Aug. 1, 2001
Alexandra Preiss #13
After an exciting night of bowling (Amanda showed off her impressive “long arm extension” bowling form and Bond proved once again that his life doesn’t only consist of Tech volleyball, but also a professional bowling career) we spent our morning driving to the peninsula “Usedom” on the Baltic Sea.
We had some individual time, where some of us went shopping and others went to the beach. Kele and I checked the water temperature, but it was too cold to swim in, so we went to a trampoline area where 5-year old kids were jumping. As we all know, Kele can’t spend a day without any sports, so she joined the kids. She fit right in, and you couldn’t really tell a difference because she was as excited as they were and wanted me to watch her tricks just as the other kids wanted their parents to watch.
For lunch, we were entertained by our assistant coach, Bond, better known as “The ‘Pie’-ano Player” who played and sang “Crocodile Rock” for us. It was an awesome performance. After volleyball and bowling, he has our team thinking that he must also be a professional musician who spends his nights in clubs!
Next stop was the artillery museum in Peenemunde. This was a place where they researched and manufactured rockets, weapons, and missiles that were used in the World Wars. We had an unneccesary guided tour, because the guide only spoke German, so Maja and I had to translate (which was really hard), and we had a specialist among our group members, Ky Bell’s dad, Bob, who had been an Air Force Colonel and knows a great deal about history. This stop was interesting because being in East Germany, the museum just opened 11 years ago. Many of us found it hard to imagine what life was like in this part of Germany only 11 years ago.
At 4pm everybody met at the bus, ready to go to Berlin, which is the city that I lived in for 3 years. The bus took a long time to get there, and nothing really exciting happened on the trip as most of us either slept or read, or played cards. After the dinner, we checked into our hotel and had a nice dinner in the restaurant in the hotel.
Tomorrow we will have a guided tour in Berlin (thank goodness a translator provided), and then will have a match against the German Junior National Team.
