Katy in Cologne

A couple weeks ago I had a game in Dusseldorf. Katy was able to go and grabbed a ride from somebody here in Giessen. On their way to the game they stopped in Cologne which is only a little ways a way from Dusseldorf. Cologne is home to a huge, beautiful cathedral known as the "Cologne Cathedral" and Katy was able to tour it. She said it was beautiful and really enjoyed getting to see it. The Cathedral was started in 1248 and didnt get finished until 1880, more than 600 years. Katy said the detail on the Cathedral was amazing, bth inside and out. During WWII the cathedral took 70 hits from bombs but did not get destroyed. There were many places that needed fixing but the overall structure remained.

Games up to this point

Well, we havent been off to the best start so far...0-6. We have the guys to do well, its just that we seem to wait until the second half to really start playing. We will go down by 10-15 points right away and then try to fight back. In the second half we usually fight back to within a couple points or tie it up, but it the end it gets us as we went down by too many right away and it is just too big of a deficit to fight back from. If we can put 4 solid quarters together I think we will do quite well. You see it when we play well we are a good team, now we just have to bring that for the whole game. Our next game is this weekend vs. Ludwigsburg so hopefully we will be able to get back on track and get a mark in the win column. Check back next week to see how we did.

Driving in Germany

Another thing that is different about driving here in Germnay is thaty when you are driving down the road all of a sudden you will see a four-wheeler going past you. After you do a double take of it driving down the road in the middle of town you see that it has a liscense plate so it must be registered. I havent seen a lot of four wheelers here but there have been a couple. Too bad they didnt let you drive a 4-wheeler on the roads back home, it would be perfect. You drive your 4-wheeler to where you are going to hunt and then just drive it out into the woods. Perfect.

Internet down

Our internet has been down recently so I havent been able to make any posts...so I will try to fill you in on what has been happening.

Driving in Germany

Driving in Germnay is similar to driving back in the U.S. There are some differences though. Here in Giessen when you are waiting at a red light instead of just getting a green light when it is time to go, the light goes from red to, yellow and red at the same time, then to green. When I first got here I asked what this meant and was told it is sort of like "on your marks, set, go." (I guess since a lot of people drive sticks here they do it for that reason so people can shift into gear and then go on green).

Another thing that is different: back home when you pull up to a set of lights you have lights on both sides of the intersection (on the same side as your car at the intersection and then on the other side, where people coming at you would be stopped. So you have two sets of lights, or if there is only one it is usually across the intersection so it is easy to see). Here it is a little different. Most interesctions, almost all, have the lights on the same side as your car. There is a white line where you are supposed to pull up to and stop when waiting for lights. Just like back home you are supposed to wait behind this line. Well back home it doesnt really matter if you cross the line and I think almost everyone does. Here if you go past that line it is very hard to see the lights directly above you or on the side of you. Even if you stop at the line, many times you are looking out the top of your windshield to see the lights.

Also here there are a lot of bike paths and a lot of people that ride bikes.

One thing they have here that they dont have back home is the autobahn. The autobahn isnt just one road, every big highway is an autoban and even some of the back roads dont carry a speed limit. So far both Katy and I have been on the autobahn a number of times. The fastest I have been in a car was 220 km (just under 140 mph) and I think Katy has been almost to 200 kph (125mph), but it was in a nice car and when you have a nice car it doesnt seem like it is really fast (it is quite smooth). When you are driving though you have to check your review mirror quite often, even though you think you maybe going fast, as people still come out of nowehere. When we went to Oktoberfest we were going about 160 kph (so about 100mph) and people were flying by us like we were standing still. If someone is coming behind you they flash their highbeams and that means move over, and you should move over soon as they might be coming very fast. Even though people can drive really fast there arent as many accidents as you would think.

In our apartment building we also have a garage in the basement of it. You pull your car in-need your key to open the door-and then pull into a spot. Each spot is actually 2 as where you park is on a hydraulic lift. The lift can be raised or lowered depending on if there are already people parked in it. The first time I parked in the garage I had no trouble getting in, but when I left to drive out I could not find a button or a spot to put my key into to open the garage door. As I had to get to practice and could not figure out how to open the door, I had to walk around and open the in-door with my key and drive out quickly that door. Needless to say we have since figured it out, but I was a little worried that first time that I might have to call coach and tell him I was stuck in my garage. What a call that would have been. :)

It is a little bit different than back home but a lot is the same. There are difference but some of the differences make the experinece that much better.

1st weekend

This past weekend we had our first games of the regular season. One on Friday night and then another game on Sunday afternoon.
On Friday night we played Hagen. Right away we dug ourselves into a hole. I think at one point we were down by 18. Throughtout the game though we chipped back and in the 4th quarter got the score back to within 1 or 2 points. In the end though it was just too big of a deficit to overcome and they ended up beating us. It was our first game and our first home game so it was dissapointing to lose in front of all the fans (as the stadium was pretty packed), but hopefully our next home game will be a different story.
Then on Sunday we drove to Frankfurt and played against the Deutsche Bank Skyliners. This game we played well for 3 quarters but at the beginning of the 4th we sort of fell apart. We let them get up by about 10 and just couldnt get back into it, and ended up losing.
It was a dissapointing first weekend, but I think we learned some things from it that will heopefully help us out with our following games.
This coming week we are pretty busy with games. We play Friday, Sunday, Tuesday and then Friday again. It will be a busy strecth but its what you look forward to as a player (playing games) and I am excited for the next week.
Check back to see how we do.

First Weekend

This weekend we start our season. We play our first game tomorrow night (Friday) at home against the Pheonix Hagen and then play again on Sunday against the German Bank Skyliners in Frankfurt.

Check back after the weekend to see how we did.

Decorating Success

Based on your help and your opinion we have decided to go with Picture Zwei, as it won our poll. Thank you for your help in decorating our apartment!

Rest of Oktoberfest

If you want to see all of the pictures from Oktoberfest click on this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/kajowerner/Oktoberfest?authkey=Gv1sRgCMuarYintoyZTQ#