even realized that we’d lost. The final score was 20-25 and I was surprised that it was even that close for us because of how poorly we played. We knew that we had to play better for the next two games because there was no way we were going to go to five!

In the third and fourth games we still struggled a bit to find our passing form but we were still able to pull off the victories in both sets with the final scores being 25-15 and 25-12 in our favour. The fans and our managers were very happy after the match as we were now 13-0 and 2 games away from clinching the league!! It was also my home debut at right side and my third match playing that position. The transition has been very smooth and I am starting to feel more comfortable each match on the opposite of the court! Hopefully we could clinch the league in the next two games so we could have the rest of the Monday’s off for the rest of the season!

The next weekend we had no match so I decided to head up to Langen again to visit the basketball boys. I arrived on the Friday night quit late so it was straight to bed for me as I had a busy day of sightseeing in Frankfurt before Basti was going to pick me up in the afternoon.

I started the day off at 9:30 am with a 2 km walk to the train station in Langen, something I didn’t mind one bit as it was so sunny! I couldn’t have picked a better day to see the city. After a short train ride and some major guessing on where to get off I had arrived in the city centre. The first place I went was the main tower which gave me a 360 degree view of the city! It was so beautiful to see so far into the horizon and also exactly where I was going to go on my walking tour! This tower wasn’t the tallest in the city but it was over 225m high!

After the tower I went on a 17 site walking tour! The main sites of the trip were many of the places I went walking on during the Christmas market before I came home in December. I saw the main catholic church with the tower being 95m in height, walked across the Iron bridge to Sachsenhausen (south Frankfurt), walked around the Römerberg and saw all the buildings and houses that had been restored since WW II, went to a few churches one of which was the home of the German National Assembly and viewed the house of the famous German poet Goethe! After a leisurely lunch at a cafe that was in the old train station it was time to head back to Langen.

The Munster, and the main square

The Frankfurt Hauptbahnof from the sky

The east of Frankfurt

Basti picked me up and we went headed back to his place for a pre-game meal and then it was time to head off to their game. Langen was down by 3 points with less than 10 seconds left when one of the Langen players was fouled shooting a 3 with no time left on the clock. He hit all 3 foul shots to force the game to overtime. Unfortunately they lost by 2 points missing the last shot with a chance to win the game.

The next day we went for a leisurely stroll around Darmstadt, a town about 15 km south of Langen. We hit some of the major sights the unique circular Roman Catholic Church, the building where the chemical element Darmstadtium (atomic number 110) was found, some beautiful parks, the Hochzeitsturm called the Marriage tower or the Five-Finger-Tower in English and the most famous sit in Darmstadt the Luisenplatz which is th main square in the city. It is named for Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. Then we had some coffee and cake (Kaffee und Kuchen) before we headed back to Langen.

The Wedding tower

The Luisenplatz

The next day it was time to head back to Villingen. It was a very busy weekend of sightseeing, thankfully I had a camera since my mom mailed me hers after I broke mine the last time I went to Langen. I was kind of back to Villingen because the upcoming weekend was Fastnacht or more commonly known as Karneval!!