More on driving

I thought I would give you a little more insight to what it is like for driving/going on a trip here.

When you go to the gas station to fill up you have choices like back in the states (back home whether you want regular, super or super plus - i think the octane ratings are 87, 89, and 91 or something like that). Here they are a little bit different as the have different levels here. Here the octane levels are 95, 98 and some gas stations even have octane ratings in the 100's. Not sure if the number means the same here in Germany as it does back home, but if it does I think the 100 octane stuff would be like jet fuel.

Another thing that is different. Here when you are on a trip (on the autobahn) and need to pull off at a gas station/food place to go to the bathroom, you have to pay .50 euro to get into the bathroom. Then when you come out they give you a little voucher for .50 euro, so if you get something to eat you can use that (these places are called serways). They are nice places but it stinks when all you have is a 5 or 10 euro bill and you need .50 euro.

This is also the same at many other places. When we were at Oktoberfest there is a table outside the bathroom and a dish with a note that says to leave .30 or .50 euro. I think it is for the people that clean the bathroom as pretty much every place you go to asks you for this and has someone waiting outside the bathroom next to the dish/table it sits on. When we visited one of the Cathedrals they had a guy waiting by the bathrooms and when we went to the Frankfurt Weinachtmarkt (Christmas Markt). I know small bars and restaurants dont have them so maybe it is just at bigger events.

Speeding. Here in Germany they have speed cameras, but not set up on lights or at intersections like they did in Melbourne. Here it is a portable speed camera. When the police want to target an area they set this speed camera up. What it does is: when you go past it and you are speeding, these lights flash at you and it takes a picture of you. It not only records your speed and take a picture of your liscence, but actually takes a picture of you in the car so there is no way you could possibly try and get out it. So here if you say "I got flashed today" it doesnt mean you were at Mardi Gras or something like that, it means you will have a ticket coming in the mail. I have to say we have been lucky enough up to this point not to have gotten flashed. Hopefully it will stay that way until the end of the year.

Allstar Weekend

This weekend was the allstar weekend and because of it none of the teams in the league had games as someone from every team is in the allstar game. Even though we didnt have a game this weekend this past week of practice was full-on. We practice 2 or 3 times a day and had one Saturday morning. We have a game coming up this coming weekend and hopefully the practice we had this past week coupled with the practice we have this coming week will pay off into a win.
Katy's team was back in aciton this week though. After a three week break for the holidays she was excited to get going again. This week they played a team that was tied for first with them - Kronberg. The game was in Kronberg which is about 45 minutes away, I guess Kronberg is the city that has the most millionares (percentage of the people that live there) from any other place in Germany (one of the girls on the team told us that).
The game was a fun game to watch. After the first quarter the game was basically tied around 15 or 17. Then in the second the other team got stuck on 19 points for about 6 minutes, they just couldnt get a basket. As you can imagine Katys team took full advantage of that and pulled ahead by about 20. The third quarter Kronberg fought back, one time going on an 11-0 run, but Katy's team picked it up and they dominated the forth. The game was over with quite a bit of time left in the forth, but with a couple mintues to go, after some of their girls had fouled out (and one got tossed after getting 2 technicals from talking back/yelling at the ref) they were left to finish the game with 4 people. It was kind of funny to see.
In the end Katy had a good game. She ended up shooting 25 free throws and made 16. She pulled down 18 boards, had 7 steals, and had 35 points. What an awesome game!!! Because they some times play on the same day that we do I dont always get to see her play. I have to say it was great to see such a good game and one they won 80-54.
They now sit tied for first with one other team. I think they play them in the next couple weeks so hopefully they will be able to win until then and get that one too.

Game in Berlin

Yesterday we played in Berlin. We left on Saturday monring and drove there as it was a 6 hour drive by bus. It was a pretty long trip but we had DVDs on the bus so it made the time go by faster. Berlin is one of the teams on the top of the standings so we knew it was going to be a tough game, but we were ready. We played pretty well for the first 3.5 quarters. We didnt score a ton of points, but we played pretty good defence. The last half a quarter they went on a big run and ended up beating us by quite a few.

One of the guys on the team said that Berlin has the most modern stadium in the world right now as it was completed last year. It was a very nice place to play .
Now we have 15 games left. We dont have a game this coming weekend so hopefully we will be able to get a little rest and recover our bodies.

While I was in Berlin this past weekend I was able to see the Parliment buildings, some of the remaining parts of the Berlin Wall, the Holocaust Memorial, the main gate (that is still standing) that separated East Germany from the rest, the Berlin Cathedral, the big tower there and other things that are in Berlin all from the window of the bus. If we had more tiem it would be fun to go and explore them with Katy, but it was still neat to see them from the bus

Castle tour and Cathedral

Since we had a game on Friday, coach gave us Saturday and Sunday off. I think it is the first time since we have arrived in August that we have gotten two days off in a row. It was nice to have a little chance to spend some time with Katy. We decided that we would go for a little drive and see some of the country side.

