Lieber später als gar nicht.

Kristen, Rachel and I
 (note: 32 hours of no sleep = extreme bags under eyes)

I forget how much flying sucks. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time that I have ever arrived somewhere on time and with no problems. There is always some kind of problem. As of last Tuesday, well it was supposed to be Monday; I flew back to Minnesota as some of you know. My flight to London was quite the disaster to begin with when I took a short snooze before takeoff, only to realize that when I woke up we still hadn’t moved because our flight was delayed an hour. Awesome. Kristen and Rachel were meeting me in Chicago for my four hour layover, so that cut a big chunk of time out. Then on the flight, I was surrounded by all these long haired men that I think drank about 10 mini bottles of wine. One that was two seats away got drunk and was snoring like a moose and the guy behind me had his foot on my armrest. As you know I hate feet. I almost vomited. And the girl next to me had horrible breath. She told me she was running late, must mean she skipped the toothbrush. Never good. The flight seemed like an eternity though and I couldn’t sleep for the life of me. I literally just watched the time tick. I wrote ten pages in my journal, practiced my German and played every game on my IPod. I had a window seat, which is good for leaning your head against, but the problem was I couldn’t sleep. Instead I had to pee and the window seat is not conducive to that when the people next to you are sleeping. Regardless finally we arrive an hour late, but then I had to go through customs. Which to my luck I went in the visitors line instead of the US citizens line. I contemplated showing my German passport, but I figured that it might take longer.

After I got through customs, I got to see Kristen and Rachel! It was awesome getting to see them, but since there weren’t any restaurants outside the security checkpoints, we decided to just sit outside and eat German chocolate. After a couple hours, I decided I should probably get going and go through security. I said my goodbyes and made my way to my gate. Only to find out that my flight was delayed until midnight instead of 10:30 pm. So annoying, which meant I wouldn’t get in until like 1:30am. I had my American cell phone on, so I called my ride and made them aware of the bad news. Then I went and found some food since the whole day I had been eating the chocolate that I had brought for gifts because that is all I had and at the airports I didn’t have any of the correct currencies. What I found was a 5 dollar bag of spicy Chex mix or something or other, which was a generic brand and clearly you should never get generic brand because it was horrible. Instead I ate more chocolate. So then comes the worst part of the night. I was talking on the phone at the top of the stairs of my gate. My flight was now pushed back to 12:30 because the airplane wasn’t going to arrive on time. I figured we were boarding at 12:30 for some reason and I was chatting away, checking the gate randomly, and watching for people to come up the stairs off the plane since I could see it from where I was. At 12:31am, I go downstairs and there is nobody there. They had boarded so I ask one man what’s going on and he says the gate had closed early. It was the last one of the night and he told me the first flight out was at 7:30am, but it was full so I could be standby. He said I could get on the 9am one. At this point I have been awake for 32 hours and it took every bit of strength to not start crying and screaming at this man. After a lost battle of begging him to open the gate since the plane was still there, I decided to go find some internet to pass time. This was great until my computer, phone, and iPod all died. I decided to try to sleep a bit, which was hopeless because I was freezing and all I had to cover up was a thin scarf. I am not use to the air conditioning and so my nose started running, etc. All in all it was a nightmare. The second good thing that happened besides seeing Kristen, Kath, and Rachel, was that there was one spot left on the 7am flight and so after being awake for 38 hours, I finally made it home. Memo to self, never leave your gate.

Spielen, Essen, Schlafen....

I am too lazy to write in paragraph form therefore I am going to use the alphabet.

