Change in Season

Summer in Sweden is officially over (and has been for a few weeks now), and although the nice weather was only here for a short time I find myself very excited for the fall season. I haven’t experienced the fall in 2 years and it just feels right being able to watch some football Sunday evening and have the weather outside be just cool enough to wear jeans and a sweatshirt when I venture out. Hopefully, I’ll even be able to teach these Swedes how to make a proper bonfire with some S’mores one of these evenings, even though everyone thinks I’m crazy for being so excited that the weather is getting colder. 

I also thought that I would be really homesick at this time of year. It’s exactly 8 weeks until I make my way back to Chicago, which is close enough that I start to think about having some good pizza nearly every night, but not quite close enough that I can start to get excited about being home. But with the fall finally here, and the next 8 weeks broken into 3 separate blocks of time (3 games in the next 10 days, then 1 month left in the season, then 2 weeks until I’m home) I know the time will pass quickly.

Speaking of the season, we lost to a red hot Halmstad on Monday night, and now find ourselves in need of a win Saturday afternoon against Umeå to stay in 5^th place in the league. At this point in the season promotion is an unrealistic aspiration, and we are just a few good results away from being safe from relegation as well. If we can continue to string together solid performances, and win our remaining home matches, we should finish the season right around 5^th position which would be a very good result for this team considering the significant disadvantages the club faces financially and how unlucky we have been with injuries this year.

In other news, I am only a few weeks away from becoming a functioning member of society in Sweden. I believe I’ll actually be immigrating to Sweden, which will allow me to take Swedish classes offered by the town, pay my own bills, rent movies, and a lot of other things that I haven’t been able to do on my own. Needless to say it will be nice not to have to rely on other people to take care of simple tasks. I’ll most likely have to wait until I get back in January to start taking Swedish classes but it’s something to look forward to!

Hope all is well back in the states, go Bears!

The "Kids" Visit

It has been a few weeks since my sisters have left Sweden, and I know that I had promised to have a blog up soon after they departed, but I have been busy enjoying the nice weather that has FINALLY arrived to my part of the world. It was a change that began while my sister’s were still here in Uddevalla, and since they left we have been lucky enough to have 5 or 6 days of sun a week, with temperatures in the high 60’s. So sorry I’m not sorry that I have been spending more time at coffee shops like this, than writing blogs…

It was nice having the kids here to visit me for a few days after they wrapped up their own travels around the continent. I got to show them around the small slice of Sweden that I call home and they were lucky enough to get to see us win a game.

I took the kids a few of the coffee shops I enjoy, introduced them to my second family down at Butler’s, and also drove them to Smögen, a neat little tourist town on the coast. 

Mo and Eddie fearlessly exploring the archipelago around Smögen

The two highlights of their stay with me were the trip over to Smögen, as it is just a really cool town to spend an afternoon in and have a picnic and also having them at a game, since it has been 2 years from the last time they had been able to watch me play live. 

Action shot courtesy of cousin Nel

I think that by the end of their stay with me, the kids were real envious of my lifestyle here, which, with the appearance of the sun, has only gotten even more relaxing.

The past few weeks soccer-wise have been somewhat frustrating, as we have struggled to find some consistent form. Although we are still hanging around near the top of table I don’t think we have any chance of being promoted unless we can win 6 or 7 games in a row. Whether or not that happens, I think that we have already exceeded our expectations for the year and now we have to continue to improve so that we can be successful again next season.

That’s all that I have for now, ha det brå!

At my sunset spot that overlooks Uddevalla

Nel diligently taking pictures at my game

Dislocated

This past weekend I had one of the most painful and frustrating experiences of my life. During our match against Trelleborgs I dislocated my shoulder for the second time. Dislocating your shoulder is a very painful injury for those lucky enough never to have experienced it, and I had been told that the first time is the most painful. Because, after your first dislocation, your shoulder joints have all been torn and stretched it is more likely to happen again. So when I felt my shoulder pop out in the 50th minute of the game this past weekend, it hurt, but I knew that the pain would last only so long. Usually, when I have an injury like this I'm rather easy to deal with. I may be in pain but I can make jokes and laugh with the doctors as we figure out what needs to be done. This time was no different. However, as the doctors on site were unable to fix my shoulder we had to call an ambulance. I figured it was no big deal as this happened last time. The paramedics will show up, give me some laughing gas and then pop the thing back in. But, to my dismay, the paramedics decided they needed to take me to the hospital. At this point 50 minutes had elapsed since the dislocation. I was beginning to struggle with the pain and my patience was already growing thin. I was relieved when I was finally given some morphine for the pain and muscle relaxers to aid in setting the shoulder in the ambulance. The relief lasted only minutes as the morphine had little effect other than to make me very dizzy, and the experience only got worse from there. The ambulance ride was 20 minutes long, over bumpy roads jolting my shoulder with increasing pain, I was unable to hold my head up or my eyes open, and the paramedic is interrogating me for every last shred of information on my life in Sweden.

