The Rugby Game

Akwardly sitting in a bus writing this so that I can feel caught up on catching people up. I feel like a lot has happened since the last time I wrote, which is lately how it’s been going.  I guess when you’re doing more than caring for farm animals on a daily basis, time gets away from you a bit faster.  Miss those cows. I am currently on my way to Salzburg for the weekend, then Munich for a night, and then a week in Stockholm.  That’s right.  I booked my ticket, heading to the motherland.  I’ve even been practicing my Swedish (to myself in my head) and I have a key phrase I’m going to use. “Kan du mig saga, var det är?” And then I will point to something on a map or piece of paper.  We practiced giving/getting directions last class.  Actually I’m not sure if the way I wrote it is correct, but it’s a start.  It means, Can you tell me where this is? Very advanced. I know.  I am getting really excited to go.  I am excited to spend the weekend in Salzburg actually, it’s going to be like a flashback to Doing Appropriate Things.  Sausage Queen, The Aug, Stiegl, Mönchsberg, game on. 

Two weekends ago, Christina came to visit me in Heidelberg.  She is the current Program Assistant in Salzburg and is also from Portland, so we’ve met a few times.  We had a good weekend together, exploring the city, enjoying Klosterhof, going out into town and seeing what trouble we could find, all the while listening to Cro and just singing eaaaaasy ea easssy, oh..oh ohhhh. That’s the new jam in Germany.  I think.  Wrapping sounds pretty BA in German, I think I like it more than I do in English. Of course they’re always throwing English words in.  Also while Christina was here one night, we were stopped by two guys who started out with, “You wouldn’t happen to be American, would you?”. Always a good way to enter a conversation.  They were apparently trying to figure out why we say “He’s seven foot” instead of “feet”.  I said that’s just the way it is losers.  But they wanted to go on and make fun of Americans some more and so they started asking why we don’t use the metric system and I said, you know surprisingly, I’m not the one in charge of the USA measuring system, so you should probably take it up with someone else.  Then when we beat them at their own game they hung around and wanted to talk for a while and one of them happened to be Swedish (the mouthy one, of course) and I finally understood why I am the way I am. Sassy, snarky, no no, I am just Swedish.

So a few days after Christina left, I played in my first ever rugby game.  Yes, after four practices in total, I was ready to conquer the Karlsruhe Women’s Rugby Team.  We all met up on Sunday and drove to the game together.  I think we had 11 total girls with us, so we played 7 v 7.  It was of course just a practice game for them and a little extra experience for us, nothing serious.  The other girls had been playing for about five years, no big deal.  We all warmed up with them, which was really strange, because…they were the other team.  And just super awkward when we didn’t know what to do.  But it was all a trick.  We were hustling them.  That’s what it’s called when you lose a game and they still give you beer afterward, right? Yeah.  We played 5 seven minute long mini-games, which was good because rugby is tiiiiiiiring.  I feel like I threw out some good tackles, even though I could never get the mini-scrum down and basically I was just happy because I wasn’t the worst player on the field.  It was fun, but definitely a painful experience.  There was one time when I was tackled and as I was going down I threw the ball back at one of my teammates so they could keep going, but then I landed really weird and my neck hurt a lot afterward.  So that was definitely a highlight.  It’s starting to feel better now. 

Sam with the tackle!

Hayley in the scrum

Hayley with the ball, girl down on the right, whoops

The two best parts of the game were afterward, when the other team gave us all beer and we chatted and hung out with them, and also Hansjörg, who is our coach, because he is the funniest.  He is just like 6 and a half feet of pure muscle I’m pretty sure, short shorts, long bushy hair always pulled back, and just looks like a wild beast basically.  Plus his name.  And we just found out that he is apparently an English teacher, which finally explains why he’s always trying to speak English to us.  We thought it was just because he thought we couldn’t speak German well enough.  Anyway, he’s a baller, and he told me I did well at the end of the game, point Hayley.

The super best part of the game, though, was after the game.  The boys club played after us and we sat around and watched and drank and then eventually had to go to the bathroom.  So as we’re walking back to the field afterward, we saw that the game was over and everyone was crowded around the home team bench area, and then, on the other side of the field, there are four butt naked men running a lap.  I believe it was because they got their first “try” (like a touchdown, point, whatever).  So of course this was some sort of initiation and celebration. By the time we reached the group of other team members, the nakeds were rounding the last corner and sprinting toward us all, in all their glory.  No shame.  It was that awkward situation where you want to look, but you know you probably shouldn’t, but then you just can’t help it.  I saw it all.  They ran in and got sprayed with water and then handed a beer and were in no rush to put their clothes on again, just stood there and drank with their teammates.  That’s when I knew that I would continue playing rugby for the rest of my life. 

But then there was the fact that we had to wear jerseys that smelled as if they had not been washed for a decade.  So that was gross.  We really smelled bad, which may have been the only reason we got two tries in the first place.  Did I ever mention we lost? It was like 7 to 2.  Whoops!

Other than that, Heidelberg flooded this past weekend.  The water was covering the roadways on either side of the Neckar.  That was kind of weird.  We watched the Schloss Beleuchtern on Saturday evening, which just means fireworks at the castle in remembrance of when it was lit on fire. They do it three times each summer for the tourists.  It would have been cool, but we watched it from up in the mountains across from the Schloss and there was a tree in my line of vision the entire time.  Just kept looking like the tree was getting lit up, which I also liked. 

I hung out with Verena this week and helped her with an assignment for her English class, which made me feel really useful and smart.  At one point as we worked on it, she was speaking all in German to me and I in English and that was kind of cool, and then we switched over to just German which is also always cool.  She invited me to join her and her friends for a weekend to Prague, if they end up actually going, and I hope they do, because that would be aweeeeesome.  I like her.

Also I never wrote this, but a few weeks ago I decided to buy some paint and canvas and then, I PAINTED.  I’ve never painted before, but it just seemed fun.  So I got some oil paints because they seemed pretty professional and I sat down for a few hours and I’m proud to say that the first portrait I ever painted was of my dog, Emma.  I can’t wait to bring it home and give it to her.  Luckily I bought three canvases, so I can also do Leo and Cooper, they get so jealous sometimes. 

Another accomplishment, probably the biggest of all, is that Albrecht has invited Sam and I over to have lunch with him and his wife and his two year old son, Leontine! We almost died of happiness when he asked us.  More literally, we screamed, fell on the floor, teared up, and acted really weird for a good five minutes.  Of course, only after he walked away.  So that’s something to look forward to after I get back to Heidelberg.  I can’t believe it’s actually June right now, how did that happen! Oh well, gotta go and burn off another two weeks.  Till then!

Here's some random Heidelberg pictures!