Hello to all and to all, hello. Sorry it has been so long, I think almost a full month. That is inexcusable and therefore I will make no excuses. A lot has happened in the past month and over the next few pages I will try and highlight those experiences in an exciting and entertaining display of words.
Handball has been going well for ESV Weil over the last month. We lost in our showdown with the number one team in the league by 2 goals. We could have easily won the game; we just squandered too many opportunities. However, it was somewhat of a breakout game for yours truly, who was able to notch 8 goals during the game which is/was a season and career high. The best part of the game was realizing we (Weil) could play with them and therefore play with anybody in the league. Riding that wave of confidence, we have run off three straight wins, two coming against the 2nd and 4th ranked teams in our league. Standings as of today have Weil tied for 3rd place, the highest they have been in the league standings for the last few years.
Last time we were together, Jen was recovering from a shoulder injury that had scared us a little. She was forced to miss a game but we were relieved to find out it was purely a muscle strain and not something more severe. Jen has since not seen the playing time she deserves. She continues to be the best defender on her team and perhaps in the league and her offense continues to improve. It is frustrating to her because she knows she can play and one of the girls playing in front of her doesn’t come to practice and doesn’t produce like she does. Grenzach started a three-weekend break yesterday and the hope is she will see more PT when the season resumes on the 27th of February.
It is now another week after I started writing this. Sorry, we had a really busy/crazy weekend. It is now Tuesday afternoon in Grenzach-Wyhlen and the sun seems to be shining for the first time in a long time. Jen’s team has a scrimmage against a first league Swiss team tonight and I am excited to be able to watch her play. We are both pretty healthy overall. Jen’s shoulder is fine, she should be ready to go this evening.
Warning: If you have a queasy stomach, skip the next 3 paragraphs.
We spent all day Friday and most of the day Saturday working for Jen’s coach in Saarbrucken. They are opening a new store, so we stocked the shelves and got everything set up. I worked with him as well all day Thursday (330 AM, didn’t stop until Friday night) and endured one of the longest days in my life for multiple reasons. We started at 330 Thursday morning and drove through a snowstorm for 4 hours to Wiesbaden, where we loaded a 30-foot Lorry full of goods and drove 3 hours to Saarbrucken and unloaded it. This took about 10 hours in total and was just the beginning of a long, nasty day. After we finished in Saarbrucken, we loaded back into the Lorry and headed North to a small town called Dulmen. We spent over 6 hours in the Lorry, the top speed being 89 kilometers per hour (around 55 mph) and arrived in Dulmen around 1000 after getting lost twice with a GPS system. Jen’s coach, a friend of his and I than loaded the Lorry again with goods for the TV Grenzach store soon to be opened in Grenzach. It took us another hour to load and we headed back to Grenzach (minimum 8 hour drive) around 1130. Than, the worst thing I may have witnessed in my life happened. We were 10 minutes into our drive when I noticed a man standing on the side of the road, on a bridge. I was the only one that saw him at first and when he started walking into the road, I could not believe my eyes, I blinked, thinking I was making it up. When he paused at the white line and than kept moving, my first thought was that he was looking for something and I yelled “Achtung” (attention in German) so the driver would look and see him. By the time I yelled, the driver had no chance, he slammed on the brakes and swerved left but even if this would have been enough, the man was on a mission; a mission of suicide. He literally walked faster when we served and when we were so close I could see his face, he dove in front of the truck. Our Lorry was not huge or fast, but that much weight moving at that speed left the man no chance. We ran over him twice, front wheels and back. He was a bigger man, big enough to completely break the Lorry, the radiator and other parts literally dropped out of the truck.
I sat in a daze for what felt like minutes but was only seconds. Our truck had come to a stop in the right hand lane, our driver had tried to get over into the breakdown lane but the Lorry would move no farther. Jen’s coach went to check on the man and try to get all the vehicles stopped behind us so nobody would run over the man again and so nobody would rear end us. One driver in a VW Golf couldn’t stop in time and also ran over the man. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to console a driver who had no chance at doing anything. This was very tough considering he was a grown man crying and we don’t speak the same language. Worst 30 minutes of my life. We spend the next 4! hours on that highway, standing in the cold (15 degrees tops) talking to cops and fireman and trying not to start at the body under the white sheet that was left on the road for the better part of 3 hours.
It didn’t get any better once they let us leave the scene. A tow truck took us to the nearest train station, which wasn’t open. We spent another 45 minutes in the cold waiting for the next train. 4 hours and 3 trains later we were back in Wiesbaden with no car, no way to get anywhere and a man who felt personally responsible for the death of a man. We sent the driver on a train home where he would meet with friends and they would try to help console him. Jen’s coach and I rented a car and drove to Saarbrucken to work the entire day on now sleep. Nasty, nasty experience and it really put things in perspective for me here. Jen’s coach said something to me that night that I think is pretty true and makes the guy under the sheet a big coward. He told me “Two people died tonight on the autobahn, not just one and that’s a shame.” I agree, the man not only succeeded in ending his own life but he took the life of another man, our driver, in his hands.
