Veselé Vánoce

That’s Czech for Merry Christmas if you haven’t figured that out already. I should tell you a little about what I have learned and experienced with the Czech Christmas traditions. First off on December 5th an andel, čert, and Mikolauš come around to the children and give them candy if they have been good. In English it’s an angel, devil and kind of like a Santa Claus. The children believe in these three characters kind of like how (some) kids in North America believe in Santa Claus. It’s really funny though as the devil carries around a big sack and threatens the children that if they have been bad then he will put them in the sack, but he usually just gives them a lump of coal.

Now as for the Christmas Day celebrations here in the Czech Republic that actually happens on the 24th not the 25th. Why I’m not sure. They do give presents but instead of Santa giving them they are told that they are gifts from baby Jesus. They typically have a huge meal in the evening, open presents, and then head to a midnight mass.

Now here’s where it gets interesting...the traditional meal is fish and not just any fish - carp. Now from what I know I would not consider carp a delicacy or something that I would consider special. More like they are bottom feeders in lakes and contain many bones in them. According to what I’ve been told the carp here have been farm raised, I guess that should make me feel better. Now where would you get these fish you might ask. The grocery store? Nope, you can get them right on the street. That’s right, about December 20ish or so people come with big tubs containing live carp and just set up on the side of the street. People come pick out their fish or more like the weight they want and then they kill it and filet it right there on the spot for them. I was Christmas shopping the other day, and was walking down the street with my head down and all of a sudden I heard a big THUMP! What the heck...just a guy killing a fish with a mallet. Crazy I tell you! Here are some pictures of the process of it all, and a video of it. I actually can't get the video up and running at the moment but will try again later today.



There can be quite the line up



Notice the fish scales and "stuff" on the street

The Never Ending Road Trip

Day 1:
My day started way too early at 5:30am. We were to be at the rink at 6:30am so we could be on the road by 7am. The destination for the day was Slovenia, not to be confused with Slovakia. Where is that you ask? Well it’s south of Austria and east of Italy if that helps you out. We were to play Maribor a team in our European Hockey league. After about 10 hours and a couple of bad Czech movies later we arrived in Maribor for our game. From the ten hours long bus trip I have to admit that my legs were in horrible shape, and I don’t think I have had a more terrible first period than I did that game. Finally in the third period I felt them come back to me. We ended up squeezing out a win coming from behind to beat them 4-3. From here we were off to Kranj, the site of our next game the following day. Why we just didn’t spend the night in Maribor I’m not sure. Kranj was where we were playing but not actually spending the night as we were to stay in the resort town of Bled. We finally get to our hotel at around 1:30am, but not before first going to the wrong rink to drop off our equipment, finally heading to the correct rink then waiting another half an hour as they forgot to bring the key to the dressing room. You would think this would be the end of our day but nope...apparently the hotel the Triglav team had booked for us was in fact a hostel. Our coach was not impressed at all, as this was way below his standards. I’m glad he has high standards but at this point I really didn’t care if I was to sleep in a 10 bed room, I just wanted to sleep. This was one huge mess to say the least. The people at the hostel spoke English so Sara did a great job translating in broken Czech between those people and our coach. After waiting outside for about 30min we headed inside with our stuff to spend the night. In the mean time Karl and Smarta, a girl on our team who speaks broken English set out to find another hotel for the team. The workers at the hostel had told us that we would not find another hotel anywhere at this time in the night. Well they were wrong as just up the street we found a great hotel that we moved to that night (morning). So after being up for 23 hours, we finally were able to get to sleep. I have to say that the funniest part of the night was when we were waiting outside of the hostel and the worker told us he had to legally close the hostel at 2am cause of some restrictions. This was relayed on to our coach, Karl, and he proceeds to pull out some card from his wallet, which saying it didn’t matter because of this. The guy was like that’s great, but you are dealing with different police here in Slovenia. So as to what Karl showed him from his wallet, I really don’t know, nor did I ask any more questions, but let’s just say my coach has some powerful friends.


Our coach and trainer cutting up salami and buns on the bus...very European

Day 2:
We awoke to some amazing scenery as we were staying in the pretty town of Bled, as you can see from the pictures below. Breakfast was at 10am and then we were able to go back to bed until lunch at 2pm. From there we were able to take a walk around the town, very picturesque. Then it was off to our game in Kranj at 6:45pm, which in fact we thought it was at 5pm. I should mention that this rink was still under construction and half built. The dressing rooms were mostly done but the stands and everything else still looked like a construction site. It was a terrible game as they are not very good but even with that we only won 6-2. After the game it was back on the bus for some more traveling as we were off to Italy for our next two games. We made it in to Bolzano at around 2:30am so it was actually an early night for us.