A.      My life has been busy; last week was training camp for my soccer team. We went away for five days to a facility especially for training camps, which was an hour east of Berlin. We had three a days and on Monday we had a game against a Polish team. They were fast. At camp, I think for the first time I got to show a glimpse of my personality to the girls and started to come out of my shell a little more on and off the field. Pretty much our lives consisted of spielen, essen, und schlafen, which is playing, eating and sleeping. The facility was neat though, the German National handball team was there and so was the national volleyball and canoe team. Who knew there are National canoe teams? I really enjoy the women on my team though and it was great being able to spend time together outside of practice. We played the German version of Cranium and let’s just say that one girl shouted, “We should go first because we have the auslander (foreigner).” I counted myself as a half a person. I only did the ones that were drawing and let’s be real, I wasn’t good at that either. First of all, I asked if I was supposed to shut my eyes and they thought I was crazy, because in Cranium you do, so it seemed like a valid question. For one of my turns I was supposed to draw a word that meant fog in front of car headlights. I don’t even know how I would draw that in English even though you aren’t using words. How do you draw fog? I went with the bonfire smoke idea. Clearly didn’t work. We did win though. I mean I would guess, but my guesses were like Level 1 German words like to eat. And clearly that’s not in a game for adults. It was fun though.  The food was so good there, we had a buffet every meal and literally even though we were training three times a day I think we ate enough to break even in calories. They fed us well to say the least. We got to play beach volleyball for the first half hour of one practice, which was fun. It is so funny how going into things I never really know what to expect. Like packing for camp, I knew I just needed all my Hertha gear and then other sports clothes, but not nice clothes. Thank goodness. I show up to leave though and everyone is matching but me. Awesome. So I put on our matching travel jacket at least to make it look like a sad attempt to match. What I didn’t realize was that I needed no other clothes and literally we woke up every morning and put on our polos (Yes, you read correctly. Polos.) and warm up suits to go to breakfast. Then we changed in and out of our practice gear throughout the day only to always end my day in my lovely blue polo. I have two actually and when packing, I decided to only bring one because I was like it’s not like we will wear these during the week. Well, I should have known that is all we would wear. Training camp was overall really good though and I definitely enjoyed the time with the team and getting to know the girls.

B.      The next question of this blog is do foxes attack? So I was at camp and I was talking to my mom through Skype and I was walking by myself on the long path to where we slept  and I saw a fox. I just first stopped at stared at it hoping that it would think I was a tree. It definitely didn’t, it just started creeping towards me and I totally thought that they were scared of people, but then I thought that maybe I was mixing it up with another animal like a deer. So I decided I needed to run just in case, not to mention I have my big soccer bag. Wearing my polo. It still kind of kept running towards me so I ran to a bench and jumped on it. Thinking that I guess it couldn’t get me there even though they for sure can jump. It just stared for a while and then became disinterested. I know not much for a climax, you probably thought it was gonna bite me or something. Well it didn’t. I am glad no Germans saw me standing on a bench in my polo scared of a fox.

C.      Today, we had a game against Jena. They are in the first league. We lost 2-1. I couldn’t play because I am hurt. I am back in the good ole’ boot until Thursday. Regardless, that’s not the moral of the story. I was sitting on the bench during the game and it is interesting we play teams at neutral sites, but yet we have all these random fans there. It is like we have more fans there than I ever did at a college soccer game including all our parents. All of sudden like ten minutes before half time all these cowboys and women with huge, poufy skirts show up. They are dressed like they are from the time when that was popular, which I don’t even know. They were carrying in speakers and I was like oh yikes, maybe these people have a show going on here today or something. Nope, I was wrong. Tends to be the case these days. They were our halftime show. Sure enough, they set up their speakers and at half time (Lucky me, I got to stay and watch.) they fancied their way onto the field and turned on their hoedown  country music and started line/square/two stepping dancing or whatever you want to call it. I leaned over to my teammate and asked, “Is this normal?” but don’t worry she was just as surprised. I was hoping they could at least play some good country music, I mean country is nonexistent over here or so I thought. Just another day living in Germany. Love it.

D.      Exactly a week from tomorrow I will be on an airplane back to the US for my best friend’s wedding. I am really excited, but nervous at the same time. I think I might have culture shock and it will be interesting from going to being alone a lot and traveling alone to always being around people that I know and driving a car. I am so excited to see my family though and very excited for the wedding and all the festivities. A little nervous for the public speaking, as many of you know it is not exactly my favorite thing to do or one of my talents. But it will all work out in the end. So if you could pray for safe travels that would be great.  Chipotle here I come!!