Christmas Comes Early...

It looks as though my Christmas break has come a bit early. I am going back to New Jersey tomorrow until the first week of January when I come back to dominate zee Germans once again. I think I am going to continue blogging while I am home. Hopefully, I am going to help out at Delbarton with the basketball team and maybe get a part-time job to have some cash available (if anyone knows a good part-time job I could have, please contact me).

Honestly, I am SO PSYCHED to watch the NFL, college basketball, and engorge myself non-stop on Thanksgiving. I wanted a picture to show my love for America so I google imaged "quintessentially American," and this is what it gave me, hahahahaha. I am sure one Mr. Reale will be extremely satisfied with this.


I had already decided Thanksgiving would probably be the most depressing day here in Germany and now I get to be home for it! Glorious. Again, I have to give Ivan love for showing me loyalty and wanting me to come back in January.. Awesome stuff.


So, on a side note, we lost last Saturday. I met with the Dr. prior to the game, and here is essentially what he told me, "I have seen your Xrays and your MRI and from what I can see here, you have a very bad bone bruise. Basically, the bone in your foot is bending and if you continue to play, it will inevitably break, BUT if you want to play today you can." Great doc... Ivan is sitting next to me when the Dr tells me this and clearly he wants me to play. So I turn to him and say, lets just play it by ear Coach. Clearly, he did not understand that phrase but that was part of the reason I went with it.


The game starts and we are quickly getting demolished, 21 - 6 or so. Ivan turns to me and says, "Can you go?" and I respond, "Just quick spurts coach, nothing too long." So, I go in the game. I pull the best Larry Legend impersonation of my life. Go in, within the first 5 posessions hit back-to-back threes and we cut the lead to 4. No big deal, except for the fact that I was strictly jogging from 3-point line to 3-point line and slowly starting to cringe on each step. We went into halftime down around 5 or so I think.


During halftime though, I told Ivan I just could not play on it anymore and we ended up losing by 22. Trevor fouled out and the refs hated T all day. It was a rough one to watch to say the least.


On another side note, I was quoted in my first politically motivated newspaper article ever on Saturday! Haha.... A woman from our local paper interviewed Trevor and I about Obama's victory and we did our best CNN international impersonations. Everyone here is extremely excited about Obama getting the W. Maybe, the rest of the world will stop hating us.. woo hoo! We have no idea what the article says, but it is hilarious to say the least. Good times. Can't wait to see a bunch of you soon!


America, here I come.


- MFG

Quick Update...

As of right now, the near future is a bit in the air. After not playing last week because of a sore foot I suffered in the win 2 weeks ago, we are getting a doctor to come to this week's game to give me a full pre-game work-up. Currently, it could be a bone bruise, a soon-to-be stress fracture, or nothing. It is amazing how my body never ceases to fail me.

Big ups to Ivan for having some loyalty in a league where teams run through Americans on a weekly basis. Last week he told me that no matter what the deal was with my foot, he wants me back in Germany on January 5 for the second half of the season. I have been brainstorming ideas of what I could do at home if I came back and the possibilities seem half-way decent. I am not going to lie though, the chance of going home for Thanksgiving and seeing all of my loved ones is EXTREMELY enticing.

- MFG

Greatness..

Some people like to say only Greatness equals Greatness, but I have a new way to sort out that formula: Winning + WTG + Fwalt + Palaces + Sim Ju = Greatness.

Will arrived bright and early Friday morning (as all of my visitors have) at Dusseldorf airport. We mostly just hung out on Friday and Will caught up on some sleep because we had some big plans laid out for the weekend.

First, we wake up Saturday morning and decide we should hit up a castle so Will gets to see some classic, old Euro stuff. I do a quick google search and find something called Castle-somethingorother. I write down the address and we GPS that ish. We arrive at the address and we are somehow in a flat, rural neighborhood. Something does not seem right here. Will and I both decided that this castle would suck anyway because it is not on high ground, and therefore, would have an extremely difficult time defending itself. We turned around and head back to the house, wondering where the hell this castle was. No Biggie. We arrive back in Werne and guess what - Fletcher Walters is in the building. Fletch just rolled up and was waiting for us in my apartment.

