German Soccer

The original post for this date ended up being pretty long, so I won't re-write the whole thing, instead just fill in details. The boys that I met were Ramon's friends. There names were as follows: Atilla (the hun), Mate, and Thomas. They are all god guys and very fun to play soccer and spend time with. Also, they were more than patient with my broken Deustch.

Atilla is a short, stocky, middle-eastern-looking guy and the soccer whiz of the group. He was really amazing to watch. One time he was 20 feet out in front of the goal and jumped up into the air facing away from the goal to redirect a pass with his legs and turn it into a corner shot on the goal. Amazing. He also had a good sense of humor and after a few hours of playing, as it was quite hot out and he was wearing a white shirt, he said he could win a wet T-Shirt contest.

Mate was the quiet one of the group. He kind of looks like the actor from The Pianist. He was also good at soccer, and played on Thomas's team most of the time. He is a kind person, and quietly helped me with my German the whole afternoon.

Thomas is a cool guy. I mostly talked with him after we played soccer and sat down to talk politicets and get a drink of water. He told all about how they treat German girls differently here, and a couple of new German words, like spastika, which means idiot. He also taught me how to avoid being a spastika. He rode us home on his bike and we worked on pronouncing words the whole way. Recht is hard to pronounce in German. We got some funny looks. English is spoken with the mouth, but German is spoken with the throat. Sounds like they are going to spit most of the time. Earlier Thomas explained to me that Germans are not very outgoing. He told me in German, but I think that the said that if you say hello, they just look at you and don't respond. He called this the "German hello". However if you need help, then they will almost always help you. Germans.

Original Post:
Like the preivous post, this cannot be too long because I have to go to bed. Wilhelm is waking me at 8 to go out for a breakfast of white sausage and beer, and it is almost 1 in the morning. I think that I might have time to fill them after. I have more energy now than earlier because of the jetlag, but i can still sleep. Today, I woke up at midday, ate breakfast and lunch one after the other, both german, first muesli then fried noodles. Then the boys and I walked the dog and came back to the house to get ready for basketball. We hopped on our bikes and rode down to the local public sports arena and started to play with some of Ramon's friends, whom I will introduce later. Almost immediately after we started, a man came by and took all of the hoops down. It is kind of hard to play basketball without hoops. This is good because I could not play with my shoulder injury. So, Ramon went home to get a soccer ball and came back.

There was a field directly adjacent to the court so we played soccer, with me as goalie for most of the time. I did pretty well, and scored a goal when I played in the field. We played for 3 hours, which is a long time when it is so hot and muggy, then sat down and talked politics in German. When one of us didn't understand a word we asked Ramin for help, or pantimimed it out, or feebly explained what we were trying to say. I spoe in broken German the whole time and they spoke in German unless I didn't understand something, which was more often than I would like, but not very often.

We ended up staying there for five hours until Wilhelm came to get us for dinner. We rode home to a delicious barbecue of sausage and pork steaks with a special German drink, I'm spacing the name, that is half lemonade and half beer. Quite good, even though Ramon accidentally used room-temperature beer.

As I said earlier, I must go to bed. Tommorrow is a big day. We will watch the Germany game in the same place as yesterday, and have to go three hours early just to get a spot. It will be insane. I am very excited. After that, we will go to a German bonfire party in the park with the girls that we met yesterday.