The Migration, Volume 1

Okay. So, I'm in Tampa. (By the way, like the new layout?)

Forecast: Let me first say the obvious: the weather is gorgeous. When I arrived on Wednesday, it was about 75 degrees, with little humidity and a nice wind. It's heated up a bit, and got a lot more humid, but it's a lot nicer than what New York was when I left that morning (9 degrees, wind, snow).

There are palm trees (and beautiful women) everywhere. Just driving around Tampa, on any given street, it could be lined with palm trees (and beautiful women).

Hotel: My hotel, the Mainsail, isn't really a hotel; it's like an extended stay. It's sah-weeeeet. I'm rooming with the PR assistant (note, we are PR assistants, not interns) with the Hamburg Sea Devils. Since it's a business suite-kind of thing, we each have our own nicely-sized room. There's even a porch (we're on the first floor), a living room with a couch and big chairs and a TV, a volleyball court right outside my little quad, and a housekeeping service that does our dishes (and did I mention there were lots of beautiful women?)

Andy's first day: Wednesday was pretty slow. Since I left at 6 AM in the darkness and snow, I slept for much of the afternoon. I got dinner with the other PR interns, Maik Matischak (the director of communications for NFLE), and Joachim Haas, the PR director of the Frankfurt Galaxy. We had Chinese buffet; I managed to avoid peanuts and soy. (I mostly just ate dry sushi.)

We went out that night to a place called the Green Iguana. (what, are there other kinds of iguanas?) (seems most of the places to go here go by a similar formula; they are "Color" "Object". The other good place to go in the area is the Blue Martini. I expect the next best place is the Purple Lampshade.) Anyway, yeah, the Green Iguana. Wow, there were lots of beautiful women there...

Andy's second day: Players arrived on Thursday; I met lots of the offensive skill position players on the team. Omar Jacobs, our starting quarterback, is a really nice guy. He had his picture taken in a Berlin Thunder jersey, which I'll post once I've got it. Actually, pretty much all of the players that I met were really nice. Steve Sanders, one of Berlin's wide receivers, and a teammate of Omar Jacobs at Bowling Green, is a good guy. Walter Washington, one of our quarterbacks, got screwed out of dinner, though. I gave him a cookie. Nourishing.

I also got a league phone. Now, I carry a Blackberry and a Nextel. The right side of my body weighs like, ten pounds more than my left. Yeah, the whole click thing is cool, but I haven't met one person that's out of high school that genuinely enjoys using one of those phones.

Andy's third day: Let's see, what else is going on....oh yeah, I got kicked out of my room for an hour yesterday (Friday, I think). Why, you ask? Well...here's the thing. From Wednesday until Friday, everyone stayed here at the Mainsail. Then, on Friday, four teams go check into their team hotels, and two teams stay at the Mainsail (luckily, I am one of them; Frankfurt, for instance, is staying at a Howard Johnson's. Nothing against HoJo's, but....)

Anyhoo, so, with all of the staff checking out and players checking in, lots of the reservations were simply juggled around. It seems that from Wednesday through Friday, the Mainsail had Andrew Lutzky staying in Building 600, room 109. From Friday until April 2, they had a guest by the name of Andrew Lutsky. Which, apparently, is a completely different person.

So, you could imagine my surprise when, after getting my free coffee from the lobby, my keycard didn't work, and the front desk told me that I had checked out. And that there was no one by my name staying at the hotel anymore.

I called the woman in charge of the hotel bookings; she was, understandably, incredibly busy that day. She said, "Tell me what is wrong and I'll call you back when I get a chance." I said, "I have no hotel room." She said, "....oh." She then told me she'd call and take care of it.

I told the front desk that she was going to call them and see what the deal was, and that I was going back to my room. They said, "No, you need to stay here."

So, at the front desk, I sat for an hour, watching my team and Hamburg check into the hotel; nothing happened.

Finally, Berlin's football operations intern, Hansen (maybe the busiest person I've met here so far) saw me in the lobby, and asked what was up. I told him, I have no room. He checked his records, and by his papers, he had me checked into the same room I was in the whole time. We talked to the lady at the front desk (not the same one that told me I had checked out and that I couldn't leave the front desk). She said to me, "Are you sure your name isn't spelled with an S?"

Yes, I was sure.

"Oh, we just had it spelled wrong. You can go back to your room."

...kill them....kill them all...no...just walk away....just walk away, Andy.

I ate dinner with the coaching staff on Wednesday. They're all relatively young guys, considering some of the other coaching staffs have been around for a while. I guess it's a reflection of our head coach, John Allen, who is the youngest head coach in all of NFL Europa.