At this point, I am extremely frustrated by this fake castle and re-run my castle search. I find the link for castle whatsamacallit and click on it. This castle is actually a scuba diving club. No joke. This is the link. Frustrated, Fletcher tells me that he google mapped Werne and saw this very cool picture of a hunting castle/palace thing. We check it out and it looks legit. Without having any idea whether we can actually go near this palace or have to pay for it, etc., (we needed a more successful adventure than our last one), we just go for it. Fletcher - GREAT WORK. This palace was absolutely amazing. We walked around, checking out all the statues and such and taking ridicuous, blog-worthy pictures like this. Posing like a statue is far more fun than you can imagine.

After the palace adventure, Fletch and Will went to Sim Ju to get some food from the Carnies ("Small hands, smell like cabbage." - TRUE), while I took a pre-game nap. Keep in mind, they have been doubting this festival all day. Saying things like, "Dude, we are in Werne, there will probably be like 100 people." FALSE. They fell in love as soon as they began to smell Currywurst, Crepes, and Pilsners. (Side Note: I think Will and I ate Carnival food 90% of the time we were eating, actually probably 90% of the total time Will was here. It was amazingly tasty and terribly repulsive all at the same time. But, seriously, Carnies can make some quality dishes.) They came back to the apartment impressed. Needless to say, I was excited for the game, but I was more excited for the Festival afterwards. Here is a little bit of info on Sim Ju.

The game went well. We won by around 20. Trevor had something like 24 and T and I each had around 18. It was nice having some friendly faces in the stands. Fletcher and Will were loving it and I played to the crowd a little bit throughout the game. They both think that I had around 20 rebounds but I think that may be a bit of an over-estimate, more like 19. I had one of the greatest blocks of my life on Saturday. As an unsuspecting guard on the other team went in for an uncontested, fast-break lay-up, I rose up to spike the ball out of the air towards my teammates on the bench. Right after, I made a no way symbol with my hands to the crowd to signal that the game was officially over (I am loving this stuff, you can do anything, it is so fun/ridiculous). The other team had 3 Americans too, so we thought they were going to be good, but judging by the point total at the end of the game: this was not the case. They were OK. We went up early and held onto the lead throughout the game. We are now officially second place in our league behind the team that beat us last week. As soon as the game ended, we did our patented celebration dance thing and than got psyched for the ridiculousness that is Sim Ju.

Most of the guys on the team and some of our fans rolled back to our apartment before going into Sim Ju. We just straight murked tequila with oranges and cinnamon and listened to quality Euro tunes. We actually left the apartment relatively early for a Saturday night and went straight to get a 1/2 METER BRATWURST. Yes, it was .5 Meter, 1.64 feet, almost 20 inches (no Romo)! Wow, it was glorious. We then hit up the beer tent where jolly, traditional German tunes were sung throughout the night. At one point, the entire tent went into a Ziggy Zaggy, Ziggy Zaggy, Oy, Oy, Oy! chant which was amazing and quickly prompted everyone to chug their beers. The night ended kinda early for Euro standards but was long and quality nonetheless.

Sunday, we hit up the Festival yet again, and ate all day. We took a break from the festival to watch Trevor coach one of his teams, hit the beer tent intermittently, and won some sweet Green Goblin masks in a balloon shooting Carnie game. We also discovered how Germans truly feel about America (notice the picture to the right). A great Sunday to say the least.

On Monday night, Will and I had a nice dinner at this Italian place that sponsors our team and talked about the world and the economy over a nice bottle of Red. Sounds kinda awkward, haha, but I truly appreciated it. Will was dropping knowledge about the US markets and I was actually fascinated by it. I think I am finally maturing haha. I dropped Will off at the airport Tuesday morning to finish off an amazing weekend with the bigger (not quite as large) brother. Will, I would just like to say thanks for rolling up. It made me happy.

Brooke is coming on Friday bright and early for a great weekend. Fletch and Andrew play each other this weekend (I think?) and we have an away game on Sunday. Should be another quality weekend in the Deustchland. 'Til next time.