When the ambulance ride mercifully ended, and I was finally in the care of the doctors, I figured the experience was over. But alas, they decided I needed more muscle relaxers before they could move my joint back into place. Another round of questions soon followed. They needed to know all my information from the U.S. as well. As I watched the time slowly tick by, and 4 nurses stood in the hallway gawking at my complete agony I decided that this was the single worst experience of my life. I have never been in more pain or been more frustrated. By the time I was finally put back together an hour and a half had elapsed, I had missed celebrating a good win with my teammates, and I had completely blown any opportunity to ask out the cute nurse when she saw me in tears in the hospital bed. I blame the morphine.

Although I was injured, the team put in a solid performance to preserve our 1-0 victory, that sees us move back up to 5th position. It was a good way to start the second half of our campaign.

One of the factors that contributed to our performance was our match against Dynamo Moscow a week and a half ago. Dynamo Moscow had been having their pre-season in Sweden and we played them in a friendly match right before they departed for Russia to begin their own season. We were lucky enough to play their full first team in the first half, which is made up of players who all represent their countries on the international level. This was a great experience for our team, because when you make mistakes against a quality opponent like Dynamo Moscow, they score… every time. After getting our butts kicked we took a boat from the island just off the coast where we played the match back to Ljungskile for a team dinner with everyone’s families. I wish that the day had been sunny enough to take pictures because being out on a boat on the Swedish coast is a stunning experience. The pictures below should give you an idea, they were taken by a small lake that is a short walk from our stadium

Also my game this saturday will be on TV here in Sweden. That means that you can watch a live stream online at 9 am central time. I don't have a link right now, but if you search wiziwig.tv at 9 you should be able to find one easily. I will be playing in the match Saturday, 7 days is more than enough time to recover my pride from crying in front of a cute nurse.

I'll have more to write about soon as Katie, Eddie, Mo, and Nel will be here to spend some time with me in 10 days! 

The Return

I’ll quickly acknowledge that it has taken me far too long to revitalize my blog and keep everyone up to date. Ok, since that is done and dusted, we can move on to the interesting stuff, like are Swedish meatballs in Sweden really better than those found at Ikea in Schaumburg? And do all Swedes drive Volvo’s and Saab’s?

As I can’t really get everyone up to speed on what has happened in my first 6 months here in Uddevalla, Sweden, I will provide a quick recap of how the season with Ljungskile SK has gone up to this point and promise to be a more reliable fountain of information for the remainder of my time here.

We had our first day back in training today after having a full week off for our mid-season break. I had planned to do some traveling over this week to Ireland, but due to some unforeseen complications with my bank here in Sweden I was unable to see this trip through. I had to settle for staying in Uddevalla for the holiday, which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I nearly finished 3 books, was able to soak up a miniscule amount of sun (more on that in a minute) and indulged in a few Gin & Tonic’s, while listening to some blues every evening, and I refuse to complain about a vacation when I’m able to enjoy a few G&T’s. Shout out to Beth Hopkins for providing the Gin. My prior indulgence also failed to keep me from completing my fitness test in the proper time, so successful holiday indeed!

It was nice to get back to work today feeling refreshed and looking forward to the challenge that we face in the second half of our season. We are currently sitting on 20 points from 15 games, which, leaves us stuck in the middle of the pack in the Superettan. With some better luck with injuries I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think we could be sitting on at least 25 points. But what’s done is done and we have to focus on improving on our first half results. Which, I most certainly intend on doing.

As for life outside of football, I have had some difficulties adjusting to life in Sweden. Most of those problems are completely out my hands and it has taken me some time to realize this, but now that I have I think life will be much more smooth going forward. The weather certainly hasn’t helped either. I think in the past 4 weeks there has been maybe 7 sunny days? The rest of the time it has rained. A lot.

So in the interest of moving forward I am hoping that re-starting my blog will force me to explore my area a little bit more, that people will get in touch with me and ask me questions about life in Sweden so that I can learn new things if I do not know the answer, and I’m also hoping that writing the blog will help me hold myself accountable to learning Swedish.

To answer those burning questions from the beginning, Swedish meatballs are better in Sweden when I cook them, and Swede’s don’t show anymore of a preference for Saab’s and Volvo’s than anybody else.

Hej då!

Grand Final

Yes everyone I am still alive. I know you were all worried about my well-being but I just haven’t had anything noteworthy to write about for the blog. So I figured, rather than bore everyone with the mundane details of my life as a waiter/ janitor I would wait until I had something more exciting to write about.