So, I got up to get some ice cream after dinner, and Coach Allen sat down in my seat. Someone said, "Andy is sitting there." He went, "Andy Lutzky is sitting here?! I better go get another seat!"

The coaching staff let out a few "oooooh's" after that. Adrian Clarke, the defensive coordinator, said, "Hope you didn't unpack!" Funny guys.

(Now watch me get fired tomorrow.)

Joe (the PR assistant from Hamburg, my roommate) and I had a random encounter last night. I got some pizza at the restaurant in the clubhouse. On the way back, this crazy looking lady came out of one of the buildings and said, "You two, stop. How old are you?"

Joe: "23."
Me: "15."

She looked at us. "I have some beer we need to get rid of. Do you want it?"

....so, after checking our ID's, and asking us four or five times if we were really over 21 (both before and after looking at our ID's), and asking if we were with any minors, and asking if we were going to give the beer away to anybody....she gave us 40 beers, a bottle of wine, some brownies, and a bag of chips. Jesus.

So, I spent last night having a Becks (und....und...und BECKS!!!), eating some pizza, and watching Mission Impossible 2.

Andy's fourth day: The second wave of players arrive today (or, are arriving now, I suppose). I, however, spent my Saturday with Franklin Petr, watching the Tampa Bay Devil Rays take on the Philadelphia Phillies in some spring training action.

Since it's probably something I'll never have a chance to do again, I'm glad I got to see a spring training game. I love the semi-professional feel of it. You know what I mean: maybe 100, 200 people watching a game, full of players you've never heard of. There were no stands in the outfield. The mascot was banging drums right as the Phillies swung at pitches, which I thought was awesome. Need I even mention, the girls were gorgeous.

I figured this would be a great time to try out my new camera.


That would be Jimmy Rollins, taken from about 45 feet away. Here's Ryan Howard, taken from about the same distance:


Very sweet. Can't wait to try this thing on the field.

I ate dinner tonight with Gerran Walker, one of our wide receivers (allocated by Pittsburgh). Very nice guy. He almost didn't make it down to Tampa; the league office never notified him that the travel arrangements had been made. Luckily, he called Delta to see if they had anything booked in his name, which they did, for the next day. Yikes.

Summary: All in all, things are going well so far. Everyone--staff and players alike--are still getting settled in, so everything still has that disorganized/panicked feel to it. Pretty much everyone I've met on my team so far has been a very nice guy. Some of the other PR staffers haven't had as much luck, so I suppose I should consider myself lucky.

My allergies are going absolutely nuts here. I forgot how itchy eyes and a scratchy voice, living in California.

I've added another link in the links section to the right: it's a blog of another of the PR assistants, Beth. She's going to Frankfurt, after spending this past season with the New York Giants. For further insight, I highly recommend checking the blog out; she's a saucy one.

Tonight, I think I'm going to go see 300 with Joe...I was told that I should expect to see lots of people get cut up. Awesome. Expect an update tomorrow or within the next few days.

And now, a word from reality

I realize I haven't posted in about a week, but in all honesty, nothing really noteworthy (blog-worthy, I guess?) has happened. I've been writing bios for the players on the Thunder, playing lots of Xbox 360, and seeing some people before I left.

Ah, yeah, leaving; at this moment, it's 12:15 AM, now Wednesday morning. My plane to Tampa, Florida, leaves in 7 hours and 10 minutes.

Just to be clear, here's how the traveling will work in the near future: NFL Europe has their training camp down in Tampa. I'm not flying to Berlin quite yet. I'll be in Tampa for about a month, starting tomorrow. I leave the States for Germany on April 2. So I'll be stateside for the next few weeks.

So, my flight. Yup, it's pretty early. I leave for LaGuardia at 5:45 AM. That's awesome. I get to Tampa around 10:30 AM. (The flight is direct, which, from talking to some of the other PR interns, I should feel lucky for.) My first meeting is at 7 PM tomorrow, when I meet the rest of the interns (along with the two I worked with at the Super Bowl), and Maik Matischak, the Director of Communications for NFL Europa.

That means that, if everything goes swimmingly, I should have a good 8 hours to nap and explore the surroundings of the Mainsail Suites, where I'll be staying, at least for a few days. You see, once the American players arrive on Thursday and Saturday, they relocate the teams to other hotels, which become the team HQ for their time in Tampa. One team stays at Mainsail, which, from he 360-degree tour on the website, looks like a nice place.

We'll have our practices at the Ed Radice Sports Complex, for any Tampa natives (or rabid Berlin Thunder fans).

