The Arrival

Well, ok. I’m kind of almost settled here now.

Posted below are the last few days of entries, but I’ll explain things from today’s point of view first.

Today was the first official day of work. When they told me that the Thunder had the best facilities of any NFL Europa team, they weren’t kidding—we have a real, real office, with a really nice locker room, and better practice fields than we had in Tampa.

The office is, I’d guess….30 people. All of them are really, really nice. I’m also very impressed by not only how many people here speak English, but how well they all speak it. I almost feel dumb for not speaking another language fluently. (I try to talk to our Mexican players in Spanish, but they’re better at English than I am in Spanish…)

It’s chilly here. I’d say it was about 45 degrees today, with a stiff wind. (7 Celsius.) Not too bad, but after spending a month in Tampa, and 6 months in California, that’s a wake-up call. I’m in a windbreaker and jeans. (yes, jeans at the office.)

We also had a tour of Olympic Stadium today, where we’ll be playing our games. It’s…freaking AWESOME. I’m trying to post the pictures…once I have an internet connection worth anything, I’ll get them up here.

I’m still kind of tired, and honestly, a little drunk…I had my first two real German beers tonight; a light, then a dark, hefeweizen. Strongly recommended.

Scroll down for a recap of the traveling from yesterday (and, the day before…wow, we traveled for a long time). The first post is from the plane, and the second is live from Berlin.

Sorry this is kind of ramble-ing...but, I am beat. And adjusting to German beer... (Meghan already got a drunk dial.)

But on that note, I need to call it a night. I am EXHAUSTED. The updates will be more frequent from now on. Also, I’ll post some sweet pictures once I can.Hey…it’s my birthday on Friday!

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So, a few weeks ago, Beth, the sassy PR assistant with Frankfurt, sent me a text message. “So, do you need me to send you the link to your blog?” She’s quite the saucy one, but, she’s right.

Sorry for the scarcity (ie, ZERO) updates since I hit Tampa. I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to maintain a blog during training camp. Football training camp is usually completely nuts…waking up before the sun, working well past its departure, and then doing it all again the next day.

I’m sorry. Again. I promise it won’t happen again.

What makes it so nuts, you ask? Well…a couple of things. First, training camp typically means a team has a ton of new faces to deal with. With NFL Europe…well, every player is new to the team. So, much of the work in the first two weeks is getting acquainted with the players, making sure that you’re around to answer any questions you have, and so on.

One thing we did was individual interviews with certain position groups, so we could get to know the background stories of our guys. I must say, we have some really interesting, great guys on our team. I’ll get to that in another entry.

Second, this is really the first time I’ve had this much responsibility before. I must admit, at first, it was really overwhelming. Never in my life had I forgotten so many things people told me, or just done things blatantly wrong and not even noticed. It took me a good week or so to really adjust to it. It isn’t like I had too much to do and just got swamped; I just needed to adjust. I hadn’t been THAT busy since I was doing Watermelon Bust back at Vanderbilt, and even that had some down periods. Some days during camp, it would be full speed ahead from 6 AM to 1 AM, for a few straight days.

After a few days of that, I was really starting to crack. There was one day where I was just braindead. I couldn’t shut off a car alarm. I dropped 100 copies of rosters on the ground. I fell asleep while I was changing my shirt. I was just a total mess.

But, not only did I eventually adjust, but things started to calm down toward the end. Lots of the work during the first two weeks were getting our players’ media bios all squared away, and finishing off the Thunder’s pre-season release, which, if I figure out how to post on this site, I’ll do it.

Well…Tampa went by in a heartbeat. I didn’t even unpack while I was here. (I pretty much wore the same outfit for three weeks anyway. (that sounds disgusting, but, it’s really not what it sounds like. I washed my clothes.) (Once.)

That being said, I’ve continued my streak of updates when I fly; I’m on the plane to Germany right now.

This is kind of surreal. Remember how it didn’t hit me that I was going to Tampa, until pretty much a few hours before I left? It took even longer this time.

Part of that was because I didn’t have much of a chance to sit around and think about things. Being busy keeps your mind off it. Packing my bags, I didn’t really feel anything. The five hour bus ride to Miami, it didn’t really bug me.

(The travel itinerary: Five hour bus ride to Miami, to board a nine hour flight to Frankfurt, followed by a three hour flight to Berlin.)

Checking my bags, whatever. You know when it hit me? Sitting in my seat on the plane, as we’re taking off, I looked out the window and said, “Bye bye, America.”

