Update

Hello all, I hope everything is well back in the states. Just thought I would give you a quick update of what is going on here in Austria. First of all, I know that the weather here is much more pleasant than what I left behind in Illinois. It has been about 30 degrees every day (not much different from back home), but since I've been here there has been maybe a total of 1 inch of snow, making it much more pleasant than the amount of snow I know some of you have been seeing.

Seeing this out my door when I wake up every morning makes it easy to
get up and get going. 

I thought I might give you a look into a normal day here in Austria for me right now. It is still technically the off-season, and we are practicing 2-3 nights/week, so there isn't a whole heck of a lot going on. I wake up in the morning, and take a 20 min bus ride to a neighboring town to work out. I get home from there around noon, eat lunch, and then usually head into the football offices here in Hohenems to work on learning the play book, help plan our next practice, etc. In the evenings I usually work on something for grad school, send emails, or try to connect with people back at home. Nothing too overly exciting, but I'm always trying to stay busy or go exploring in a part of the area that I have not seen yet.

One of the things that caught me the most off-guard here was the music. Almost everything is from America. New hits, hip-hop, and top 40 music from America plays almost exclusively on the radio stations here. If it's not American music playing, it is either some kind of German rap or a techno mix. It is also fairly obvious that there is no F.C.C. in Austria, as none of the words that are edited out on American radio get nixed; the songs are played as-is.

Saturday I watched the local men's professional basketball team and the women's professional handball team play. The basketball was great, and reminded me of home just a little (although they do obviously play by international/Olympic rules). I had never witnessed a handball game before, and I was amazed by how physical the play was. Both teams won their games, with the basketball team beating a team from a town in Austria which I cannot pronounce, and the handball team beating the team from Vienna by one point in the last minute. It was pretty cool, and I am planning on going to a pro hockey game this weekend, which should also hopefully be cool.

Yesterday afternoon a local girl that I met on Saturday night offered to show me around some parts of the area that I had not yet explored. One of  the coolest places we went to was a town just south of my current home called Feldkirch, a town the borders Liechtenstein. Although it was extremely cold and tough to stay outside for much more than 30 minutes or so. The sights were really pretty neat, and I'll post a few pictures at the bottom of this post to show you some of the town. However, maybe my favorite part of the town was a 15th century bell tower that the local girl showed me. As she read the plaque on the tower and explained to me some of the history (such as the tower holds the largest bell in the entire state of Vorarlberg), she also told me that there is a famous fairy tale connected to the tower that I found to be quite funny/odd that went something like this...

15th century tower in Feldkirch

"There was a young woman held captive at the top of this tower." She told me.
"Oh, really? And someone came along and saved her? Something like the story of Rapunzel?" I asked, thinking I was quite ahead of the game.
"No, they burned her alive up there, and that's pretty much the end of the story." She said.
Evidently the "fairy tales" in Europe area a little less romanticized than the ones we tell in America, haha.








Again, I hope all is well in the States, and check back soon for more updates. Please enjoy a couple of pictures below of Feldkirch, Austria.

Mitch Niekamp
Go Blue Devils/Boys!

River running through Feldkirch that comes down from the mountains

A cool little area in Feldkirch

Street in Feldkirch (a little dead b/c it was Sunday. Most shops here close on Sundays)

First practice/Trip to Bregenz

First of all, I hope you can excuse the sloppiness of the pictures and text on this page. I plan to get better at this as I go along...Yesterday I participated in my first workout with the Cineplexx Blue Devils. It was an indoor practice at the local gymnasium. There were about 22-25 guys there for the workout. It was great to meet so many of the guys, and even better to get to throw some routes. I spent about 75 minutes throwing pass routes to the guys, and today, my arm is a little tender, but it's definitely a good thing. I thought the turnout for the practice was great, and I am excited to continue building a relationship with these guys both on and off the field.


