Veronica (USA), Hellen (Sweden), Carol Anne (Canada), Karolina (Poland), Anna (Sweden), Sasha (England), and Marlene (USA)
All group matches in the group stages are double headers, so we traveled to Augsburg with the crew for Germany vs. France. Monday evening we flew to Munich and then were picked up by tournament volunteers and driven one hour to arrive at the hotel in Augsburg. Augsburg is a beautiful city, and one the oldest cities in Germany and can trace it roots back to 15 BC. Our enthusiastic driver was determined to give us a quick 5 minute tour of the city and through the oldest street in Augsburg. As the trip was quite short, we were pleased to have gotten to see the lovely architecture of such a grand city as well as an opportunity to take pictures. We even got the chance to see the hotel where local referees stay when working Bundesliga matches. The other referees were waiting for us back at our hotel, so we didn’t get too much chance to explore, but even with the short trip it was nice to see a bit of the local area.
We had an awesome dinner at the hotel with all the referees and it was great to get to relax and have a good meal together. The hotel we were staying at was really nice and every room seemed to have a cool little balcony to view the city. The local organizing committee had even left small picture books in our rooms so we could see the sites of Augsburg even if we didn’t have time to explore them.
The next day, we had police escort to take us to the stadium. We arrived early and had time to catch about 20 minutes of the prior match. The packed stadium was loud with an electric atmosphere with many German fans supporting their team. This was the first match the German team played in Augsburg, so the fans were pretty pumped up. Even after we returned to the locker room to start changing, we were still able to continue to watch the match on the large flat screen TV in our locker room.
Warming up felt like the temperature on the field was much warmer than the reported 82 degrees. The humidity seemed to rise up from the field and the design of the stadium seemed to keep out the breeze. Fortunately for Marlene and unfortunately for Veronica, the shade had shifted from the first match to the second to cover AR1 instead of AR2. Both lines were still pretty slick from the rain a few days prior to our match no matter where the shade or sun was.
We had another fun match with Carol Anne and with the experiences of the first match, we felt even more comfortable knowing what she wanted from us and from the match. The game went well and our wonderful colleagues were kind enough to let us use their locker room to speed up cleaning up after the match.
Even the time at the airport hanging out with all the officials was a good time. It was really great getting the chance to get to know the Swedish assistants and English referee from the other match a bit better even if everyone on the plane thought we were crazy with all the laughter and story swapping from the ride back.
We learned the assignments for the next round today and will take the opportunity to watch some quarterfinal matches and probably take some on-field practice tests. Unfortunately, we have both been knocked out of the referee ping-pong tournament, but will be cheering for our friends.
We are having a great time at the tournament and are learning tremendously from the group debriefings and the practical application sessions.
Tomorrow we have the afternoon free after the training session. We hope to take advantage of the opportunity to do some site seeing and shopping...we are sure to have great photos for you on the next blog entry.
Marlene & Veronica
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