Since I’ve been in Vienna, our team has had to travel to a bunch of different countries to play our opponents. So far, these countries include: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania, which is super cool because I get to go to these places that I would never pay myself to go visit. But, it’s cool to say that I’ve been there. And I get to go for free! Anyways, for our latest match I found myself in a place called Krasnodar, Russia.
Our flight took off from Vienna on Tuesday, January 31st at approximately 12:10 AM. Yeah, we flew overnight, and it completely sucked. I don’t know why our club decides to put us in these ridiculous travel situations (another example would be a 20 hour bus drive to Romania), but whatever. We connected in Moscow, and I was passed out on both flights. I woke up as we were landing in Krasnodar. We collected our bags and headed to the bus. I’ve heard people call Russia “The Frozen Tundra”, and frozen it was. When we got off the plane it was about -17°C, which is about 1°F. IT WAS HORRIBLE! I had on my big winter jacket, a furry hat, and my scarf wrapped almost entirely around my face and I was still freezing.
Our flight took off from Vienna on Tuesday, January 31st at approximately 12:10 AM. Yeah, we flew overnight, and it completely sucked. I don’t know why our club decides to put us in these ridiculous travel situations (another example would be a 20 hour bus drive to Romania), but whatever. We connected in Moscow, and I was passed out on both flights. I woke up as we were landing in Krasnodar. We collected our bags and headed to the bus. I’ve heard people call Russia “The Frozen Tundra”, and frozen it was. When we got off the plane it was about -17°C, which is about 1°F. IT WAS HORRIBLE! I had on my big winter jacket, a furry hat, and my scarf wrapped almost entirely around my face and I was still freezing.
My glasses tended to fog up a bit. Haha!
We went straight to our hotel to check in, and wow, the place we were staying was a class A dump. It was one of those places that you pull up and you are like, “Is this a joke?” Literally, we all asked our coaches if they were kidding. Sadly, they weren’t kidding. I don’t even know how to describe it besides it looked just completely run down. Britney Cooper and I got into our room and our jaws literally dropped. The beds were singles and the mattress was horrific. The beds were covered with the sketchiest bedding ever. It was just all around disgusting. It made some of the places I stayed at in China looked like five-star hotels.
We had lunch, which consisted of “mystery meat” that I think was supposed be pork, and potatoes.
After lunch we had some down time. I took a nap. We had practice that night. That only lasted about an hour and a half. After our practice, the Krasnodar men’s team was practicing! JACKPOT! I LOVE MEN’S VOLLEYBALL! And our team administrator just happened to have to go to some kind of meeting. So, we were forced to wait for him to finish. Well, shucks. I guess I’ll just sit down and watch these seemingly unattractive men become instantly hot in a matter of minutes. Oh it was beautiful. The level of volleyball that men can play at makes me so jealous! I’m jealous because I know that women will never be able to play at their level. They do things that women just can’t do. Men’s volleyball is a beautiful thing to watch.
This is one of the meals they served us. We were told it was sea tongue. Yeah, whatever that is.
After watching the guys it was back to the hotel, a quick dinner, and straight to bed. The next morning at breakfast we got our information about when and where our pre-game practice would be. Since we were staying at a “fitness hotel”, there happened to be a gym right there on the first floor! Convenient! It even had a volleyball net and everything! Perfect! So we had practice at 11. Upon entering the gym, we saw that the net wasn’t set up, and we only had one volleyball to work with. Ugh, alright, that’s okay. We could stilll find something productive to do with this space. All I needed to do was to get moving and stretch and loosen up a bit. Well, we ran a bit and did a dynamic warm up and stretched out. And what did we do next? Thanks to the brilliant wisdom and resourcefulness of our coach, we played SOCCER. Literally, we played monkey in the middle. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! Soccer!? Of all the things we could’ve done…you choose soccer? I mean we had a volleyball court, we could’ve done shadow defense, or at least gone over our scouting report (not that we even had one). Oh and I should add that the last time we played soccer in practice (yes we’ve done this before) someone got hurt. So on the day leading up to the biggest match so far in the season, we are playing soccer. Needless to say, I was pissed. I spent the next couple hours in my hotel room having a good old fashion bitch session with my American teammate, Britney Cooper. So, just from this last paragraph I think you can get an idea of how volleyball is going for me…
The team we were playing that night happened to have one of my USA teammates on it. Some of you may remember Foluke Akinradewo? She went to Stanford and is pretty much a shoe in for the 2012 Olympics. Yeah, she’s a beast in the middle. Her and her team (which I’m pretty sure consisted of four members of the Russian National Team from what I’ve heard) swept us. However, it was THE MOST FUN I’ve had in a match all season! Why? Because it was high level volleyball. All the teams we’ve played so far we’ve (for the most part) been able to beat them pretty easily. I’ve been waiting for some to absolutely kick our ass, which is why I was looking forward to playing Foluke’s team so much. I got to play at the level of volleyball I need to be, and want to be playing at. And it was refreshing to know that I could still keep up and perform at that level (I’ve been plagued with the paranoia that I’ve been getting worse here). So, even though we got swept, it was a great match to play in. And all the Americans (Jenna, Britney, Foluke, and myself) all played very well. And we got to chat with Foluke for awhile afterwards. Always so awesome to see Americans and hear the English language J Another bonus, the men’s team was playing a match right after ours! YES!
The next morning we headed to the Krasnodar airport to start our journey home. We had our layover in Moscow again. The Moscow airport was pretty big and there were a ton of shops (mostly selling alcohol, which I’m discovering is typical for European airports). I saw one of those Russian fur hats that was actually kinda cute, and I completely regret not buying it. And to my complete surprise, this airport had…a BASKIN ROBBINS! Woulda thunk it? Too bad the person working the counter was on break otherwise I would’ve been pigging out on ice cream.
It was straight Vegas style in here, with girls dancing on platforms in the corners of the gym. No joke.
We had a slight adventure figuring out what gate we were at, but once we did, we boarded right away and were heading for Vienna. I got home around 6:00 PM; just in time for dinner and it was early to bed for me! All in all, a pretty cool trip to Russia for me! And there is another country I can add to my rapidly growing list of places I’ve been too J
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