Hello Friends and Family!
By now it's pretty old news, but Happy 2011! (FYI 11 is one of my favorite numbers, and I love seeing it on clocks and calendars... 11:11 is my favorite time on the clock [12:34 is second], so you can imagine that I'm pretty excited about having the number around ALL year, and I'm especially excited for November 11th at 11:11.. can't wait!) The Dresden Christmas excitement is over (wahhwaaaah), but we're moving on towards the tunnel through which you can see signs of spring! We're not really in that tunnel just yet, but it's all about positive thinking, right?
The end of December was spent enjoying the holiday spirit with my teammates in our typical fashion: hangouts in the city with gluehwein and eierliqour! We also got tickets to a Christmas Circus, where Tesha, Nikki and I made friends with an elephant. We had a cute Secret Santa exchange before our trip to Sonthofen on the 21st, and after winning in 3 sets on the 22nd, we said goodbye for a little Christmas break....
Marco was there to pick me up (6 hour drive each way, what a trooper), and we pulled into Klagenfurt around 4AM on the 23rd. I got to have coffee with Sophie before she took off for home, and then we repeated "Pumpe Night" from Christmas Eve last year.The same traditional Austrian bar, the same crowd (Matthias & Flocki), the same amount of hilarity. I'm a fan of this Christmas Eve tradition!
On the 24th we fulfilled my xmas wish of building a snowman, but we decked it out as a pirate. In the afternoon we headed over to Marco's family's house, where his mom had prepared a meat fondue feast, complete with the special dipping sauces that make it extra super delicious. We ate until we couldn't eat anymore, and then it was time for gifts, because most Europeans open gifts on the 24th (great idea, right??). I was surprised with a package from Napa that was waiting under the tree for me, and brought me a little taste of home for the holidays :) Then we presented Marco's family with their requested gift, which was a self-written holiday-themed song. Marco and I performed a remix of "The 12 days of Christmas," while Marco's brother and his girlfriend performed "Silent Night" in sign language. Given that none of us are really musical talents, both performances were pretty funny, and I think everyone enjoyed it!
The 25th was a day of feast once again, but this time we ate the traditional Christmas meal of roast goose, along with an Austrian version of stuffing (just as delicious!). By this point I was having to loosen the button of my jeans, so we went home to watch a basketball game with some friends for my last evening in Klags...
The morning of the 26th came waay too quickly, and before I knew it I was on the train to Munich where I would catch a flight to Dresden. Sandra (our manager) picked me up just in time to make it to evening training, and all of a sudden it felt like I had never left!
We lost a heartbreaker in the semi-finals of Cup in Stuttgart on the 30th, which was definitely a bummer. Our New Years was pretty low-key, since we had practice on the 1st and a big home game against Schwerin on the 2nd, but a group of us gathered at Kiki's, where we definitely enjoyed some delicious food, champagne, and fireworks!
We went on to beat Schwerin at home, then lost at home in quick sets to our CEV Cup 2nd round opponent, the team from Krasnodar, Russia. The day wasn't totally ruined, however, because Dani, Tesha and I went out to dinner post-game with the American and Brazilian from the Russian team, and had a great time! That weekend we played a league match in Stuttgart, where we won in 4 sets, which made us all feel a little better about the fact that they eliminated us from Cup!
The following Tuesday we set out for Krasnodar, where we would play the Russian team again on the road. The trip there was fine, and we surprisingly all got into Russia OK. We played well against them on Wednesday, but lost in 4 sets, and set out early early Thursday morning on our way back to Dresden through Moscow and Berlin.
Apparently an easy trip home wasn't in our cards, because the day was fraught with errors, delays, and miscommunications! First, upon arrival at the airport at 4AM, we were told that the fog in Krasnodar was so heavy that our plane couldn't land, and our 6AM flight was delayed until 10:30 (or later). That meant that we wouldn't be able to make our connection in Moscow, so after 3 hours of sleeping on the marble floors, the airport director showed us toward a bus straight out of 1983, and already packed full of other people who were trying to catch flights. Fortunately we made our way to another bus (this on was from 1989), where we promptly stowed our baggage underneath and reserved seats for the entire team. We then sat for almost 4 hours in the 20 year old bus, constantly reminded of our whereabouts by a lingering smell of vomit and smoke, mixed with the smell of vodka coming from the back where some men with gold teeth were taking advantage of the 4 hour hangout session. When we stopped for breaks, said men would use the side of the bus as a urinal! It was unreal.
When we arrived at our destination, which was a secondary airport on the shores of the Black Sea, we were able to check in to a flight to Moscow, where we still weren't sure if we would catch a flight to Berlin. Fortunately we were able to take off, and ended up in Moscow around 6:30pm.
Once in Moscow, we had a delicious dinner at an Italian airport restaurant (sidenote: when I say it was "delicious," I'm not sure if it was really that good or if it was just the feeling of hunger being satiated AND comparison to the other food that we had been offered that day), and were able to organize a connection to Berlin. We fooled around and used the internet, but we were ready to get out of Russia and back to the big Germ ASAP...
As soon as we were called to board that connection, we all got excited: the end of our nightmare journey was near! The Aeroflot gods had other plans, however, and we sat on the ground for an hour and a half as they fixed something that they explained in Russian.
Finally, FINALLY we took off to Berlin, where our baggage came out unharmed, and our bus driver Mikey was waiting! Our new, clean, vodka-free bus had never looked so welcoming :) We made it back to Dresden around 2AM, which was the 24 hr mark from leaving the hotel in Krasnodar the morning prior. Ahhh nothing like 24 hours of travel!
Since that nightmare, we won a home game against Potsdam on Saturday, and then traveled to Vilsbiburg where we lost a close 5 set match last night. Today the weather is reflecting our moods post-loss... it's gray and beak once again! (After a December of blizzards, the last 2 weeks have been speckled with amazing spring-like weather, and we've all gotten used to it! But alas, Mother Nature has come to her senses...)
I hope you all had an awesome Christmas and an exciting New Years, and I hope that you don't have any nightmare travel stories to rival mine! (But if you do, it might make me laugh, so feel free to send me an email with the info :)
xoxox, lots of love from Dresden!
Anna