Not a bad move: This morning, when I woke up, the temperature read, 9 degrees. That was a complete lie to anyone who walked outside and was greeted with nipple-hardening winds. It couldn't have gotten any higher than 30 degrees today, and looking at my little weather reader here on FireFox, tomorrow's forecast calls for some kind of flurries, and 24 degrees.

At this very moment, in the dead of the night in Tampa, it's 55 degrees. Tomorrow's forecast? 78 and sunny. The 10-day forecast is a lot of the same, with one day of possible scattered showers. I'll take February humidity in Florida, in exchange for arthritic agony in New York. So much for global warming, huh?

As for Berlin: And right now, in Berlin, it's 46 degrees. It looks like they're having a bit of a rainy spell over there, as the high for the next few days teeters between the 40's and 50's with showers.

According to weather.com, the average high for April (I won't see Berlin in March) is 55 degrees, with an average low of 39. May ranks at 65/46, and June at 71/52. From the averages, it doesn't get much warmer than that in Berlin, as June and July's average highs are 73, which are the highest of any month, and their lows are 55 and 54, respectively.

Moving, are we?: So, what does one pack for a 1-month stay in balmy Tampa, Florida in the early springtime, immediately followed by a 3-month stay in chilly-then-springlike Berlin? Well, I charted down what I packed in my bags (partly so I know where everything is, partly because I'm a big ol' nerd): 5 pairs of jeans, 5 pairs of khakis (2 tan, 2 black, 1 olive), 5 sweaters, 4 polo shirts, 9 various t-shirts, 11 pairs of boxers, 11 pairs of dress socks, 9 undershirts, 15 button-up shirts, sweatpants to sleep in, a suit, 1 blazer, 1 sportscoat, a bathing suit, 2 pairs of shorts, a fleece, a leather jacket, a brown belt, a black belt, a brown watch, a black watch, flip flops, 2 US to European power converters, 2 pairs of mesh shorts, the various chargers that go to the various electronics, my new camera, a LOT of Claratin, soap, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, the various other toiletries, my passport, an external hard drive, headphones, and, of course, this very laptop and the accessories that apply.

I tried to pack light. I really did. And, in some ways, I think I did. The 15 button-up shirts is absolutely excessive. By the fifth week, I'll probably be in a 5 or 6-shirt rotation. 10 pairs of pants is also a waste. But, I could have gone a lot more, and this all fits in my bags, so I consider it a victory.

Quick hits:

• Well, that was great timing: not a week after I wonder what Linkin Park is up to, they announce the details of their new CD, titled "Minutes to Midnight."
  
  
• Daylight Savings Time has now officially moved up three weeks. Now, at 2 AM on Sunday, March 11 (this Sunday), you'll need to "spring ahead." Huh? From the article: "The change was caused by the passage of the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005. The U.S. Department of Energy will study the effects of the change and Congress has the right to revert to the original Daylight Savings Time schedule once the study is completed. Since 1986, the U.S. has observed Daylight Savings Time from 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April until 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October."
  
  Very interesting. Unfortunately, the effects of the change may be more widespread than energy usage, as a great deal of the software on our computers and other devices (phones, iPods, etc.) aren't equipped to deal with the change in the time change. It's not Y2K, but those of you who depend on your computer to alert your times, beware. If you're going to manually change the time on Sunday (as most of your devices won't change on their own), be mindful that many of them, like cell phones and laptops, will automatically jump another hour back three weeks from Sunday. And, in October, when all those devices try to "fall ahead," you'll need to take the hour back off, as DST has also been extended by one week on the back end. "Fall ahead" doesn't happen now until the first week in November.
  

Maybe this is all a dream: For the last week and a half or so, I'd been wondering when it would hit me that this was happening. I thought it would hit me when the draft happened, and I got my rosters; not really. Maybe when I started writing the bios for all of the guys; nope. It sure didn't sink in during the week when I was playing Xbox. As I started to run final errands and pack, I began to realize that my time was running short, but not that I was moving, if that makes any sense. The last meal with my family seemed normal. Finalizing packing just seemed like, well, finishing up packing.

It really hit me twice, in two different ways, today: I got really excited about it when I was talking about European plugs with one of the other interns (go figure, way to nerd it up, Andy). The prospect of going off and doing something unknown is just a pretty exciting concept to me.

I got really sentimental when I said goodbye to my friends tonight. I'm a people person. That's just how I roll.

And I'm sure it will hit me more and more times tomorrow and will continue to do so, until it's a 100 percent reality.

Next update: from Tampa Bay, Florida.