Easter in Germany is pretty much celebrated the same as in America, except that here they call it Ostern and both Friday and Monday are national holidays. They have Easter egg hunts, lots of candy, and normally a big party on Saturday night. I only participated in the candy eating part because we had a game on Monday. Our game was in Jena so we drove about 7 hours on Sunday to get to the hotel around 8 p.m. Our hotel was a Best Western and even had a partially American style breakfast complete with bacon, sausage, eggs, and hash browns, which are hard to come by at a typical German breakfast. We didn't stay for long, though, because our game was at 11 a.m. In our pregame talk I learned that I would be man-marking not only Jena's top scorer, but one of the top scorer's in the league. Right from the beginning our team came out strong. We fought for every ball and completed many long pass sequences. We scored right before the half ended, and carried that momentum into the second half. Jena didn't have many chances offensively, and after we scored the second goal, any hope they had of winning seemed to deflate out of them. We celebrated our win by passing around a bottle of Jager on the bus and drinking German beer. I can tell you that the ride back to Cloppenburg was much more enjoyable than the ride there.
Now our next challenge, and quite possibly one of our most important games is against Potsdam. They are currently in first place, and with good reason. Our first encounter with them did not turn out so well and we lost 5-0. But now we will be playing them on our home field and this time we know we have a lot more to lose if we don't win. This week will be all about preparing for Sunday and hopefully our hard work will pay off and we will get the results we need.
 |
| Easter Market in Vienna |
 |
| There were dozens of crates filled with intricately decorated Easter eggs. |
 |
| Another Easter Market in Vienna near the Schonbrunn Palace. |
No comments:
Post a Comment