Day 6, January 13, 2007
Maribor, Slovenia
By, Melissa Mulick, Seattle University

Today was our second full day in Maribor, and I was able to see pretty much all there was to see of the town yesterday. We're staying right at the foot of a ski resort, and while I would have loved for there to be more snow so we could ski, it's nice to be able to walk around and see the town without freezing.

I slept in until about 12, catching up on a lot of lost sleep from traveling and going out in Prague. My team (the white team) met up at around 1:00 to walk down to a gym that's really close to our hotel. When we got there we found out that the gym was only reserved for an hour, so Cory had to make some phone calls, and we ended up switching gyms. We played a juniors team in a gym that was about the size of the court plus five feet all the way around. The girls we played ranged in age from about 17-19, and while they were pretty good, it was easier to get inside their heads, and we ended up sweeping them in four games.

Playing with different girls every day from different systems all over the country has been difficult, but we're finally getting into a flow. We still only had one “true middle blocker”, but the girls who stepped in to play did a pretty good job. 

After the match we went back to the hotel to shower and change, and we were invited to dinner at a winery with the coaches of the junior team we played. Cory drove a van full of players to a nearby town and we ended up at a winery out in the middle of nowhere. We had about a three-hour Slovenian meal, with plenty of wine. There were about 5 courses, with a selection of 5 or 6 main dishes. It was one of the most impressive meals I've ever had, and although it was traditional Slovenian meal, everything tasted somewhat familiar and it was all really good.

Later that night, a bunch of the girls got together and we took cabs into downtown Maribor to a club called “Samsara” in the new Koloseo Theater-Club Complex. This club had two different rooms, one with “Techno” music and another with popular American music. We stayed and danced until almost 3 in the morning. On the way home we asked the cab driver to stop at a 24 hour hamburger stand that we later found out was really well known. The hamburgers were huge, and a perfect end to our second day in Maribor.