Super Bowl 43

So the main reason we drove to Langen last weekend was to watch the Super Bowl and hang out with some of the guys from TV Langen basketball team whom we had met in November. It was a spur of the moment trip as we decided on the Thursday night that we were going to head up there after our game in Umkirch. Luckily we were able to get the car from the club after our game so we loaded it up with ridiculously amounts of clothing and bedding and headed up on the 2.5 hour drive.

After a very fun Saturday night we were ready to go on Sunday for the big game. Everyone woke up around 2pm and started drinking again. Keep in mind that the game didn’t start in Germany until midnight.....it was going to be a long day!! I decided instead of drinking to go for a running tour of Langen. It is a fairly small town of around 30 000 so what are the chances that I wouldn’t be able to figure out where I was going. While unfortunately they were pretty high!! I was able to successfully navigate over half of the town but when I got to the Banhof I got very lost. Luckily I kept running and came across a street that was actually one we were supposed to drive down the previous day but because we had gotten lost we took a different way into the city. I was very grateful to find this street as I was about 30 minutes into my run and was unsure of how much longer I was going to be able to run for and it was starting to rain heavily. So after 40 minutes I found my way back to the guy’s house on dieburger strasse! I was a happy girl to get back inside!!

It was then time to prepare the food for the game!! We provided a vegetable platter which I did all the chopping and assembly for and I helped prepare the devilled eggs Jeremy was making. But by far the best part of the food was the amazing chili that Jeremy made! He had to do some major improvisations in his recipe because of different food products that were available here in Germany and the size of his pot was rather small so it was hilarious to watch him stuff all the ingredients into the pot and praying each time that it wouldn’t overflow all over the stove!

Look for the pot on the right it was the perfect combination of spice, vegetables and pork fat!

Eventually the guests for the party began to trickle in and we started the night off with a few games of beer pong and flip cup. Again we dominated in flip cup beating the boys every time we played. Not bad for 4 girls!

Getting the beer's ready for flip cup

Michele and Brynn getting their game faces on for beer pong

Beer pong however was another story....we did end up getting a few victories but it took us a lot longer than was necessary but nevertheless we still won the majority of the games! As for the Super Bowl itself most people didn’t make it until 4am when the game finished. For the few who did it was a treat to watch as the last 5 minutes or so were the best 5 minutes of the game!

My favourite part of the entire weekend was the ride home. Michele had been doing most of the driving but was getting tired and needed a break so she enlisted my help with the driving duties. As I have written previously I just learned to drive manual about 3 months ago and have only practiced twice since the New Year. So this was going to be an adventure, especially since we were on the auto bahn and there is no speed limit! I managed to start and get going without stalling but we missed our exit and had to take a detour to get back on the right track. We seem to be pretty good at not making our exits but it always works out for the best. Once we were back on the auto bahn it was smooth sailing into Villingen! I was so excited that we made it home safe and sound while driving at a leisurely 160km/h. Maybe I’ll get to drive a bit more on our next trip!

Victory 12 in Umkirch

On Saturday night we drove through the black forest to play against a team who we beat 3-1 last time we played them, Umkirch. Probably the best part of the night was the drive to get to the game. Although Umkirch is only 80 or so kilometers from Villingen we had to drive through the heart of the Black Forest on smaller highways to get there. I was amazed at how much snow there was compared to where we are and compared to when we got to Umkirch. Throughout the mountains there was beautiful little town all having a gasthaus (local hotel), restaurant, tiny church and local store. There were so adorable and I can’t believe how many tiny towns there was on our drive. There was also many stops for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, something I would love to do while I am here!

Once we finally arrived in Umkirch it was time to prepare for the game. We arrived 2 hours early like normal and had some time to socialize with the girls whom we hadn’t seen in practice this week because of injuries, sickness or school. Now onto the match which would be another victory for our team in 3 sets. This time we didn’t allow them to get back into the game in the 3^rd set like we did in our first meeting.

Game one took us a little time to get comfortable. We struggled a bit in passing but we were still able to get side out conversions quite easily from our outside attackers. We eventually closed out the first game with a couple small serving runs winning the set 25-22.

The second game was a whole different story as we dominated this set from start to finish. We had an early serving run from one of our middle blockers Lisa. This gave us a comfortable lead that we just coasted on for the rest of our game. In this game our middle attack was very good as our two outside hitters weren’t able to convert on as many attacks easily like game 1. The final point ended on a setter dump by our 16 year old back up setter Ramona with the score being 25-13 in our favour.

The third game I finally got involved in the action offensively getting a few more opportunities to put the ball away. In the first 2 games I was mostly digging balls, blocking and serving well. It was also nice to get a chance to contribute offensively. We won the third game easily 25-17 to secure our 12^th victory of the season in just over an hour!

The four of us were very happy that the match ended so promptly as we were headed to Sebastian’s birthday near Frankfurt, but more importantly Super Bowl Weekend!! I have never seen 4 girls get ready so fast in my entire life. I’m talking shower, hair and makeup all in just over an hour. It was a good thing we were so prompt because we had a 2.5 hour drive to Langen before we could go out.

We arrived in Langen around 12:30 am about 15 minutes after I thought we would get there because of a little detour. What I’m trying to say is I got us lost by missing the exit but luckily I had been there a few times before and knew that there wasn’t just one way to get into the city! One we arrived at the guy’s basketball house we changed to head to the club in Darmstadt, a city about 15 kilometers away. Next time we take a cab I will remember to get the exact address of where we are going.

Michele and I in the cab

All we knew is that the party was at the Nacht Cafe, a place our cabby thought he knew......while he didn’t and we ended up taking a driving tour of Darmstadt costing us and extra 15 euro until he finally found the place and asked 5 or so random people on the side of the road if they knew where it was too!

Once we finally made it there Happy Birthday’s were exchanged with Sebastian on his 24^th birthday and we hit the dance floor like we normally do!!

Sebastian, Brandon and Kai

Janna, Brynn and Brandon dancing up a storm!

By far my favourite part of the night was when I first broke my camera and then lost it at the end of the night when I was getting everyone’s coats. All in all not one of my favourite nights so I was hoping the Super Bowl party would be better the next day!!

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!!