Daylight and Team Spirit

Of all the beautiful (or not beautiful) things about daily life in an extremely northern town, the most comment worthy miracle, I think, is how quickly the average day length changes throughout the year.

I’ll admit it was pretty miz in November when I was used to having daylight in October and it was suddenly stolen from me due to the “fall back” time change and the lightening speed of day-length decline that my continental brain could not grasp.

November and December meant rain, cloudiness and ever increasing darkness and I ended up walking to school at 8:30 in the dark and the rain, and arriving home around 4:00 ALSO in the dark and the rain.  Where there were once beaches and sunshine in my life I only had, well, darkness and rain.

After a few months of this, though, one tends to grow accustomed to a life deprived of light. I learned to enjoy the laziness that a cloak of ever-present nightime allows and learned that if I was patient enough, the sun would go down and I could justify not going to the gym and convince myself it was probably in my best interest to stay home and bake/eat instead…which was nice.

Now in April, thanks to “spring forward” suddenly the sun doesn’t go down til about 8:30PM, which is just preposterous. Now that I’m used to the darkness, you’re going to rob that of me, too? … And what is this warm stuff on my skin? Is that…THE SUN!?

My newly developed vampire qualities were quite not prepared to accept that I could not curl up with warm food, a glass of wine and a good book when the sun went down at 5:30…so it has been a slow process trying to wean my way off the couch. But there’s hope for me yet. Yesterday I found myself craving fruit and a salad instead of warm heavy pastas, and today I might even get to go for a run after school! Oh the possibilities!

The most unbelievable thing of all is this amount of daylight is just the beginning. I heard that around summer solstice in June the sun comes up at 4:30am and goes down at 11:00! Gurl could get crazy with that amount of vitamin D…

I know you all are probably enthralled by the minute-by-minute updates of day length here in Northern Germany but I’d like to change topics to something completely unrelated, but equally northern-German, and that is Handball.

There apparently are a few rare Americans who have heard of Team Handball and maybe played it for a week or two in Gym class, but for me, this sport was something as foreign as cleaning stairs and being environmentally conscious.

I saw it first while flipping through channels one night in September. Still being new to Germany I was not quite prepared to sit down and “lazily” watch some German soap opera (which would require concentration, translation and that equals OPPOSITE of lazy) so I settled on the universal language of sports.

As a back story for any of you that might not know me I played Water polo for a good chunk of my youth and teens, and lacrosse picked up where I left off with water polo and I followed that sport into college. As far as athletic prowess goes, brute strength, speed, and field sense are the name of my game, but the minute I need to do something with refined skill... well, it's time for a substitution....

So anyway, flipping through channels I could not find any fun sports to watch on TV except for this weird game being played in a gym. From what I could tell, all these people were doing was running fast, jumping really high and bowling people over.... OH yeah, and throwing a ball really hard. Seemed interesting enough.

As I continued to watch I realized that their positioning and field sense was a PERFECT blend of lacrosse and waterpolo. I instantly understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, and after only a few minutes of watching I felt my pulse start to quicken.

Like the hulk suddenly transformed (well, maybe a girlier version of that?) my body suddenly felt the urge to jump of the couch, run out the door and start throwing a handball ball. Running fast? Jumping high? Throwing hard? I CAN DO THAT!!!

I needed to play this sport. It was urgent. 

Well, due to traveling it took a while, but I've finally joined a team and my life is complete. (Actually if you scroll down to the bottom of this page you can see my "entry into the team" article  on the team website). They are in the highest league for U-20 (I can play with them b/c I'm an American and I won't be here long...)

Ugh, I'd like to tell you more, but I'll leave this as a taste of handball (and a clip of what it looks like) and will comment on the wonderful world of handball (and the CRAZY world of german team bus experiences) later. 

For now I am off to Amsterdam with college friend Jackie Goodell who is here to visit for a week! Woo hoo!!