This past Monday I attended the end of the season banquet for the Brisbane Premier League with the rest of the Wolves squad. It was a fun night, especially having the entire team and support staff there to celebrate our achievements thus far. In addition to receiving the Premiership trophy for keeps ,the league passed out individual honors and named the team of the season. Steffen Vroom took home the Golden Boot award for scoring the most goals in the league this year, he was also named to the Select XI team of the season along with myself, Drew Jeskey, and Trent Clulow, and our head coach Sam Saif was honored as the coach of the year. I just missed out on being named the player’s player of the year by one vote, the reason being I didn’t play in the final game due to suspension, guess that’s what I get for being a rebel.

After attending the banquet most of the team decided to extend our night a bit further, and where else to go on a Monday night at 11 than the Treasury Casino, which was conveniently located across the street from the hotel our banquet was at. Now, this is my first visit to a casino ever so I was quite happy when I walked out up $5 including drinks, some high roller I am. I was able to make my money playing roulette on these monitors that they have at the casino, that way you don’t have to bet in front of everyone, and it gives you all the information on the 15 previous rolls so you can make a more informed bet, or at least makes you think that you are. Either way it was a good way for me to get my feet wet and learn the game.

Other than this night out with the boys, these last few weeks have been focused on ending the season on as good a note as possible. We have finally been able to get back on to a regular training routine leading up to the Grand Final this Sunday evening. We also know that our opponents will be Rochedale, who will have played 3 games in 8 days, including a double OT Cup final Wednesday night, while we have been regaining our legs and sharpening our play in anticipation for the final. Needless to say I can’t wait to play Sunday night, and I know the entire team is looking forward to capping the season the proper way.

So look out for the result of the Grand Final. Hope all is well back home!

Last weeks of the season

Having lived in Australia for over 6 months now everything about the culture seems like second nature to me. I may notice a few dissimilarities when I really think about how things are back in the states, but with being so well acclimated to Australian culture I no longer find things odd, so I figured that while my parents were down here I would see what they noticed about Australia throughout their short time in Brisbane.

I remember writing in one of my first blogs that driving on the left side of the road isn’t really that big of a deal so long as there are other cars on the road. It’s the little things about driving that are completely screwed up, like using your indicator, checking your blind spot over your right shoulder, and getting in the proper door when you are going to drive, my father noticed the exact same things. Other than consistently turning on his wipers when he was trying to indicate a turn my father did quite well. The only scary moments were when we drove up into the mountains on a single lane road, his first impulse was always to swerve to the right when a car suddenly appeared around a blind corner, which would have resulted in 3 or 4 accidents if he hadn’t then corrected his mistake.

In Brisbane, the streets aren’t laid out in any recognizable pattern, with roads that routinely change names 2 or 3 times within the course of a few blocks. I was frequently giving my dad directions like “Stay rightish at this next intersection” when I was trying to navigate him to the right spot. Ultimately, the only way to navigate around Brisbane is to follow the traffic, there are “main” roads that meander towards some unknown destination and you really have no choice but to follow these routes even if it isn’t the most direct route to your destination.

Frequently, during my parents visit, they observed that Australia has more of a European feel than American. Retail stores and shopping centers close at around 5:30, the only exception to this being grocery stores which stay open until the late hour of 8 pm. Almost everyone that you encounter is genuinely nice and courteous. The pace of life here is much more relaxed than life in the U.S. On the roads, walking around, and when just hanging around Australians are rarely in a hurry. I really enjoy this part of life, until I need to get somewhere in a hurry, it then becomes difficult to walk around people when everyone is going the same pace or pass cars on the motorway when every single person is driving 100 km.

On the soccer front, we lost our first game of consequence this past week to Rochedale. We fell 3-1 in the semi-final of the Canale Cup. It stinks because we can no longer win a treble (League, Cup, and Playoffs) but it isn’t a huge loss. Hopefully, all the loss will do is make us hungrier as we play Rochedale in a bigger game next Wednesday in the first round of the playoffs. We played in our penultimate game of the league yesterday, winning 5-2. The fourth goal of the game helped us eclipse the century mark for the season, the first team in the history of the league to do so. The win also helped us accumulate the most points in league history, 67, surpassing Rochedale’s 65 from last year. We’ll receive the trophy this weekend after our game against Rochedale, although most players for both teams will be rested in anticipation for the playoffs matchup next Wednesday. Only 3 games to go in the season so its time to buckle down and grind out results to win the championship.

Hope all is well back home!

My parents visit

My parents should have arrived back in Chicago by now so I hope they had a good trip home. It was a fun visit but I’m glad they left. Not because I didn’t enjoy seeing them, but because we didn’t even win a game while they were here! 3 whole games without tasting victory! But don’t worry we won our game last night immediately following my parents departure. However, that is the last I will speak of soccer in this post. I will dedicate this entire blog to talking about my parent’s visit and the things that we did.

