More mediocre volley+Mercedes = Decent week

Greetings all! Well, unfortunately
there is not a whole lot to brag about this week. There has been a lot
of stuff going on with the club that has keeping me busy and at the
moment, we don't haveInternet or telephones in our apartment because our coach is moving to a new flat. I miss the Internet :(.

Yesterday we played against Durmersheim.
This is a Derby match. Basically, it is like the LA Dodgers and the SF
Giants rivalry... it is kind of a big deal. We had 700 fans in the Shwarzweldhalle, standing room only. There have never been so many fans in the hall
before and they were amazing. The only problem was that our team
was not. I am not really sure what happened, but the first set was
pretty much a blur. They would serve Vladimir float serves and bad
things would happen. We got dug, we got blocked, we served every other
ball out of bounds and pretty much we earned a 25-14 shellacking in the
first set. In the second set we showed a bit of fire and managed to
stay close until about 16-14, at which point we folded again losing
25-20. In the third we actually had a lead for the first time in the
match and won 25-21 after our block finally got on track and Vladimir
started passing towards the net. In the fourth set we were up 16-13 and
then had a brutal series of ace, hitting error, hitting error, hitting
error, side out, service error, hitting error, ball handling error,
that left us in 20-17 hole. We managed to tie it back up at 22-22, but
then made three more mistakes that basically handed them the match.
Brutal.

One highlight though was that this week Dante, Matty and I went with Philipp, Armin, and Karin Lorenz went to the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart! Sooo cool! We started out the morning with some breakfast supplied out of the
back of Armin's new travel bus. Karin and Armin are two of our biggest
supporters and they have been at every match we have played in the last
two years. Simply amazing! All photos were taken by Dante, including
this one overlooking theMercedes 40's era speedsters. Apparently, Mercedes was KarlBenz's daughter and the company actually combined with Daimler Motor Company during the second world war to stay economically viable. The interesting thing was that Daimler and Benz never met during their
lifetimes, even though they lived fairly close to each other throughout
their lives... crazy. This is a picture of my new favorite car. It is a 1955 Mercedes "gull wing", and I know Christmas is coming up, so if anyone wants to make this Libero's year (hint hint).

Anyway, it is time for me to head off to bed, so that is all for now! I hope that Halloween was sweet for all!