Break

This week began a long break for me, a week early unfortunately because of my suspension. Although we had practices and a game on Saturday, I could not be a part of the gameplan, so I had to do my best to help the team prepare as much as I could during practice. Unfortunately, because practice was so sparsely attended that literally every single body counted, no matter its status and skill-level, that did not amount to very much.  We did the best we could with the time and people we had. This game marked the first repeat match-up of the season; we had lost to the Bonn Gamecocks at home in our second game.  Thankfully, we were more familiar with their team because of this, so the pregame planning had less to do on speculation of how they had played against other teams and was more focused on the first time we played. Unfortunately, however, we were playing not only without me, but also without the Serbians, who, to satisfy the requirements of their Visas, had to return home for the week. The Tigers had quite a challenge on Saturday, especially considering Bonn had been the team to knock of the league leader the weekend before.

The bus trip on Saturday was as I've come to expect. It's funny: although at times in college I was able to read on the bus, I generally didn't, even when I had assignments that needed finished for the good of my academic well-being. Here, I do nothing but read on the bus, aside from the odd jerks in and out of sleep. I think that I really do my best reading on the bus as opposed to anywhere else, with headphones in and old long memorized albums playing as white-noise in the background so that I can focus on the words on the page--or rather the screen of my Kindle. I was reading Faulkner's Light in August, so focus was quite necessary. When we arrived in Bonn, I realized that I was now in an unfamiliar role: team support staff. I had no equipment of my own to carry to a locker room, no thoughts of my own impending struggle filling my head, dressed in a team polo and khaki shorts rather than some iteration of sweatsuit and nerves. I helped carry some of our equipment to the locker room and realized that I was lingering unnecessarily. It was not that I was unwelcome or unwanted, but that there was no place for me there in the hustle and bustle of gametime preparation. It is an odd world to visit as a sudden outsider, without the focus of preparing for a game hanging overhead. I went to the sideline sooner than I ever have, and waited for the game to begin.

 Base Camp for Tiger's pre-game intelligence...yeah...reading. Whoops.

The first half of the game went better than anyone expected. Even with an offense with only three starters playing in their usual position and a short-manned defense, with Steve playing two ways and on every special team but two, we played Bonn to a 6-6 halftime score, which could justifiably have been 12-6 to us if not for a controversial goal line call erasing WR Phillip's second TD catch of the game. Like I said, the offense had only three players in their normal starting position. This offense was even more impressive because none of those three players were on the offensive line. No single player was in his natural or even usual position on the OL. Even then, the running lanes were open and our running backs were able to gain some good yardage. It was hard to be on the sideline.  

Oli and Nils both had great games under bad circumstances

Unfortunately, our depth proved too thin to continue the second half as strong as the first. At the end of the game the score was 32-6, Bonn. We certainly gave our all, and without another terrible call, we'd have scored again. I was not happy at how the game was officiated, or how Bonn insisted on passing deep into the fourth quarter, long after the game was decided. But, I forfeited all control over the Bonn game when I allowed myself to act in a way that resulted in my ejection the week before. We left the game with heads high, and I'm proud of everyone that contributed in a total team effort. I wish I could have been on the field. For a football player, watching one's own team play on the sideline healthy and competent without being able to contribute is a terrible punishment. We made the long trip home, on which I ate more fast food than I have in a long time.

That game is our last until August 11. With such a long layoff, we hoped to find something to do. Thankfully, our brother Eike had something planned for the day after the game to start our holiday. We visited Park Kalkriese, a historical site about fifteen minutes from our house. This was particularly exciting for me, considering a bulk of my collegiate studies. The site is (assumed to be) where Germanic warriors ambushed and defeated three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest, an early example of guerrilla warfare. I seem to recall learning about this with both professor Bowman in History of the Early Middle Ages and professor Shutt in Celts and Germans when we read Tacitus. Or maybe I remember it from the legends that pass down through time, as this site is where Rome suffered one of its worst defeats and lost three of its Eagle standards. Essentially, Roman commander Varus was doublecrossed by his adviser, a Germanic hostage named Arminius, who led the legions into a bottleneck of woods and moor to quell a rumored Germanic uprising. The Germanics instead slaughtered the Romans so completely that the site of the carnage was lost, along with the Eagles, and Roman rule never quite took hold in this part of the world. The site today consisted of a small museum and tower, and a recreation of the wall the Germanics constructed to keep the Romans at bay. Eike knew just about everything about the site, and proved more knowledgeable than our "English speaking" tour guide. It was an amazing experience. This is not something I expected to find here in Osnabruck, something that I had studied but existed to me only in the far reaches of my mind and history, almost in an alternate world, not fifteen minutes away. Now that I know about the site, I have seen recreations of its most famous find, a Roman ceremonial face mask, all over the city. 

The recreation of the wall

One of the masks they had displayed on site.

Aside from that, the time off has been mostly spent relaxing. We had a nice night at a biergarten with Anke, but working out and reading have been how I've spent most of the time off. I have big plans for this coming weekend, which I'm very excited about, but they're not major travel plans. I hope that I can get a trip in sometime over this break, but the holiday season means that things are more expensive than usual. We'll see what happens. Steve is going to Rome, and Mitch is going to Brussels, so I need to get somewhere out of the country as well by the time the break is over. Judgment was made, and thankfully my suspension was one game, so it has been served. Tonight, I look forward to a dual Monika/Anke birthday party. Hopefully they'll like the presents Steve, Mitch, and I collaborated on. 

 Embarrassing.

Obligatory drinking out of a huge mug in Europe picture

Aside from that, things are calm after a bit of craziness. I finished Light in August, and the proper Faulkner mental fallout has resulted, especially considering all of the nasty things about race from home I'm reading about seemingly every time I log on to the Internet. Love, everyone. To cool off and shut my mind off a bit I've begun the second Game of Thrones book (A Song of Ice and Fire for purists), so that should be a nice change of pace. Now is when it will become very interesting for me, without football for a time. I hope I'll be productive. I'm easy to reach, everyone, so don't hesitate. Glad you didn't. For now, I'm excited to have a family party to attend, and to have some home headed my way this weekend.