Rudern in Deutschland

Ok ok, I am going to post! I am sorry I did not get around to it earlier, but although I technically do not have anything to do I am busy all the time (ask Victoria). Victoria is interning only about 30 minutes by car (Victoria here, I think if you drive sanely, it takes at least 40 min and that’s going 100km/hr so more like an hour drive) from my hometown and since she lives in the town with a river I get to see her almost every day…almost like in Boston ;) Although I also spend a lot of time visiting my friends and family.

Yeah, the „Weser“, the river we are rowing on is very different from the Charles. It is rather narrow and has a strong current that pulls you towards the middle of the river even though you are supposed to stay on the right and makes rowing 10 kilometers a matter of a few hours! Especially since I have to do it in a racing single and thus row in slow motion most of the time (Victoria here again, Sabine is trying really hard to not flip actually so yea, really careful rowing). There are also these mean little „whirlpools“ (I am lacking a better word for them) created by the current that pull your oar under water if you happen to catch in one of them. It is not tragic (i.e. instead of whitecaps, you get mysterious other disturbances), but very annoying when you are trying to steer! Victoria mostly rows in doubles and quads with the more advanced scullers while I fight through practice in a single since I still make too many mistakes and have way too many insecurities to be put in a double. Victoria tried to row with me the second time I was on the water: Oh man, I did not know I was so uneven ! We kept moving towards the port shore no matter what we tried. Afterwards, we had very sore buttoxes except on opposite sides.

Hmmm, what else? Oh, about once week I bike to Holzminden before practice which is about 30 miles. There is a wonderful but hilly bike path that connects my home town and Holzminden, so I have to use it on days when my mom cannot drive me to practice.

I am not sure how many of you are following it, but the World Cup is going on right now and as a German in Germany I cannot escape from it ;) Tomorrow is the game Germany against England and I really hope Germany wins. Germans are so much nicer when their soccer team plays well ;)

So now Victoria here, that 1-0 score of Germany against Ghana…yea, we heard the loud cheer from all the neighbors even though we had no TV within probably 20m of us. Yea, we definitely knew when they had won. Not much else to say about rowing because it’s still feels like everyone is trying to figure it out. Next week, a lot of the younger rowers are going away to a camp so I’ll prob be working things out in a single soon J There is a 500m race in two weeks….so I guess I’ll be seeing more of Germany and attempting to understand German rowing commands :P It’s so far been really intuitive except yesterday they said, literally translated: to hands, meaning go to waist except I didn’t process it that fast and ended up standing under the boat by myself. Lol.

Most interesting part of yesterday however was watching two amputations and assisting in two surgeries earlier. The first story the doctors told me when I went in was about how another girl passed out from the sight of blood and fractured her skull. So I’m not sure if they were relieved that I was fine or if there was some other point to the story but yea, boy was I glad I didn’t have that involuntary reaction. I probably would have crashed into a sterile cart and they would have had to start over or something.

Auf Deutsch jetzt, die Leuten sind immer sehr nett. Heute, eine Schwester hat mir ‚ni hao‘ gesagt. Yea anyways in English, everyone’s just always smiles and helpful. One of the nurses decided to greet me with hello in chinese today :)

Hope everybody is enjoying their summer!

Sabine and Victoria

p.s. the pictures are of the boathouse and retractable dock, necessary because the river level changes 10 - 20 feet or so depending on the season -V