4 Australians at the Prague Castle After my last post, I was straight onto my Christmas break. Reading over how excited I was before the break is definitely in line with how fun my Christmas week actually was. The morning after our last match I flew to Switzerland and the Basel-Mulhouse- Freiburg airport. Yes it has 3 names. What's cool is that the airport is technically situated in France, but is so close to the Germany-Swiss-French borders that depending which way you exit the airport, a few kilometres in either direction will get you to a different country, so it was cool seeing exit signs not pointing to suburbs but rather directing you to the country you would like to go to. A few trains later, I arrived in Aarau where Jordan Richards is based. It is in the North-West of Switzerland and from there his partner in crime (Georgina) took the train with me to Geneva which is in the South-West. It was in Geneva that I would get to see Jordan's team play. It was great to see the Swiss League and be able to compare it to Dutch league. From what I saw it seems to be a bit stronger in level, and the match was really entertaining not only because I got to watch Jordan play, but there were about 5 different yellow cards handed out, a guy beating a drum non-stop for a 2 hour, 5 set match and a lot of fierceness between the two teams. Despite losing the first 2 sets, Jordan's team rallied back to take the match 15-13 in the 5th, in a match that all but secured the teams place to make the post-season still with 6 weeks to go in their season. After the match I got to meet his team mates and coaching staff, and they were all as Jordan had described: just a bunch of nice cool dudes (direct quote). Then a fun trip back to Aarau where the next morning we would fly off to Prague to spend Christmas with our old friend Gerrard Lipscombe. Before I get to Prague, just a quick note on how expensive the cost of living is in Switzerland. My cup of coffee cost 7 Francs which is about $8.5 AUD. My chicken burger meal from Burger King cost me 15 franks, so about $18 AUD. And this is just the norm. So for anyone visiting Switzerland be prepared to for it to cost you a fortune, although maybe it's worth it to be able to see the beautiful Swiss alps which by the way are amazing.
After arriving in Prague there is one word I would use to describe if: beautiful. It really is a beautiful city. The buildings are so old, and there is so much history behind the city. The architectural detail behind the buildings was amazing. How these buildings were built centuries ago without simple things like cranes still baffles me. We saw some major sites, including the most popular Charles Bridge and Castle. The Castle was truly amazing, it's the largest ancient castle in the world (according to Wikipedia) and was just crazy. The whole city was packed full of tourists and their selfie sticks but it was still amazing, no matter where you walk around you can't help but be amazed with how surreal your surroundings are.
Another bonus is Prague is pretty much the opposite of Switzerland; that is everything is so cheap. They use the Koruna (possibly announced corona) as a currency, and $1 AUD is worth 18 korunas, so when we cashed our money in we felt like we were rich. Food and drinks are so cheap. You can eat out at a nice restaurant with a huge main meal for what works out to be $5-$10AUD each, which is just prices you can't get back home in Australia or in Western Europe.
We all spent Christmas with Gerrard and his family, exchanging gifts, while enjoying some traditional Czech Christmas foods. Fried carp is pretty much a must have at Christmas time there, cause you can't really buy it any other time of the year, as well as some delicious potato salad. An awesome night was had by all and it was great to be taken in by a family for Christmas.
There is also an expression I heard about Prague that 'beer is cheaper than water'. Some quick price comparisons and it's absolutely true. You can buy beer literally everywhere. At some Christmas markets we saw some 500ml bottles of water selling for about $2.5 AUD, and 500ml of beer for about $1.5 AUD. So naturally the Czech people drink a lot of beer and it's by far the best beer I've ever had (sorry to all you Carlton Draught lovers out there).
Overall my Christmas break was awesome, seeing some really good friends who I haven't seen much lately as volleyball has taken us to separate corners of the world. It was great to embrace another culture, and a few evenings we got to hit the night jazz scene as well which was cool. Live performing bands were everywhere and cool to go, watch and hang out in a relaxed atmosphere, and for the most part we had good weather but unfortunately no snow so my first white Christmas still eludes me. My mini vacation week was over, and I'd fly back to Rotterdam before New Years Eve to rejoin my team.
For anyone who is ever in The Netherlands for New Years my best advice is this: watch out, Dutch people go crazy. I got back to town on the 29th Dec, and there were people letting fireworks off everywhere out here in suburbia at all times of day and night. Every 5-10 minutes you just hear a bang of someone letting off some fireworks. This country spends something in the tens of millions of dollars on illegal fireworks and it's ridiculous. Sometimes it sounds like there a flash bang grenades going off. Walking around downtown on New Year's Eve there were people letting off their own fireworks all night like I've never seen or heard before. Usually things get so bad there's usually a handful of fatalities due to firework mishaps so we were warned to be careful if we were out on the streets. But luckily everything was all fine.
Now were back into season mode again. We had practice tournament last weekend against Taurus and Talentteam, two teams we will verse again before seasons end. There was still a bit of rust in these matches coming back from Christmas break but we it's good to be able to get the rust off in practice matches and not league.