- MFG

My First L...

Unfortunately, TV Werne took our first L this past weekend against Hagen Haspa. We were the last two undefeated teams left in the league and they took us down at their place. Luckily, we got another shot at them when we play them at home.

We shot out to a 10 - 0 lead early in the first before they started crawling back into the game. By halftime, it was a 1 point game I think. They had 3 Americans as well, actually 2 Canadians and an American but you know Canada wishes it was America anyway, so I will do them a favor and call them Americans. There lone actual American had absolutely BOOSTIES (this means he could jump really, really high). At one point in the second quarter, he caught an alley-oop behind me with his left hand and absolutely railed it home. I thought his head was going to hit the rim, and he looked kinda old too. It was surprising and impressive to say the least. After the alley-oop, I kinda just shrugged and said respect. Perhaps before I broke my leg (or never in my life) I would have jumped to try and alter the alley but the oop was too legit - no stopping something like that, woulda just been embarassing. Speaking of embarassing, this picture kinda sums up how the game was and how much higher this guy could jump compared to us. You may not be able to tell, but our opponent is still rising while Trevor is at the peak of his jump resulting in Trevor getting this shot PUNCHED in a similar fashion to Team Blackout's consistant spikage in the MSVL (Motown Summer Volleyball League) this past summer.

Trevor had four fouls in the first half and fouled out early in the fourth, which never helps anything. T and I each had around 20 points and I think I had 5 three-pointers on the day. It is sad to say, but the refs truly changed the outcome of the game. Whether it was terrible fouls leading to our foul trouble or letting some "hacking" go uncalled, they definitely made an impact. Andrew came to the game to represent and after the game Trevor (whose birthday is today - Happy Birthday Trev) and I went back to Andrew's apartment to begin the annual Fletcher and Goldy Birthday Extravaganza, for this year only, known as the Fletch, Gold, and Trev Celebratory Weekend. By the way, thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes, it made me feel like the good ol' U S of A missed me.

Fletcher showed up soon thereafter, and we brought back on old school game known as Strategic War while watching college football and the truly surprising Tampa Bay Rays. Although Saturday's Rays game was a disappointment, I gotta give a shout-out to one David P Sullivan for being a great fan. He has always followed the Rays religiously and he is finally getting his shot at the World Series. Congratulations my friend. Overall, one of the best nights I have had here in Germany with a ton of hilarious moments occurring throughout the evening, and all we did was sit in Andrew's apartment for most of it. We did get yelled at by some German Frau about her children sleeping and threatening to call the Polizei (I think?), but no biggie. I am sorry to you if you are reading this blog, we may have been louder then we thought.

The GMEN with another big time W yesterday and gotta give some love to the Packers for my pops. Dominating against the Colts. In case you were wondering, I miss Sundays in America...

Will is rolling up on Friday for the annual Sim Ju Festival in Werne. Supposedly, absolutely crazy. We already have Carnies posting up all over town and the town is buzzing with excitement. I will definitely have a post for ya sometime next week.

- MFG

Quick Note..

It is my birthday today and days like this when you are half way across the world make you truly appreciate your family and friends from home. I miss all of you but luckily have my boys to hang out with this weekend so that Fletch and I can celebrate our birthdays in style, just as we have done the past 4 years.

On a less serious note, when you work in Germany, people bring in cakes for EVERYTHING. So, yesterday, I had to go to the bakery and purchase 3 cakes for my co-workers. I felt like if I did not bring in cakes, I would have gotten fired. Last day of an internship - cake. Birthdays - cake. You stub your toe over the weekend - cake. No, one of those is not true, but seriously we have had cake at work like 3 times over the past 5 days. It is getting out of control. I have discovered, though, that Germans know how to bake. They also know how to celebrate birthdays. Work got me Zoolander on DVD and many of my co-workers told me "congratulations" as if I had just won the freakin' Nobel Peace Prize. Haha, yes, they say congratulations for birthdays. I think something got lost in the translation there but who knows.

On another side note, it feels good to know that our class at Amherst left a legacy in the Division 3 sporting world. Til next time...

- MFG