The first 2 days of my parents visit weren’t too exciting, especially compared to the adventures that we had the rest of the week, but they got to sightsee around Brisbane quite a bit. I took them over to the Lighthouse, where I work, for a cup of coffee early on their first morning and they were amazed by the views that I have from work. I’m not sure if I ever explained that my restaurant looks right out over the ocean to an island just off the coast, which we visited later in the week, and because the water is protected by this island the area is almost always filled with sailboats and other recreational fishing vessels (almost all of my sunset pictures are taken from right next to the restaurant.). After hanging around for a bit I took them to the hotel they were staying in for the first 2 nights. I had them staying right in the heart of Brisbane so they could walk around and experience some of the unique sights the city has to offer.

On Sunday morning I picked my parents up from their hotel and we drove up to the Brisbane botanic gardens on Mt. Coot-Tha and the scenic lookout located there so they could get a great view of the river city and surrounding area. From that vantage you really get a sense of how important the river is to Brisbane, with the way it meanders through the region, the city is defined by it’s interaction with the river and landscapes it has carved out.

Monday is where things started to get interesting, as we made our way up to O’Reilly’s mountain resort in the Gold Coast Hinterland. I had made a visit to this area once before for a hike and knew it would be a good spot to showcase the hiking that is available around Brisbane. We arrived late in the afternoon, due to my poor navigational skills, but it turned out to be perfect timing, we were able to complete a short hike and then watch the sunset over the hinterland from our balcony. I think that view helped them appreciate why my days are so often scheduled around sunset, especially when we were feeding parrots out of our hands as the sun dipped behind the mountains. After the sunset we went for a quiet dinner followed by a relaxing hot tub session under a starlit southern sky.

The next morning we went on a hike into a deep gorge carved by a river cutting its way through dense rainforest. The views that you get of the surrounding area are spectacular but impossible to photograph. The hike was great until the snake charmer, Beth Hopkins, decided to make her first appearance. Our path was blocked by a couple of red-bellied black snakes sun bathing on our trail. Unfortunately, my mom had already passed the snakes when she caught sight of them. So she was stuck on one side, while my father and myself were stuck further down the trail. This standoff persisted for 45 minutes until a boisterous family scared off the venomous snakes and we were able to resume our trek back up the mountain.

On Wednesday I sent my parents up to the Steve Irwin Zoo so I could prepare for my game that evening against the Brisbane Roar. Having been to the zoo I know that they loved every second of the experience. It is well worth the price of admission, especially when you get to see the crocodile feedings.

The highlight of my parents visit was our trek up to the Great Barrier Reef. We could only spend one day at the reef, but even that short amount of time is enough to understand the beauty that the reef has to offer. We visited Lady Elliot Island, which is a miniscule oasis in the southernmost reaches of the reef, but it was a spectacular showcase for what the Great Barrier Reef represents. We arrived on the island and had 40 minutes to walk around before we embarked on our glass bottom boat/guided snorkeling tour. Unfortunately, because the day was overcast the colors of the reef didn’t really pop out as we would have liked but it was still breathtaking, and that is just from above the waterline.

Once in the water, you enter another world, teeming with life and color. It was absolutely amazing to experience from such a close distance. We saw every single fish from “Finding Nemo,” including sea turtles, and if you dove down about 10 feet you could even hear faint whale calls echoing in the water. The only thing I didn’t like about snorkeling was when I found myself in really shallow water, hovering only 2 feet above the reef. That experience was unnerving for three reasons; First, I didn’t want anything to come out of the reef and bite me, second I didn’t want to break off any part of the reef by kicking it, and third the reef is really sharp, all 3 of us have scratches from coming in contact with the reef as we were snorkeling. All in all the trip north was breathtaking, especially when you include the views of the coastal islands we had from the plane ride to LEI.

In the last two days of my parents visit I took them to North Stradbroke Island and Byron Bay. On Straddie, which was a short 30-minute ferry ride from where I work we got to do some whale watching and enjoy spectacular views of the rocky coastline on one of the locals favorite weekend destinations. From our short time on the island we understood why the locals have such great affection for Straddie, it boasts secluded beaches, great surfing, and spectacular landscape. On our ferry ride back from the island we got to witness another breathtaking sunset over the ocean before making our way to The Lighthouse for a more than satisfying dinner.

The following day we made our way south into New South Wales for a scenic flight over the coastline at Byron Bay. Once again the vistas were spectacular because Byron Bay boasts jagged coastline mixed with pristine beaches, and is also a popular area to whale watch. Being able to experience all of the sights from the air made the trip even more spectacular than it already would have been.

In my parents short time Australia they got to experience everything that this country has to offer; a beautiful city, spectacular coastline, stunning mountainous regions, and unique wildlife. I know that they enjoyed their time visiting me and I definitely enjoyed having them around.

I hope I was able to paint a good picture of all our many activities. I have posted heaps of pictures on facebook already so hopefully everyone can find a way to view those.