Changes have been happening.....but the winning continues!!

So, I have been back now for two weeks and few things are different. The one thing that has stayed the same is that we are still winning, 2-0 since the Christmas break and we won a tournament in Heidelberg the day I returned to Germany! It has been a crazy two weeks especially since we now have another player on our team. The Friday before our first game of the second half of the year we were introduced to our newest player Brynn from Southern California. We didn’t really need another player because we weren’t losing any games but we when one of our starting players decided that she couldn’t handle Volleyball, school, her boyfriend and family commitments the team brought Brynn in. It was sad to lose her but Brynn so far has been a great addition to our little family we have here on Färberstraße! The other change that has been made is that I am now sharing my room with Brynn so our large apartment for 2 originally has now become a smaller more crowded apartment for 4! But it’s our cozy home!

So onto volleyball......we had our first game on the 17th against Lauchringen who was currently last in our league not having won any games this season. We didn’t play our cleanest match of volleyball but we were able to pull out the victory in 3 sets and under one hour, two of our team goals. The final scores were 25-11, 25-19, 25-15.

Playing a little defense.

This victory put us at 10-0 and having even more of a stranglehold on first place in our league. There really isn’t much else to tell about this game as it was really scrappy volleyball and I was even able to get a break and not play most of the 3rd set to get other girls playing time.

My last game at Left side....

Another change is that I have moved to the right side of the court leaving Brynn and Michele playing on the left side of the court. It was a little interesting in practice last week as I haven’t played much right side since beginning of 4th year of university. It takes a while to get used to hitting the ball across your body and more responsibility blocking. Hopefully the transition will continue to be as smooth as it was for our first game against Konstanz.

On Sunday we had the privilege of getting up at 8am to leave for our game near the Swiss border in the beautiful town of Konstanz. In our last game against them we really struggled to play consistent throughout the whole match. We had many moments of when we were very good but it was the moments where we weren’t so good that lead to trouble and the match being finished in 5 when we easily could have finished it in 3!

We arrived nice and early for our game.....which was okay because it was a beautiful day! The sun was shining and it was a good 8 or so degrees warmer than our little town of Villingen. You could tell from warm up that it was going to be a good game from us. The mood was light and almost a little jocular; everyone was loose and ready to go, no nerves for our first game with our new player!

We started our match off with a bang, 2 big kills (one from me) and some strong service allowed us to jump out to an early lead big which we never release. We were digging balls, chasing some down and strong service allowed us to win the first set 25-17.

The second set was a different story....we didn’t attack nearly as well and missed 4 consecutive services in a row during the crucial middle part of the set. We did have another lead early but with our mental errors in the middle we squandered that early lead and needed some big blocks towards the end of set, a couple which came from the middle blocker and I!! With the score being tied at 24’s Konstanz took a ball that was served out and went down 25-24, and gave us the chance to win the set. On a strong service, which was surprising because of our great service during the set we took the last point and a second set victory 26-24.

The third set was much like the first. We passed well and were able to run a faster offence leading to many one on one blocks and one and half blocks. We should have been getting kills left right and center but this time Konstanz was making it a little more difficult on us by digging many of our hard driven balls. But we were still able to prevail on many of the rallies because of our good free ball plays, also known as “danke” balls here! We were able to close out the third set with the final score being 25-17 again. Another victory which now puts us at 11-0 on the season and 2 games up on Sinsheim and 3 games up on Mannheim because they lost last weekend in 5 to Weisloch. Hopefully the victories keep on coming!

Last Home Game before the Holidays

So sorry for the late late posting but I decided to take a break from blogging and figured I'd get it done when I got back to Germany on the 10th. It is now the 21st and yes I have been back in Villingen since the 13th so I figured it was about time to talk about our last home game before Christmas.....

On Saturday December 20th we had our last game before the break. We were 8-0 so far this season and were playing Mannheim who was 7-1 and right on our tails in the standings. This was a “make or break” game for our season. A win would put us comfortably in first place and a loss would put us a little bit on our heels going into the second half of the season. It was going to be an epic battle.......

Our games normally start at 7pm but by quarter past 6 there was well over 1000 people already in the gym with another 400 expected to show up. For the first time this season we had our own drummers! There were 6 of them sitting in the 3^rd row in the center of the bleachers pounding away on their steel drums from 6:30 until the game finished around 9:30. Thank god I took an Advil before the game because I don’t think I would have made it through the whole game without a pounding headache.

The fans that were there at 6:15

Just before the match started they opened the third side of the bleachers revealing a couple hundred more fans who weren't able to find seats in the main bleachers. It was amazing how many people were there! They estimated that there was around 1400 people at our game, definitely the most that I have ever played in front of!

Honestly I don't really need to talk about the first 3 games as they were pretty crappy and we found ourselves down 2-1 going into the fourth game. We lost the first game with 3 consecutive errors on match point to lose our first, first set of the year. We were able to recover in the second game but the volleyball was still filled with lots of errors by both teams.

The third game we lost, marking the first time our team had been on the brink of elimination this season. We needed to recover for the fourth game and for the first time this season I wasn't sure that we were going to win the game. I was actually nervous going into the 4th game. The scores in the first 3 games were 23-25, 25-22, and 24-26.

The 4th game was one of the longest games that I have ever played in. The final score being 35-33 in our favour! Again though I thought we weren't going to win as we made numerous hitting errors and were down early and often. We were finally able to string some points together! Once the score hit 26-26 we kept taking the lead with the serve but weren't able to close out the match. We continued to trade side outs until finally we got the victory! Everyone was in a frenzy and so pumped up for the final game!

We started the 5th game on fire with yours truly serving 5 points in a row to go into the side switch up 8-3. We continued our good play to go up 13-8 only to let them back into the game when they tied it up at 14. Finally after the biggest side out of the game and serving for the match our setter and Jana came up with a huge block on their outside hitter to finish the game and intact our perfect 9-0 record before the holiday's!

Victory number 9!!!

After a small celebration at Saki bar it was time to head home to good old Williams Lake. But first I had to take the train to Frankfurt where I went to the Christmas market with my friend Sebastian and toured his hometown of Langen.

The beautiful Christmas tree in Frankfurt. Too bad I didn't get any more photos because my camera died.

The next day it was time to depart home to Williams Lake. After a four hour delay out of Frankfurt, a missed connection and some luck to get on the last flight of the night to Vancouver from Calgary I arrived in Vancouver without my luggage. Rozey picked me up at the airport at 2am and returned me there at 6am that same morning so that I could fly up to Williams Lake. After 48 or so hours of exhausting travel I finally made it home to see my family for Christmas minus my luggage that showed up on the 28th! All in all I was very happy to be home!

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!