That’s when I looked around, and said, “Holy crap, I’m going to Germany.”

I just sat back in my seat, closed my eyes, and contemplated that for a moment. Damn. How the heck did I get to this point? What’s going to happen over the next four months? What am I going to do without my Playstation 2 for four months?!

***

I guess they dig the interns here: So one night in Tampa (the eve of my first day off), a whole bunch of us went into downtown Tampa. My boss, Cem (pronounced Gem) and I started off at this club, whose name I forget, which was so-so. My roommate, Joe, the PR intern—I mean, U.S. PR assistant—with Hamburg, was at this club across the street, with a line that went around the block. He insisted that I went over there. So, Cem and I stood in line (surrounded by 16 year old girls, which was just fantastic.) (sarcasm.)

All of a sudden, out walks Joe. He waves his hand and says, “Come with me.” Cem and I blindly followed. Joe walks to the front and says, “We’re with the NFL.” Not only do we skip the line, but we got VIP wristbands! Woot!

It was my first time being at VIP in a club. It was pretty cool! The room was much smaller and, clearly, the entrees had much more freedom as to what they did while in the VIP confines. I stuck with my Miller Lite and observed the scene.

You could buy a bottle of champage for pretty cheap. They had little rooms off to the side which—well, I couldn’t tell what was going on in there. I could see that you could buy a cigar and get a seat on a big, cushy couch. The other doors in this room were closed, meaning, I assume, they were in use. For what, I was left to guess.

And beyond that, the club had two more levels above the VIP area. One story up with the Latin music room. Wow, Latina girls can dance. Then, the last level was “The Roof,” which, appropriately, was on the roof.

On a crystal clear night in Tampa, feeling about 65 degrees with a light wind, this was clearly the best place to be. It offered a neat view of the area we were in (Ybor City), and you could get drinks up there, too.

Yup, Joe has balls: That’s really typical Joe. I need to give credit to the guy. He really has no fear in those situations. Where I’m just fine hanging out with a drink in the regular area, however he figured out that just saying “NFL” got us the red carpet treatment, he did.

That’s how he rolls. He’ll just start a conversation with anyone and go with it. He’s an interesting guy; he seriously reminds me of another side of me, a person that, with a few experiences going in different directions, I easily could have become.

Joe is driven by the desire to prove his doubters wrong, and to make his enemies look second-class. (I call him Gilbert Arenas.) He seriously busted his ass during training camp; his motivation, so it seems, was his distaste with previous work experiences, and his desire to show them that he’s better than that.

He’s with the Hamburg Sea Devils, who I affectionately call “The Team of Stars.” We’ll get into that later.

Nap time.

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I’m in Berlin.

Quite a day of traveling I’ve had. Buses, planes, buses…I’m pretty beat.

Last time I wrote, I was mid-way between Miami, Florida and Frankfurt. That was a long, long plane ride.

The airport in Frankfurt felt like what I imagined purgatory to be. We weren’t in our final destination yet. It was 6 AM at the airport, so it was eerily silent and empty, and foreign feeling (I wonder why?). No one knew what to do, and we all just sat there for 2 hours for the next leg of our trip.

I’d say 99% of the team passed out on the 1-hour flight from Frankfurt to Berlin.

When we got off the plane in Berlin…we had a Fan Fest waiting for us! Cheerleaders lined the entrance from the gate. Fans with Thunder flags and banners stood waiting. Okay, there were like 50 fans—but it was pretty cool!

Taking the bus from the airport over to the hotel, all of the players were wide awake, but silent. We were all looking out the bus, taking in our surroundings. Every now and then, someone would chirp out something that caught their eye out of the window, but other than that, it was mostly silent fascination of another world in another language.

It’s really incredible. When we got here, the team planned a whole big day of touring for us—that way, we can beat jet lag.

The bus tour itself was okay, but it was just neat to see part of the city as soon as you arrive. I’d hate to sit around in a city like this for days and can’t be able to say that I had seen anything.

Anyhoo…we got to check out Brandenburg Gate, and some of downtown Berlin (which really, really reminds me of downtown NYC), and Checkpoint Charlie, which also had a pretty neat WWII museum.

I’m trying to put my pictures up on the Kodak Easyshare, but I have almost zero internet at the hotel…bear with me.

Hard Rock Café for dinner. Burgers and fries. How (yawn) American.

In case you can’t tell, I’m rambling-tired.

Anyhoo…tomorrow’s the first day of work. I’ll give back something juicy then.