Wiesbaden, Germany

This past weekend, my team competed in a tournament in Wiesbaden, Germany. This was my first time spending any time in Germany besides a stop at the Munich airport. Everyone was excited to leave on Friday and head to warmer weather (It was supposed to be in the 20's in Germany, more than double the temperature in Finland!). We took a bus to the Tampere airport (the smallest airport I have ever seen), and boarded our RyanAir flight. For such a small airport, the plane was surprisingly large. Unfortunately, RyanAir does not provide any food or drinks during their flights, so by the end of the 2.5 hour flight, we were all starving. Once in Germany, some of the people from the host club (VCW) picked us up at the airport. We traveled for about an hour to the hotel, then finally went to grab a bite to eat. After dinner at a traditional German restaurant and once back at the hotel, Marina and I passed out because we were so tired from traveling, it was pretty late at night, and we had an early start in the morning. 

Saturday was filled with volleyball! We started with a one hour practice from 9-10. Then we had opening ceremonies for the tournament, followed by 2 games. In all we played 8 sets in a row on Saturday. The first game was against a team from France, and we split sets with them (2-2). The next game was against another French team who we ended up beating 3-1. When we first left for Germany, we only had 9 players healthy enough to play. Once in Germany, one of girls got a stomach bug of some sort and ended up not being able to really play. This dropped our total to 8 healthy players, 2 of them being setters and 1 libero. This meant that everyone else had to play all the sets. Also, because of the positions of everyone still healthy enough to play, I had to play right side. Although I have experience playing this position and the fact that I like it because I get to defend, it was difficult at times because I have been training in the middle for the most part. At the end of the day we were exhausted, so we ate some dinner at the hall and went back to the hotel to go to sleep.

On Sunday we had a match at noon against the host team and then depending on how everyone finished, we would either play in the Championship game or the 3rd place game. My ill teammate was still sick on Sunday, so I played opposite the entire day. We ended up splitting sets with the German team, but it was good enough to put us in the first place game against the German team! We had to play them again after the 3rd place match. After winning the first two sets in the Championship game, we lost the next two to force a deciding, fifth game. It was back and forth until we switched at 8. From there we went on to win the next points, winning the game 15-8. It was a great feeling to know that all that hard work and effort during the last two days was worth it.

 The team with our trophy and huge bottle of champagne (which we never drank). Not a great picture, but the best I could get!

 As the winners of the tournament, we were each given a rather large book filled with the sights of Wiesbaden and a little cosmetic bag with nail polishes and make-up. The book was really nice because we spent all of our time in the gym which did not allow us any time to see the city

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I was able to take one picture of the street outside our hotel. There was a little walking street that was really cute with little shops, restaurants, and such but this is the best picture I was able to get.

Overall, we played 17 sets of volleyball in two days! Everyone was tired and ready to get back to Finland in order to play our first league game on Wednesday. Hopefully more people will be healthy and get can get the first W of the season. I am also attaching a website that I found that has lots of action shots from this weekend. The ones that say HPK Naiset are the albums from the games my team played! Enjoy!

http://www.wiesbadenaktuell.de/galerie.html