View from my hotel room

Hanging out on the dock with teammates

Beautiful Scenery
Day 3:
It was a pretty uneventful day as we of course slept in and just hung out in the hotel and had an amazing pregame pasta meal. We were actually not playing in Bolzano that day but instead Agordo, located in a tourist town in the Alps. It was only about 150km away but took 3 hours to get there cause we were constantly on switch back roads going up and down a couple of mountains. The view was amazing and I really enjoyed the scenery once my gravol (motions sickness pill) kicked in. We beat them 9-3 and continued the winning streak. The owner of our team drove out to the game and afterwards celebrated the win by giving everyone shots of pure Italian whiskey. I’m not quite sure why, as the next day was our big game, but it was pretty funny none the less as he was really excited and was even giving out small shots to the young players on our team. After a fantastic post game Italian pizza meal it was back on the bus for our trip back to Bolzano, another three hours on the Alpine road and home around 3:30am.

Day 4:
Finally we were able to sleep in until noon, letting me have the most solid sleep I had gotten since being on the trip. We checked out of the hotel around 2pm but not first before having a crazy photo session by the hotel’s pool. I guess the team is making a calendar and so we were to put on our jersey’s and pants for some random pictures. I can’t ever see this happening back in Canada. The game against Bolzano was pretty huge for our team. They are in second place in the standings and we are in first. There are no playoffs in the league, why I have no idea, so according the point totals if we were to win that game then we would win the league title. We ended up winning 2-0. It was a pretty good game, I’m sure the scored would have been more to our favour if it wasn’t the fourth game in four days. Chelsa and I both scored and Sara had the shutout, so we were pretty pumped with our Canadian connection. It was great to celebrate after the game with everyone and what would be a Czech celebration without our coach buying the team beers at the bar after the game. It was then back on the bus for another 9 hour trip home to Prague. The first couple hours of the drive was pretty great as we pretty much drove through all of Austria to get back to Prague, but by 5:30am we were pretty delirious. Sara, Chelsa and I thought it would be great to top the trip off with McDonald’s breakfast at 7am on the way back to the house. Currently I am super exhausted and have no idea what time it is as my sleeping patterns are way off but am happy as we are now the Eastern Europe Women’s Hockey League Champions!




View from my hotel of the Italian Alps

Christmas Market!

Christmas time in Europe is just fantastic. They may not have the snow quite like in Saskatchewan or the cold, but they sure know how to do it up and make it festive. The big thing here is Christmas markets. Last year I was fortunate enough to head to Munich for a few days and partake in their huge Christmas market. That means tons of cute little stand selling all types of knicknacks and crafts along with all types of food and gluwein, which is hot mulled wine.

This past Monday on our day off, Chelsa, Sara and I headed down to one of the Christmas markets in Prague to do a little shopping and take in the festivities. The atmosphere is just fantastic and it was so much fun to eat hot candy covered almonds as well as different types of Czech pastries. Unfortunately it started to downpour while we were there - it's not quite cold enough for snow. So we took cover under an outside cafe where they have outdoor heaters and blankets. Really kind of cozy! Here are some pictures of the market. Enjoy!



Old Town Christmas Market



Chelsa and I eating traditional trdelik



Market at dusk



The market and I

I Hate Losing

Well as you can tell from the title, things did not go as planned in Berlin. We played our first game against Lugano, last year’s champion from the Swiss League. Since I played in Switzerland last year I have actually played against their team before. We were tied 2-2 going into the third period and then I’m not sure what happened as we let in 4 goals that period for them to win 6-2. We could definitely play with them, and it didn’t really help that we had 17 penalties to their 7. It was a crazy game to say the least with there rarely being a full five on five on the ice. We were disappointed with the loss but I think it did give our team some confidence it was the toughest game we have played all year.

Then the next game we played against a French team, they were not all that bad but we came out flying and beat them 8-1. So that set the stage for our game on Sunday night. We played against the German team, Berlin. We had both beaten the French team and lost to Lugano, therefore the winner of our game was to go on to Sweden for the next round as the top two teams advance. It was a great game to play in, the type of games that I wished I played in every day...reminded me of one of my college games with physical back and forth hockey. We ended up with a 3-3 tie after 60min and from there went into OT. IIHF has a 5 minute OT with 4 on 4 hockey. After that we were still tied and then went into a shootout. I wish I could say I scored the winning goal and we are now off to Sweden but that is not the case. I shot first and didn’t score...my success rate in shootouts is terrible and I’d be just a-okay if I didn’t have to participate in another one. We ended up going to the fourth round of shooters...sudden death. Well they shot last this time and scored. So we are not going to Sweden. I’ve lost some pretty tough games before, but losing in a shootout really stinks. I’m not a fan of those rules and would have preferred to play OT until someone scored.

Now on a more positive note...I did have a great time in Berlin. We sure didn’t see any of the sights (I have to go back) but I did have a great time with my teammates and felt like I got closer to some of them even with the language barrier. Our team played really quite well if you take into account that we win most games by quite a bit and only have a couple of games where the score is close. We did struggle in the defensive zone but that is to be expected as we are hardly there during games and our coach doesn’t seem to see a need in practicing it. I think the weekend was a good eye opener for the girls and maybe gave them a bit of confidence in that they can play with some of the top teams in Europe but also see that there is tons they can work on in order to make it to the next level.