Last night it was the first league match of 2015, and a very important game against Inter Rijwisk. As they are in a similar spot on the ladder it was a pretty important home match for us. They are the closest club to us (from The Hague which is only about 30 minutes away) so they brought a lot of supporters who made a lot of noise. And we had our biggest crowd by far of the season including some loud drums going on. It was an awesome atmosphere and a super close game. We would go down in a close 4 sets but can't be to upset because the whole team fought pretty hard the whole match. Luckily next Saturday night it will be another match and another opponent.
And also, as anyone whose read some of my previous posts I've had a few visitors since I've been here. Recently Phil Freere and Mitch Branson spent two nights with us. While Mitch stuck to coaching, Phil got to step in and train with us, so the Australian/GMVA takeover of Holland is still taking effect slowly but as always it's great to see familiar faces/accents and I can't complain when he brings me milo as a gift.
Until next time, keep on keepin' on.
After arriving in Prague there is one word I would use to describe if: beautiful. It really is a beautiful city. The buildings are so old, and there is so much history behind the city. The architectural detail behind the buildings was amazing. How these buildings were built centuries ago without simple things like cranes still baffles me. We saw some major sites, including the most popular Charles Bridge and Castle. The Castle was truly amazing, it's the largest ancient castle in the world (according to Wikipedia) and was just crazy. The whole city was packed full of tourists and their selfie sticks but it was still amazing, no matter where you walk around you can't help but be amazed with how surreal your surroundings are.
Another bonus is Prague is pretty much the opposite of Switzerland; that is everything is so cheap. They use the Koruna (possibly announced corona) as a currency, and $1 AUD is worth 18 korunas, so when we cashed our money in we felt like we were rich. Food and drinks are so cheap. You can eat out at a nice restaurant with a huge main meal for what works out to be $5-$10AUD each, which is just prices you can't get back home in Australia or in Western Europe.
We all spent Christmas with Gerrard and his family, exchanging gifts, while enjoying some traditional Czech Christmas foods. Fried carp is pretty much a must have at Christmas time there, cause you can't really buy it any other time of the year, as well as some delicious potato salad. An awesome night was had by all and it was great to be taken in by a family for Christmas.
There is also an expression I heard about Prague that 'beer is cheaper than water'. Some quick price comparisons and it's absolutely true. You can buy beer literally everywhere. At some Christmas markets we saw some 500ml bottles of water selling for about $2.5 AUD, and 500ml of beer for about $1.5 AUD. So naturally the Czech people drink a lot of beer and it's by far the best beer I've ever had (sorry to all you Carlton Draught lovers out there).
Overall my Christmas break was awesome, seeing some really good friends who I haven't seen much lately as volleyball has taken us to separate corners of the world. It was great to embrace another culture, and a few evenings we got to hit the night jazz scene as well which was cool. Live performing bands were everywhere and cool to go, watch and hang out in a relaxed atmosphere, and for the most part we had good weather but unfortunately no snow so my first white Christmas still eludes me. My mini vacation week was over, and I'd fly back to Rotterdam before New Years Eve to rejoin my team.
For anyone who is ever in The Netherlands for New Years my best advice is this: watch out, Dutch people go crazy. I got back to town on the 29th Dec, and there were people letting fireworks off everywhere out here in suburbia at all times of day and night. Every 5-10 minutes you just hear a bang of someone letting off some fireworks. This country spends something in the tens of millions of dollars on illegal fireworks and it's ridiculous. Sometimes it sounds like there a flash bang grenades going off. Walking around downtown on New Year's Eve there were people letting off their own fireworks all night like I've never seen or heard before. Usually things get so bad there's usually a handful of fatalities due to firework mishaps so we were warned to be careful if we were out on the streets. But luckily everything was all fine.
Now were back into season mode again. We had practice tournament last weekend against Taurus and Talentteam, two teams we will verse again before seasons end. There was still a bit of rust in these matches coming back from Christmas break but we it's good to be able to get the rust off in practice matches and not league.
Last night it was the first league match of 2015, and a very important game against Inter Rijwisk. As they are in a similar spot on the ladder it was a pretty important home match for us. They are the closest club to us (from The Hague which is only about 30 minutes away) so they brought a lot of supporters who made a lot of noise. And we had our biggest crowd by far of the season including some loud drums going on. It was an awesome atmosphere and a super close game. We would go down in a close 4 sets but can't be to upset because the whole team fought pretty hard the whole match. Luckily next Saturday night it will be another match and another opponent.
And also, as anyone whose read some of my previous posts I've had a few visitors since I've been here. Recently Phil Freere and Mitch Branson spent two nights with us. While Mitch stuck to coaching, Phil got to step in and train with us, so the Australian/GMVA takeover of Holland is still taking effect slowly but as always it's great to see familiar faces/accents and I can't complain when he brings me milo as a gift.
Until next time, keep on keepin' on.
Some of Prague
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