Sun Devil volleyball sophomore Allison Palmer blogs from the Czech Republic as she plays with the USA Women's Jr. National Team in the World Championship.
June 16th,
After a three hour bus ride to Montreal from the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center, an eight hour flight to Munich, a 45 minute flight to Vienna and a two hour bus ride, we finally arrive in Brno, Czech Republic.
Although it was a long day of travel with a significant time change of six hours, traveling went without a hitch. The drive from Vienna to Brno was absolutely amazing. Lush green hills, farmland, and cute towns some not even a mile long scattered the landscape. The team wants to acclimate ourselves to the new time zone as quickly as possible however, only a few of us managed to resist napping on the bus, but not without difficulty.
Each team competing in the World Championships is assigned a guide. Our guide is Robin, a local guy from Brno most likely in his mid-twenties. He acts as out tour guide and scheduler. We are staying at Hotel Voronez for three days then moving hotels to where the other teams will stay. We arrived a couple days earlier than most of the teams. Our hotel is very nice and very European style. The rooms are quaint: two squishy beds side by side, a bathtub and a big balcony with white curtains letting in plenty of natural light.
I am rooming with Canace, a middle blocker who plays at Oregon. After getting settled in, we had our first Czech meal: vegetable soup, a pheasant dish (or maybe it was chicken- we don't know) with potatoes and cooked veggies and then dessert was a wafer dipped in chocolate that tasted similar to a tiramisu...yum!
Already a language barrier is noticeable as some of the girls try but fail to successfully get butter for their bread - the waitress brought jam... its close enough. Now we are back in our rooms resting, still resisting the urge to nap so that I can sleep tonight. We have dinner in a few hours then Robin, the guide, is taking us for a walk around Brno so that we can get the juices in our muscles going again. I cannot wait to explore this beautiful new country! The team will all be ripping our USA gear on our walk tonight :)
Talk to you all soon and Go Devils!
Allison
Allison Palmer is blogging from the Czech Republic with the @USA_Volleyball Jr. National Team. Here's a pic pic.twitter.com/ioyE3zZC39
-- Sun Devil Volleyball (@SunDevilVB) June 16, 2013
What a view! Another picture from Allison in her first blog post http://t.co/j4DJVsKc3D @TheSunDevils @pac12 pic.twitter.com/Ct9sPUU6nG
-- Sun Devil Volleyball (@SunDevilVB) June 16, 2013