Today I took a trip to Bregenz, the capital of the Austrian state of Vorarlberg (which is also the state in which I live). Christoph, the teams owner, told me this morning that he and his family were going to go to Bregenz and asked if I would like to go along. Of course I said yes, and I really appreciated him letting me go with his family for the day. We took the bus from Hohenems (pop. 15,000) through Dornbirn (pop. 50,000) to Bregenz (pop. 38,000), which was about a 30 minute trip. We took the train home which was only about 15 minutes. Public transportation is very nice here. All of the buses are Mercedes Benz, and the trains are all very clean, modern, and fast.

Floating stage in Bregenz

    

The first thing I saw when we hit Bregenz was the world famous "floating stage". Every year there is a big opera festival held there, and it is one of the most unique settings in the world. Just Google image search "floating stage Bregenz" and you'll see why this is so. Also, a scene from a recent James Bond film, "Quantum of Solace" was filmed at this location. The stage sits on Lake Constance, a very cool body of water that touches Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. From where the picture below was taken, I could see across the lake into southern Germany. Pretty neat.

View into southern Germany from Austrian side of Lake Constance

View of Bregenz and Lake Constance form inside the cable car.

Next we walked to the cable car that would take us to the top of the mountain that overlooks Bregenz. From the top there was a good view of Lake Constance and the mountains that surround the region. It was a little cloudy today, so the view was a little bit skewed, but still pretty amazing. Even through the clouds I could see southern Germany, the Swiss Alps, and the Austrian Alps that surround the area.

In front of Austrian Alps

Christoph and his family took me to a restaurant in the mountains for lunch. I had no idea what the menu said, so I asked Christoph to order my food for me. Turns out I would end up having my first weinerschnitzel. From what I understood it was fried pork, and it was really pretty tasty.

View of the restaurant where we ate lunch. 

Overall it was a really great day. Now the only thing that could make it better would be a Bears victory in the NFC Championship game. The game starts a little after 9 pm local time here, so it won't be a problem for me to stay up to watch it. The AFC game though, will be a different story, as it doesn't start until 12:30 am Monday morning here. Hope all is well in the states, and I'll be back soon with more news.

Go Blue Devils/Boys! (and Bears!)
Mitch Niekamp

Another view of the Austrian Alps

At Home, in Austria

     Well, I finally made it to my new home. The travel was long, and not all that fun. Although I was lucky enough to get a window seat in the exit row on my 7 hour flight to London. As I sat down, there was a girl sitting next to me who kept giving me strange looks as I sat down to start the flight. She finally pipes up and says "Excuse me, did you go to Illinois College?" (I think her first three clues may have been the IC hat, t-shirt, and jacket that I was wearing.) I told her yes, and it turned out that she was from Springfield, IL and had graduated from MacMurray in the late 90's and was now living in London. Small world!
     After a short layover in London and a short flight to Zurich, Switzerland, I navigated myself to the train station and hopped on a train to St. Gallen, Switzerland where the president of my new team was waiting for me. He gave me a ride back to Hohenems and showed me to my new residence. I will be living in his basement for about a month until the condo that we will be staying in is ready for us to move into. Out of respect to his privacy, I will not post any pictures of his home, but it is very nice, and I feel very lucky that he is letting me stay here until the condo is ready.
     Last night our left tackle, Tobias (Toby) drove me all around Hohenems and Dornbirn and showed me all the places I'm going to need to know. Our stadium has a tremendous view, the gym I'll be working out in is much better than I expected, and I know now how to take the bus from my house here in Hohenems to the downtown area of Dornbirn.
     I also attended a players only practice last night at the stadium. It started at 8 pm, and was held outside, in the snow, on a small patch of grass in Hohenems. About 20-22 guys showed up for a totally volunteer practice, and I was very excited by their enthusiasm in the poor weather. They meet every Wednesday and Saturday on a volunteer basis until the season begins. I didn't participate last night due to the jet lag I was feeling, but I'm excited to hit the ground running on Saturday.
     I apologize for not having any pictures to show right now, I was too worried about making sure that I made all my flights and trains to take any photos yesterday, but I will have some on my next post. I hope all is well back in the States, and I'll be back soon with more updates.

