Back on the winning track

Hello Everyone,

It seems by now that many of you have found out what is one of my major loves, FOOD! I figured there was no better place to start today then talking about food, the good and the bad.

As I wrote about last week Drew and I were still in Berlin on last Sunday. We had this plan to go to the zitadel (citadel), then to dinner and a movie. I figured this plan was going to be altered a little bit when I heard drew losing his guts around 11 am on Sunday. Apparently he had eaten something bad that night. We have lots of choices to pick from. It could have been 1 of 2 kebabs we ate, 1 of 3 bratwursts he had, dinner at “house of 100 beers”, or the late night hotdog from the subway station. He believes it was the hotdog from the subway. Some of you may be thinking it was just a hangover that was keeping him down. I know this is not the case because he did not get out of bed the entire day and slept all the way into Monday morning, only eating peanuts. No hangover would EVER keep Drew from eating.

So I was left to explore the rest of Berlin solo on Sunday because there was no way I was staying in the room that smelled like death. I headed out to find some lunch and stopped a small diner on the street. The lady whipped me up a nice sized piece of pork with some fresh French fries and some kind of salad (I stayed away from that). After, lunch I was heading to the 9th best thing to visit in Berlin, The citadel. I first had to do my teammate duty and pick up a huge gallon of water for Drew (this really was like a valentines date).

I’m not real sure why the citadel was ranked the 9th best thing in Berlin. It was huge fortress that was built back when they had kings. To me it did not have much glamour and was more of just some big brick building, but obviously there was a lot of history there. It was surrounded by a mot that led to a bigger water source. I think there were some shows or tours you could take, but with it being a Sunday it was downscaled. I just walked around looking at everything, and going into places I’m not sure I was suppose to. There were no signs not to enter so I was exploring everything. It took me back to my childhood days of hide and seek. I was going around looking for great places to hide. I did find some hidden stairways, but they no longer led to anything. It was snowing most of the day and after being outside for a couple hours I figured it was time to head to dinner and a movie.




I was still destined to eat at Tony Romas’ restaurant. I looked like one of those lonely guys who just got dumped on Valentines Day and was soaking it up at the local bar. I was the only one in the downstairs bar. The main restaurant was on the second floor. I ate my meal pretty much in silence while watching Manchester United (soccer team) run over whomever they were playing. The only people I saw were the ones heading to the restroom to wash all that rib juice off their hands. The meal consisted of a nice portion of baby back ribs and steak. They also have some of the best coleslaw I have had. I just recently started liking coleslaw (within the past two years), and it is quickly moving up my favorite foods list. I even splurged for some dessert, a skillet brownie toped with some vanilla ice cream and what looked like an entire can of whipped cream (50 euros later I was full). This is the perfect time to answer the question about how I eat all this and keep it off.

Very simple answer, lose around 700-1500 calories in morning workout and then evening practice lose 1000-2000 calories again. A couple of guys wear the heart monitors during practice that give the calorie countdowns, along with the heart rates. The real question is what I will do when I no longer play, because I hate running just to run. I need a purpose like score a goal or hit a ball. Hopefully my local recreation center will have some competition for me to continue playing for fun.

The Game

We finally got back into the win column, although it wasn’t all that pretty again. The team we were playing was a little shorthanded considering they just cut there top 3 scorers, most likely due to money problems. Atlas came out shooting pretty well in the second quarter and we actually were down by 10 at halftime. We played much better in the second half building a 10 point lead of our own and winning by around 14. Kevin was one assist shy of a triple double, and Skip, Drew and Sefton all had pretty good games.

Personally, I am beyond frustrated with myself right now. I have shot 4-15 in the last 4 games behind the arc. They are shots that I should be knocking down. I have had some trouble lately getting warmed up in the games. I’m still having a tough time adjusting to only playing 20 minutes or less a game. I was 0-2 this game with 2 points from the foul line in about 15 minutes of play. I had 1 steal and 2 charges. I thought charges counted as steals, but I guess I was wrong because they only had me down for 1.

We now have two weeks off, with an all-star game being played next week. Drew is playing for the international side while Kiko is playing for the polish side. I think the town is about a 6 hour train ride. I’m trying to talk some of the players into going for the weekend.

These photos are all from Berlin! our hotel, bratwurst stand, restaurant we ate at, a random Toys R us, and the stadium!







Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

My First European Futbol Match

Hello Everyone,

Things have started to get a little mundane here. The only thing that happened this week was it snowed twice. This reminded me a little of Indiana. It has not snowed but a couple times in Kolobrzeg. Now in the middle of February it snows multiple times.

We headed to Turow on Thursday for the game that would be played Friday. The trip was about 6 hours and we stopped outside of Berlin for burger king. We cut through Germany on the auto-ban since the town Turow plays in is real close to the boarder. We stayed at a pretty nice hotel with BIG beds and great wireless internet (the two most important things). They also had some great food for us, with chicken and fish the first night. The gym they play in is smaller then it looks on television, but they packed that place. The fans were loud the entire game with chants and cheers.

