Changing Hemispheres

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Trip Start Feb 01, 2012 Trip End Ongoing Next
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  Bolzano, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy
Wednesday, February 1, 2012

He did it again.  After four seasons coaching American football in Austria (1 year with the Danube Dragons and 3 years with the Vienna Vikings) he said he was "all done".  Yeah, right!  Done with Austria maybe but not done coaching in Europe.  What did he do?  He signed another contract with a European team, this time in Bolzano, Italy.  We are now officially "playing for pizza" instead of schnitzel.  Well, almost.  Bolzano is located in the very northern part of Italy and is quite Austrian in so many ways.  The city is about an hour from the border and fortunately I will be able to fall back on the little German I learned while living in Vienna as much of the population here speaks German rather than Italian.  There have probably been many blogs written by players and perhaps a coach or two but has one ever been written by the wife of a coach?  I truly would like to know so that we could connect and share our perspectives together with one another.

The flight over went quite smooth.  Sacramento - Dallas/Ft. Worth - London - Milan.  One of our local news anchors from Sacramento (Channel 3), Deidre Fitzpatrick, was on our flight as far as London.  She was covering the Super Bowl there and doing groundwork for the upcoming Olympics.  Amazingly the seat next to me was empty as was the seat directly in front.  This meant that no one would be leaning back into my lap and I could stretch out on the seat next to me during the journey.   God is good!

My husband, the coach, had said that I could only bring one bag and a carry-on.  "For five months...you've got to be kidding!"  He wasn't.  As unhappy as I was with the situation, I came to understand his reasoning.  Once in Milan, we were expected to gather our baggage and get from the airport to the train station, catch the train to Bolzano with a change in Verona, all after being awake for over 24 hours.  Surprisingly all went fairly smooth until Verona.  The train we were to catch to Bolzano had been delayed by almost two hours.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that we had struck up an acquaintance with another train passenger traveling from Milan to Bolzano.  Daniel was a young corporate lawyer from New York who was moving back to Tel Aviv.  His one last vacation before the move was to spend a week skiing in the Dolomites with friends he was joining.  He turned out to be an angel, helping us with our heavy luggage on and off the train and together we figured out "Plan B" which was to hop on a little regional train from Verona to Bolzano.  This took an extra hour in travel time but it got us there and we decided a bird in hand was our best bet since there was snow and weather issues and who knows if the other train would ever show up at all.  Daniel was a bit bummed because taking this slow train would now mean that he would miss the bus up to the ski area and would have to pay for an expensive taxi ride from Bolzano.  Unfortunately I had little compassion for the young man as I figured he would easily afford to pay whatever the price would be.

Once in Bolzano we said our goodbyes to Daniel and after stepping off the train we looked down
the platform and there was Coach Tisma waiting for us.  At this point my memories of events become blurry after so many hours of travel.  I believe we went directly to the stadium and took a quick tour of the field, weight room and office.  Then Coach graciously took us down the street a short distance and bought us all pizzas.  Once our tummies were full we were given the keys to what would be our car for the duration of the adventure and off we went, following Tisma to our apartment.

 We only got lost once in the pitch black of night but so good to finally fall into bed, get horizontal and sleep.   
 
 


 

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