so much ultimate

Ok, just because I seem to play frisbee every weekend, does not mean that this will become a strictly Frisbee blog, but I do have to blog about what i have done over the past two weekends, right?

So, last weekend I played Ultimate Frisbee in Leipzig with mother tongue, yay! The weekend actually started on Wednesday when the trains decided to strike on Thursday and Friday, and I found out later that only 15% of the trains in the east were running those two days, great. So I jumped on a train Wednesday night to Berlin and spent the next few days hanging out, running errands and relaxing in the city, of course it was great. Due to my previous post, I made tacos for dinner on Thursday for Russ and a work friend of his. And they were delicious, we even had guacamole! The two of us headed out to Leipzig around 7pm on Friday.

We got to the city, and through some confusion, went out to dinner to a great place called Volkshaus, or the Folk house. The food was wonderful, and Ben, another Fulbrighter met us there. We talked and ate until the place closed down around 2am, and then thought it would be a good idea to go to the bar across the street. We finally got to the sleeping hall around 4am and then continued to stay awake while drinking Glühwein and throwing a frisbee around. Because of the small amount of sleep and other elements, the next day was not the most pleasant day. The team was fun, per norm, but we did not do very well, which is not the norm. We actually ended up losing all our games during the weekend, but some of the best teams in Germany were also at the tournament, and we really are only a pick-up team. I have become used to losing, and have found that no matter how Mother Tongue does, the fun part of the tournament is the hanging out with one another.

The most interesting thing that happened was after a few of us left the party. There were four of us, and on our way to dinner, Katy (who was with me, yay!), Ben (the other Fulbrighter) and I found a bar called The Old Rebel, literally. It was a bar that was full of confederate flags and cowboy things. So on the way back to the sleeping gym, four of us wanted to see if it was still open. It was, so then we decided to go in. The boys got beer and we sat and looked around for about 20 minutes, and during that time we all were kinda freaked out with all the stuff that was on the walls, and even somewhat of the people who were working there.

The week passed, and I will write more about that later, but if I want to write about Frisbee stuff all together. So this weekend was Winterflug in Berlin. It was a tournament full of really good teams. I had heard about this tournament in September, and was invited to play on a team that didn't make it on the list. Then another team picked me up, who was first on the waiting list, and also didn't get onto the actual list. This was two weeks ago I officially found out. Thankfully, my lovely friend, April, pointed out the women's team from Mainz, she said they were a fun team to play with, competitive but still spirited. I found the contact info for the women's team and sent an add for myself, asking if they needed any pick-up players. It was about two days later I heard back from a different woman who would be the captain for the weekend, and said they were in need of 1 or 2 players, and I was very welcome to come play!

My journey started on Friday and I didn't really have plans when I got in. Luckily, my friend, Julia, took refuge on me, and I crashed her friend's birthday celebration, meaning her and her friend where at her boyfriend's apartment cooking pizza and heating up Glühwein and they were more than happy to have me over. We danced and sang and ate pizza, and it was so fun being with just ladies. Then Rob came back in, and we went out for a birthday drink!

I met my team on Saturday, and melded with them right away, which was great. It took a while to learn all the names and then match them with the faces, and who plays what, and so on. We lost our first three games on Saturday. The third game ended up being 13-14 the other team, and it all came down to the last point. That team went onto third place, the first team we played took second, and the second team we played took fourth, awesome. But we did end up winning our next three games and took 9th place, which is all right by me, at least winning a few games.

After our games, we went out to dinner, there were nine of us ladies, and then one guy. We walked around for about 20 minutes looking for a place to eat, and finally finding a place that had a lot to offer food wise, but the food wasn't great, oh well. The party was great fun, I danced with my team for about an hour, it was really warm, Russ came to the party, Nadine from Dresden was there, and of course Rob and Julia.

We only played two games on Sunday, won them both, got a floor burn on my hip that is pretty bad and also dislocated my shoulder in the last game. Here is the story: it was probably only a few minutes into the game, and one of my players threw me a disc in the endzone, thrown pretty well, and wasn't hard to get. I had to jump and reach for it, but no big deal. Somewhere in there, I threw my left shoulder out. After catching the disc, I end up on the ground and can't really move because there is so much pain. Luckily, there is a doctor in the gym, he comes over and starts moving me off the field, and then the shoulder popped back into the socket, good! It wasn't too bad after that, iced it and it only hurt a little. I have been informed that I need to see a doctor about it which is what I will be doing this week.

And I may be heading to another tournament this next weekend, but just to cheer. Four students from Greifswald will be playing, so that should be fun!