We came out and shot ourselves in the foot early again with missed open shots and turnovers. We went to halftime down 12. We made a run to get back in the game and cut the lead to 4 a couple times. It seemed like every time we would get close they would knock down a big shot or we would make a mistake on defense. I had an ok game scoring 11 points 2-6 from three. I still have been struggling a little bit from the outside missing some open threes I don’t usually miss. I got some confidence back after knocking the 2 down in the second half.

They are a good team in a tough place to play. I defiantly thought we could beat them with the good week of practice we had. Every team has raised their game up now with the season coming to an end and playoffs approaching. We are defiantly going to have to raise ours up. The good thing is the team below us helped us out by loosing. So we are still in fourth with 3 home games coming up. I hope we can get a lot of loud fans to come to the game as we need some big wins.

Drew and I came to Berlin after the game with coach. We just wanted to have a weekend away and see something different. We booked a pretty cheap hotel that coach thought was in the red light district. Luckily it was about a block outside of it. It looked very shady from the outside when we pulled up. It turned out to be a steal. The room is pretty big and the location is awesome. I guess there is something to be said for a little time and patience on the internet.
On Saturday we were heading to some citadel to look at when we ran into a bunch of soccer fans on the train. They said they were heading to the Hertha Berlin vs. Munich match. The game was sold out as it was 2nd place vs. 3rd place, winner takes first. We decided to go and try to scalp some tickets. Turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. The game goes into the top 5 funniest events I have been to. The tickets were right in the middle of the “crazy” fan section. They were waving the flags all game, chanting, and singing. Hertha won 2-1 which is who we were cheering for if not for the simple fact we did not want beer poured on us. It was a great game in a great atmosphere in a great stadium.

I was surprised to see that tailgating in the parking lot was not done here. We were at the game about 2 hours early, and of course there are a lot of people there, but they are just buying from the vendors. Then I realized why, most Europeans take the train to the games, where as in America every one drives their gas guzzlers to the game which allows for that tailgating scene I’m used to. Of course this is only one game I have been to and it could be different at other stadiums and other countries. The thing that surprised me the most was just how dedicated the fans our. After the victory we saw 2 grown men crying, and the fans stay 30 minutes after the game to perform more chants and dance with the players as they came over to the section. It was really a cool scene. Little did we know, the real adventure was starting after the game.

When you sell out a stadium with 70,000 plus people they have to go somewhere. Like I stated above most of these people took the train to the game. As you filtered down to the train station you saw security trying to control the flow, but with no luck at all as people were pushing and weaving there way through. When the trains did come everyone then played “how many sardines can I get in the can”. Drew and I finally shoved our way on to a train and headed to find dinner.

We were walking through Potsdamer Platz, which is a main shopping and entertainment scene in East Berlin, trying to find dinner. We stumbled upon one of Drew’s favorite, a small kiosk grilling up bratwurst. We grabbed one of those for the walk while we kept searching out for a restaurant. We ended up eating at a place called “house of 100 beers”. They had some authentic Berlin dishes, or at least that is what it was advertised as. I had some great French onion soup, and pork schnitzel with mushroom sauce. It was a great meal and relatively inexpensive for a big city.

We are going to try and catch the movie “international” tonight and enjoy some Tony Roma’s, Mmmm steak and ribs!

I will hopefully be able to upload some pictures and video from the trip on Tuesday or Wednesday so hang in there till then!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Tough Week

Hello Everyone,

It was a very disappointing week for a couple reasons. I’m not sure how many of you got to watch the super bowl, but I had the chance. I thought it was a great game, even though I missed the whole fourth quarter (which was the quarter that made it great). Anyway there was a commercial that caught my eye. Denny’s (a somewhat popular restaurant in America) was giving away free “grandslams”.

The image on the left is the ‘grandslam”. All these items may not look like much when they are by themselves, but put them all together and you have a glorious breakfast dish. Apparently my family and friends don’t appreciate these food items. None of them went to Denny’s and devoured this breakfast. At this current moment I would pay upwards of $30 for a breakfast like this. All though you think I may be crazy because you can make a breakfast like this at home for like $5. I am lazy and can not find all the ingredients for this breakfast here in Poland. I may be wrong and I’m sure my polish friends will correct me if I am, but I can’t find a breakfast place here that serves anything close to this. My only request is please don’t take for granted all the wonderful breakfast places we have in America, IHOP, Cracker Barrel, Denny’s, Bob Evans, and all those small town dinners. Man I’m salivating all over my keyboard on to the next subject.