Back in the real world, we are still struggling financially. To fix this problem, I almost moved to a town near Frankfurt two weeks ago. There is a team there that has another potential USA player on the team. His name is Hans Self and he is a half-American, half-German friendly guy who has been playing handball since he was six. I went up to visit him about a month ago and had a blast. His father is from California and is ex-Army, which means I was able to shop at the PX in Wiesbaden. I went crazy and bought things from Vanilla Wafers to Bush’s Baked Beans. I spent the week speaking English with Hans and his family and eating Hans’ Grandmothers’ absolutely amazing authentic German meals. I also practiced with the team Hans’ plays with, SG Bruchkobel, and they showed interest in acquiring me for the rest of the year and next year.
Since we still have no jobs and no income in Grenzach, we contemplated moving me up there. I would have lived in Hans’ parents house for the rest of the year. I could definitely find a job at the PX, meanwhile looking also in Frankfurt, which is Germany’s financial hub and has the most English speaking jobs, companies and people in all of Germany. When Jen’s team found out about our plans, they immediately started working to get me a job and a source of income and we have since reached an agreement with them that if everything works out, we should be fine for the next few months. We are still waiting on a few promises to come to fruition. If they don’t there will be trouble again in Grenzach-Wyhlen, but for now things are looking up.
We received some bad news 2 weeks ago. All the time and effort we put into applying for the grant from the USOC was for naught. Neither Jen nor I were selected to receive any funds. We really hope they found other athletes who have a more severe need than us and are helping them out. But it was a big bummer for us, we were expecting to be nominated but it would have solved a lot of problems. Money usually does.
On a happy note, Jen finally had a weekend off when I had a game and got the chance to see me play. I was sat the whole first half for being late because I was working with Jen’s coach all day and had to catch a train to my game but I played okay in the second half. Got shut out in the goal scoring column but we won handily and are now in third place in our league. The best part was Jen was able to join us in our traditional after the game visit to the Sit In, a local dive the players have been frequenting for years. The highlight of the night was Jen handling Das Boot (Der Stiefel is what it is called in German) like a pro and we remembered the camera so we have pictures to prove it exists. I got my butt kicked again in the hammer the nail into the wood block with the wrong side of the hammer again but overall it was a very enjoyable time out with my teammates.
We have been getting up every morning at 530 to go clean a building around the corner from us. This is the job they found for Jen and includes 15 measly hours a week and 20 toilets to be cleaned daily. Hooray! We both think it is total Bulls*** but we are willing to do anything to follow this dream and right now it provides us with the only income we have. It is just frustrating because Jen worked so hard for her degree and even has working experience and she is relegated to a cleaning woman. Regardless, it feeds us and allows us to stay in Germany and play handball.
Last Saturday night and Sunday we finally took some time to enjoy ourselves. Our roommate and her boyfriend were celebrating their birthday parties together at his parents house near Strasbourg, France by having a raclette (see a blog from the fall to learn more about Raclette’s, they are awesome)/dance party. We had a ton to eat, too much to drink and now have the embarrassing dance photos to prove it, but it was a nice release for Jen and I. We spent Sunday touring Southeastern France, visited our first Castle (small and not impressive, it’s no wonder the French are always getting it handed to them) and toured the city of Strasbourg with the highlight being the Notre Dame Cathedral of Strasbourg. A huge, wonderfully constructed church in the center of the city.
Last night I witnessed what Halloween would be like in the hands of Mark McGwire. I saw costumes and masks that would have given me nightmares every night when I was 8. The celebration is called Fastnacht and it’s purpose is to scare away the winter and usher in spring. It all started with a parade through town with floats, bands and other random parade participants. The most amazing part of the parade was that everybody involved was dressed up. From Star Wars looking characters to forest creatures to old-school German looking people, everybody was fully, from head to toe, completely decked out. I have never seen anything like it. I have seen Halloween in college, in small towns and in big towns and I have never seen so many masks in such detail or a band full of Wachi’s (this creature looks comparable to the big hairy guy from Star Wars which I can’t remember the name of for the life of me, only on his 21st cycle of roids) belting out Creep by Green Day. The creatures and townsfolk than all piled into a gym and sang and drank and danced until the early hours of the morning. We had to work, first selling Gluhwein (heated red wine) during the parade and than manning the admission table at the gym, so Jen and I were not able to participate fully but I was able to survey and look on all the festivities. Unbelievable experience and truly enjoyable.
Jen is currently cooking Banana Bread, so good, and I must shower before we head to her game tonight. That’s right, it’s 600 PM here and I haven’t showered yet, that’s one perk to not having a job. I promise to write again soon, not in another month. Go USA in Vancouver, we haven’t watched anything (it’s hard with no TV) but we read about the athletes every day. Go KU, they are having their best season in perhaps history and I haven’t seen a game. We were able to watch the Super Bowl but we both fell asleep before the 4th quarter (3 AM here) and they don’t televise the commercials. It is very boring when both teams can’t score touchdowns and there are no commercials. Trust me. Regardless, I’m outta here, Jen is yelling at me and I don’t feel like making her late. Hope all is well stateside! Peace out, cub scouts.
No comments:
Post a Comment