So we took a drive to Mainz, which is just outside of Frankfurt and went to the Cathedral there. After that we drove along the Rhine river and saw many castles. I think we saw something like 20 castles. I was reading about them on the interent and it said that the castles were built close enough where if something was happening, like an invasion, they would be able to signal the others and let them know what was happening. I was very cool to drive and see so many castle so close together. Some were just ruins but others looked like they were fully intact. We even saw an outdoor, open-air chapel, that is named the Werner chapel. If we would have been on the other side of the river where the chapel was we would have stopped. But since we werent we still enjoyed it from a distance. After taking in all the castles along the Rhine we drove away from the river, past a little town called Munstermaifeld, out into the country and to one of the coolest castles I have seen-Burg (Castle) Eltz. Katy even said that this was her dream home. We were able to walk right up to the gate and a down to the side of it. According to its website, "The heyday or height of the castle building stretched from the 11th to the 13th century" - so this castle is old. And it is still kept up very nicely. From April to Novemeber they offer tours and maybe if we make it back during those times we will check it out. The Castle was beautiful and we are very glad we got to see it.

From there we drove up to Cologne to see the big Cathedral. It was awesome. We got to see it at night when it was light up with lights. It was very cold but we walked around the whole building and saw how intricate all the statutes and carvings were. We stayed in Cologne on Saturday night and the place we stayed was only a block away. It was great. In the morning we got up and went and saw it again. We climbed up to the top through the huge spiral staircase and passed by the bell room (even the door was closed) while the bells were being rung - It was loud!

After our climb and our legs being tired we went inside and went to mass. Even though we couldnt understand a word, the service was still a nice service in such a great place. If you get the chance this would defintiley be a place I would reccomend seeing. When Katy went the first time I though her picture were cool, but the pictures do not do it justice.

All in all it was a great weekend and we loved that we got to spend time some good time with each other.

Last two games.

Last week we had two home games. One against MBC and then we played Frankfurt, a TV game. Both had poor endings. The MBC game was just a tough game for us. We started slow again and then when we turned it on it was too late. They ended up beating us by 11, 84 to 73. Then on Friday night we played a pretty good Frankfurt team we are sitting 3rd in the league at the moment. We came out and started the game better than we usually do and the game was close pretty much the whole way. At the end of the game they hit 2 free-throws with 13 seconds left. So we called timeout and got the ball at half court. One of our players drove to the lane and kicked the ball out to another guard. He drove to the hoop and looked like he got fouled on the shot, but they didnt call it. We had two chances at a tip but they just didnt go in. We ended up losing by one-point. It was a hard-fought game and hopefully we will be able to learn some things from it and come out and play a full game with intensity in Berlin next weekend.

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!!!

This year Katy and I went over to one of the guys on the team. There we hung out for a while and ate some good German food/snacks that his girlfriend had prepared. We also played a game where you put a name on a piece of paper and then put it on someones forehead. Since they cant see the name on the paper, they have to guess who it is. The person can only ask ask yes or no questions. If they get a question wrong it goes to the next person. If they get their question right they can keep asking questions (as long as they get them correct) until they either guess their person or get a question wrong.

Here in Giessen they dont have a big fireworks display that you would see back home on the 4th of July or like many other bigger cities here in Germnay have for new years. Instead everyone does their own fireworks. Here anyone over 18 can buy the fireworks that shoot up into the sky and explode. I think if you want to do that back home you have to get a permit or its illegal or something like that. Here, every grocery store or pretty much every gas station you go into has the fireworks that shoot up into the air and explode.

Well, at midnight, even though it was pretty cold there were tons and tons of people outside and they were all lighting off fireworks. As you looked up and down the street, and over the apartment buildings on each side of the street you could see fireworks exploding. After a little while the smell of fireworks was all around and there was a haze that was everywhere. When you looked down each way the street went you could tell it was there way off in the distance. And we were engulfed by it where we were as well.

With everyone lighting off fireworks, it wasnt just the adults, it was kids as well. I can see why they dont allow those types of fireworks back home. Fireworks were hitting apartment buildings, they were hitting cars, people were shooting them down the middle of the street (even though there were cars parked on each side) we even had one come close to us. A kid wasnt really paying attentiong to what he was doing (at least I hope thats what happened and it wasnt intentional) and shot one our way. It hit a 4 foot high brick wall in front of us, but we were a little worried for a second.

Aside from that it was neat to see all the fireworks going off. It seemed like you could always hear a firework exploding, even if it was in the distance. And for that 30min-1hour stretch around new years everywhere you looked you could see fireworks.

Last two weeks of games

Well....the past two weeks have been tough for us as a team. Last week we went to Bonn and played. We started off pretty poorly in the first half and then really picked it up in the second half. Because we played so poorly in the first half though we had such a big deficit to overcome it just ended up being too much, and we lost by 7.

This Saturday, yesterday, we went to Hagen and played. Its kind of funny, one of the places we played at in Australia was called the Icehouse, and the nickname they have for this gym is the Icebox. It was a little cold in the gym but nothing too bad. This game we started out the same way as it seems we have a tendency of doing. We got down right away and then had to fight our way back into it. We went on a little run in the first half and got it back close. At half time we feel off a little bit and were down by around 10. Then in the second we kept fighting and with 15 seconds to go we were tied. They ran a play and their point guard hit a 3 pointer with just under 3 seconds to go. We drew up a play and got a decent look but it bounced out. Frustrating. When we play well we do well, now its just a matter of minimizing the periods where we struggle.

Since Katy's team is on break they have not played over the Holidays. They start up in another week so check back to see how she does.