It had been a long day considering, hardly any of us had slept on the plane. After the match Heidi Illustre and I decided to go on a “recruiting” trip to Charleroi, Belgium. An American player, Molly Stark, had come to watch our match and we would travel with her tonight to check out the team. They had a lot of injuries and were in need of some players now. We rode 2 hours in the car there and tried to sleep some. By this time both of us were dragging but we had to still meet the team and coaches tonight. We drove straight to the bar which, is of course attached to their gym. Here we met the coaches and a few players. Everybody was really nice and most spoke English. Molly talked to some other players and decided we should meet them at an Irish pub downtown but just for a little while because she knew we were exhausted. The two girls we met were French and Hungarian but both spoke English very well. The five of us sat at a table and got a lot of attention. At one point a guy came up and gave each of us 6 roses! Eventually after Heidi and I could barely keep our eyes open, we headed to Molly’s studio apartment.
Well we definitely caught up on our sleep because Molly had to roll us out of bed a 2 in the afternoon. We immediately met the Hungarian girl for lunch at a great restaurant. Neither Heidi nor I knew what to order so Molly had to explain everything to us. After lunch we had to run some errands with Molly and this gave us a chance to see the town. It was a small town but pretty close to other major cities. We went to the car dealership that sponsored their team because they had sold the car they were lending Molly and they wanted it back today. She was not happy because she needed to show us around somehow! After a lot of sweet-talking in which, Heidi and I couldn’t understand, we drove away in a car much nicer than the one we started with. Molly dropped us of at the Hungarian’s apartment so she could meet with her coach. Here we watched “Days of our Lives” which was in English but about 6 years behind the states program. We drove to practice at 6 and Heidi and I were both a little nervous because we had to participate. This would be our first European practice and it was definitely different. Of course Molly had to translate everything to us because we couldn’t understand the coach. Basically the practice consisted of a lot of hitting especially for Heidi and myself since we were “trying out”. During drills when the coach yelled something, we had no idea who he was talking to, we just hoped he wasn’t yelling at us. After practice we showered there and ate at the attached bar: steak and french-fries with mayo. Here we met the team’s manager who was in charge of contracts. He explained to us the situation their team was in and how they probably couldn’t offer us what we could make. Both of us explained that we would not stay now that we had just come for the experience. He was very nice and we assured him that we had a great time and had both learned a lot. After this long discussion we headed back to Molly’s to watch a movie because she didn’t feel very well.
Today when we got up it was a little earlier but not by too much. We headed into town to grab a quick bite to eat at one of their fast food restaurants called Quick---appropriate. After this we headed to the train station so that we could meet up with the rest of the group. In order to get back to the group we had to switch trains 3 times—thank God there was two of us. Molly mapped out everything for us including times and towns but this trip still turned out to be an experience in itself. |