The Team

It was a terrible week for me as I was trying to heal my foot from constant pain. We finally got it where it was not hurting so bad and had my first practice on Thursday. Just as things were turning around for me on the injury front, I decided to go and punch the rim, literally. I was attempting to block a shot and guess I forgot I was under the rim. My hand felt like it hit an iron circle! It bruised up pretty bad and I had difficult time shooting and dribbling on Friday. This def. goes down as one of the top five dumbest things I have done in a practice.

If the first two paragraphs were not disappointing enough, I now have to explain our first home game since December 20th. I could just say we lost and end it there, but the way we lost just sickens us.

The main stat that sticks out is that we turned the ball over 23 times. The 23rd time was with 6 seconds left in the game down one. Meaning we did not even get a shot at winning the game. Another stat is that the other team made more free throws then we attempted. With these two stats we should not even of had a chance at winning.

We played pretty solid defense holding them to only 64 points. We just were never able to get anything going with our shots. I was 1-6 from 3 and 0-2 from 2. After watching the tape today, they were good shots, shots that I usually knock down. I had a solid game defensively, having 4 steals and 4 rebounds.

This makes 3 losses in a row. On the bright side, we are still in 4th place with 5 games left. This week of practice will be very important as we try to get back to playing like US. I think the team has lost some focus that we will need to get back. It is not time to hit the panic button, but it is time to buckle down and get back to business. We have a tough road game against Turow on Saturday.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Should of had this one!

Hello Everyone,

I will start off by saying hello to all my new polish readers! I saw that the article was run in the sports paper and also online. This probably means an extra 3 people now read my very unimportant words. Although, I did have a young fan come up to me at the charity game and say he reads it and that “it is great!” so thanks for that.

So since I have all these new polish readers, what is the deal with the pillows here? They are huge rectangles with very little “fluff” or padding. This has been my experience in every hotel along with the pillows that were in my apartment when I arrived. Every morning when I wake, my neck feels like it has been riding “The Beast” roller coaster all night! I’m sure most of the hotels we stay at our budget friendly to save the team money, but some of these pillows are worst then a cardboard box. In the states when you go to a hotel it is usual an upgrade from your normal bed. They have the best sheets, best pillows, and best comforters. One would want to spend weeks at some of these hotel beds. I’m not trying to sound like the spoiled American because trust me there are some bad hotels in America as well, but is it that hard to get some “fluff” in the pillow?

Okay on to the important stuff!

The Team

We spent the entire week practicing outside. Well technically it was inside at the high school gym, but there was very little difference from the cold outside and the cold in the gym. They rented out the gym the entire week to what looked like a job fair or some kind of conference. Of course this would happen the week of one of the most important games. We were unable to get any extra shots all week in the morning and the high school gym does not have the correct three point line. So instead of getting extra shots we were able to practice on our hand ball skills.

We left on Saturday for the game via a rental van and coach’s car. It was about a 4 hour drive to Sopot. We stopped about halfway for a touch of America, where Drew and Sefton were able to get their two favorite fast food chains in America! Pizza Hut (Drew’s) and KFC (sefton’s). We then proceeded to check into the hotel. The only way you would be able to find this hotel is by typing in “cheapest hotel in Poland”. This place looked straight out of 1950’s.

The pictures should back this claim up. I was going to give the hotel a little credit and say that the bathroom had at least been renovated, but apparently they forgot one of the most important parts, the shower head. When you turned on the shower, it sprayed about 15 different ways and none of the ways were straight. There was still hope for this place as the receptionist said they had wireless internet and gave us a password. Really that is all you need from a hotel is good internet and a good bed. Since the bed was out of the question with another one made for people that are 6 foot and under we were left with “MORZE” the password that would make everything ok with the hotel. Well as you can see how this theme is going the password left us hanging and we were left with entertainment from our 1964 TV, with its messed up picture and polish shows that we can’t understand.


THE GAME

We got started very quickly hitting our first 5 shots and building a quick 12 point lead. The second quarter was a back in forth battle with us going to the locker room up 7. In the third they quickly erased that lead and built one of there own going up 7 before the 4th. This is where the game gets weird. I don’t want to criticize the refs again because honestly they officiated a good game, but they did make one call that you just can’t make. We were up 5 with 30 seconds and they called an intentional foul on an and 1 lay-up. He made the free throw and they got the ball back and they scored which tied the game. It took overtimes to decide and eventually we came up on the losing end. I thought Drew and Kiko played really well. Drew was battling there big men all night and kiko hit some big shots. Kevin also had a really good game running the point.

Personally, I did not have much time to do a lot. I hit my first three of the game and went 1-2 for the game and 1-1 from 2’s. I injured my foot that held me out for two practices and put me in jeopardy to play the game. I took a couple of injections to take away the pain. This might have been some of the reason I did not play very much, but I felt great out there.

After a long road stint we finally play a game at home on Saturday, which is must win if we want to stay in the top 4.

Until next time!



This is BC gone for now