First Weekend

This weekend we drove down to Wurzburg which is about 3.5 hours West Nowitzki is from Wurzburg and it’s a big bball town with a lot of money, so they had a real nice stadium, 7 foreign players, a hilarious 20 minute introduction segment which included some fireworks and a multiple paragraph analysis of each player.

It was pretty ridiculous but got over the top when they started announcing the 14 year-old players they had on their lower teams that would be sitting on the bench for the game. It was so long we had to have another warm-up when they were done just to get loose again and for the whole first quarter we had to play with a cloud of smoke in the gym.

You can see the smoke in the background!

We played pretty well and actually were only down 3 going into the 4^th but we ran out of gas in the 4th.

I am still struggling with my shot, I think I just have to get used to the deep three point line (they just moved it out to NBA this year) and the travel calls (I get about 3 a game) because my go to jab step right, go left move, is apparently a travel in Germany. My turnover:assist ratio has never exactly been my strength, so I definitely need to get this under control as soon as possible. Also, I am so used to spacing myself based on the shorter three-point line that, I will look down when running a play and realize that I am actually standing out of bounds. This must look pretty dumb to everyone on my team. They pay for this guy to fly all the way over from America to help the team and he can’t even run inbounds. Great. 

I did however get my first professional (and maybe life-time) charge taken, and I have proof!

The day of the game we went on a marathon, uphill, hike to the Wurzburg Castle. It was actually pretty sweet but it was a little tiring. It was pretty difficult to learn much about the castle because all the signs were in German, but based on the size of the castle I came to the logical conclusion that whoever lived there was a boss.

Me, Marcus and Basti overlooking the city

Not sure what this is but it looks like whole-fish skewers

Thought this was a funny sign

The Kings view of the City

I am currently looking for things to do to fill my time during the day. Walks around the town are cool, but I don’t think they will keep me entertained all year, especially during winter. I am mildly embarrassed to say that in the last 4 days I have read the first two books of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. I have done some soul searching and think that this is a clear sign I need something to do besides read every article on espn.com and stalk all my friends (and even complete strangers) on Facebook. My top two options right now are learning German and Yoga haha. We’ll see how that goes for me. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Random Observations from the Weekend in Wurzburg and the first week:

1) There are a lot of dogs, but none of them bark… I ‘m not sure what this says about Germans, maybe they are better at training their dogs, maybe german dogs are generally more calm, maybe it is a reflection of the over-aggressive American culture? Who knows. I just know that every dog from those annoying little rats to the big golden retriever I just saw at Netto has not produced so much as a whimper.

2) Babies stay in strollers way too long. I will be walking down the street and see these huge kids practically overflowing out of their strollers. Either the babies are just abnormally larger or they are just lazy.

3) The people working at the grocery store check outs either have some sort of pent up aggression, or all are former baseball players. Over here you have to bag your own groceries (with bags you bring from home) and as soon as they scan the item they rocket it over to you. You are expected to literally catch and bag your groceries simultaneously while also trying to figure out how much everything costs and pay. If you don’t do this in world-record time everyone in line gives you nasty looks. The result is me standing with a 20 euro bill in one hand in an athletic stance shoveling all my food into as few bags as possible. I have learned that you have to strategically place foods on the conveyor belt that can be smashed and pray that it ends up on the top of one of your bags.

4) Germans love to drink. We went out on Saturday night to some bar (keep in mind we had a game Sunday) and coach buys the first round of pints of beer for everyone. I was thinking OK one beer (actually probably more than 2 because they were pints) won’t hurt, and then the second and third rounds came around. I went home early but people were still out drinking at 1 and we had an 8:30 wake up call. Needless to say a little different than what I’m used to.

5) Everyone has a portable navigation device and the call it a ‘navi’. This isn’t that exciting its just funny listening to all the huge guys on my team talking about their navi. It reminds me of Avatar.