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The University of Utah Athletics
Volleyball's European Trip Journal - Days 2 & 3
3/20/2007 12:00 AM | Volleyball
March 20, 2007
Day 2
Today we got to sleep in until 10:00, and then we ate breakfast in our hotel in Venice. There was a crazy machine that boiled eggs for you, it was awesome! After breakfast we took taxis over to the train station in Venice where the players rode the train to Trieste, Italy...WITHOUT the coaches!! All of us had our red jackets and sweatshirts on so the other people in the train station were staring at us! The train ride took about two hours, so a lot of us fell asleep. After we got to Trieste we sat in front of the train station and waited for the Slovenian coaches to come and pick us up. Once again, everyone was staring. The coaches finally picked us up and we drove through Slovenia on our way to Pula, Croatia.
When we arrived around 5:00 pm we put our things in our hotel rooms and ate a late lunch. After lunch we decided to walk down to the beach outside of our hotel. It was beautiful! The sun was beginning to set as we got there so we got some great pictures. We took some "skate-or-die" pictures off of a wall. (In skate-or-die pictures you jump in the air and make a weird pose while someone takes your picture.)
After the sun went down, we went back to the hotel and changed our clothes for practice. When we were walking down the stairs to the lobby, Whitney jumped off the stairs and hit her head on a low ledge in the ceiling. She was bleeding like crazy! She had to go to the hospital to get stitches. There was only one doctor there seeing everyone in the emergency room. When she got an x-ray to see if her neck was okay, it looked like there was a big hole in the middle of her head. The doctor was really confused until he figured out it was from the elastic in her pony tail! She ended up getting two stitches in her head. Don't worry, she's doing fine!
We practiced against a team called Nova KBM from Maribor, Slovenia. The youngest girl on their team was seventeen and the oldest were twenty-five years old. We played a lot of wash drills. We played one drill where both teams started at twenty points and we got free balls until one team got to twenty five. We won the drill! It was fun. We also did a lot of serve and pass drills so that we could get used to how the balls float differently here. Only four of the girls on our team brought water bottles, so we all had to share. We were filling them up every five minutes!! We had to walk through a bar to get to the gym where we practiced. It was SO smoky! It was a lot different from how the gyms are set up in America.
After practice we ate dinner with the team we practiced against. We didn't get to talk to them very much, but hopefully we will get to talk to them more tomorrow and the next day. Dinner was really good! For both lunch and dinner we had pasta and rice with red sauce and some kind of meat. The desserts here are awesome too! We're all eating our fair share...just don't tell Beth! Tomorrow we get to go see the Coliseum in Pula. Its going to be fun!
Kathryn Lovell Haynie and Chelsey Sandberg
Day 3
Bok from CROATIA! Connie here and today has been a very adventurous day. We started our day in Pula where we spent a couple of hours sight seeing. We got to see the second largest coliseum in Europe compared to the coliseum in Rome. (Where we will all be in a couple of days). The coliseum was so beautiful and full of history where it sat directly off the pier of Pula. After looking around at the history of the Roman Empire we all got to enjoy shopping in the city of Pula, where many bought souvenirs to remember this trip. Sitting in the pier was also one of the largest boats in the world that carries cars.
Continuing on in our journey we took an hour in a half drive to the city of Rijeka, Croatia. Once we got into the city we ran into a little bit of rain. This was an understatement. However, that did not stop the Utes from enjoying the beautiful city that none of us have ever seen. That is except for Heather, who played professional here once before. The city of Rijeka was a beautiful city with houses placed on the steep slopes surrounding this area. After arriving we all got to go around in groups to once again shop. Many bought things again and it was a blast walking around in the rain. At four thirty we all met up again and traveled to the gym.
Before going into the gym most of us walked up to the castle that overlooks the city. Trsat was the name of this castle and it was amazing. As we all ran back to the gym, to get out of the rain, we were getting ready for the game. When we walked into the gym there was a men's basketball practice going on, which entertained us for awhile.
Although we lost our first match 1-3 to the number one team in Croatia, we all played really well and had a lot of fun playing such a fast paced volleyball game. Well I must say Bok Bok (goodbye) we are eating pizza and getting ready to drive back to Pula.
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