Go Blue Devils/Boys!
Mitch Niekamp

Last Day in the States

Well, tomorrow I officially become an expatriate. I will be flying out of Chicago O'Hare at 5 PM CST. The flight is scheduled to last about 8 hours, but as I will be flying through time zones, I will land in London at 6:30 AM local time. I'm flying British Airways, and I'm very excited about it. Our offensive coordinator at Illinois College is a Brit, and I can only hope that the stewards/stewardesses are as friendly and funny as he is. If so, I have no doubt that my flight will be extremely enjoyable. Now, if they can sit down and talk football with me for the whole flight like I know he would, I think I'll be in heaven.

I'll also be keeping my fingers crossed hoping that all British women resemble Coach Worsell. (http://www.ic.edu/RelId/608224/ISvars/default/Coaching_Staff.htm)

View over Zurich's airport.
(http://www.skyguide.ch/en/_img/zurich_over_1400.jpg)

After a 2+ hour layover in London, I will hop on another flight and fly south for just under 3 hours to reach Zurich International Airport just before noon local time. From there I will hop on a train and head East, towards Austria. I will be riding the train for about a half hour to a town that is halfway between Zurich and my new home, Hohenems, Austria. When I hop off the train, someone will be there to pick me up and drive me the rest of the way.





To say that I am excited about my new adventure would be a pretty drastic understatement. I have a decent idea of what is in store for me when I reach my new home, but there are also a lot of unknowns that I will undoubtedly encounter.

Cineplexx Blue Devil
(http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=177819835578337)

As I got to thinking, I realized that it's pretty cool that my college mascot was a Blueboy, and my new mascot in Austria will be a Blue Devil. White and blue is the color scheme for both my new and old teams. So, as I sign off every week, I think I'll wish good luck to both squads, with a pretty simple sign off tag. But I suppose this is good bye for now. My next post will be from Austria, and will actually include some of my own pictures.

-Mitch Niekamp
Go Blue Devils/Boys!

Two Weeks Left in America

This being my first post, please excuse the brevity of my explanations, hopefully I will get better at this as we go along. I just wanted to give everyone a little background on the team and town which I will be playing football for this spring.

A few months ago, I began my search to find a team in Europe for which I could play professional football. After months of searching, negotiating, decisions, and about the only time in my life I have genuinely been stressed out, the Cineplexx Blue Devils of Austria became the obvious choice. Signing this contract will give me the opportunity to continue playing the sport that I am passionate about, while also affording me the opportunity to see many new and exciting parts of the world. Perhaps even more exciting, is that my great friend and All-American wide receiver Michael Jennings will be coming with me. Last year at Illinois College, I played without him as he had graduated the year previous. However, we will get to re-connect both on and off the field, this time, in Austria.

Our team is located in Hohenems, Austria. While Hohenems itself is a small town of about 15,000 people, it is in a region of about 4-5 other towns of roughly the same population. It is one of the most centrally located places in Europe. It is just about as far west and north as one can go in Austria, sitting on the border with Switzerland, 12 miles south of the German border and the third largest lake in Central Europe, Lake Constance, which I read is a fairly large tourist destination for Europeans, but I suppose we'll find out about that when we get there. Hohenems is also 10 miles northeast of Liechtenstein (the richest country in the world by GDP per capita in 2008, by the way). Hohenems is also 50 miles north of Italy, and 100 miles west of France.

(above is a picture of Hohenems, Austria, and a neighboring town. Photo is from wikipedia.com, not from my own camera, unfortunately)

 The location of the town will afford me many opportunities to see parts of the world that I have only read about, or possibly seen on television, and this is extremely exciting to me.

    ("X" marks the spot on this map taken from http://mapsof.net/uploads/static-maps/thumbnails/central_europe_political_map_2000x0.png)

 I spoke yesterday with the owner of the team (Christoph), and I will be flying to Austria on January 18th, giving me just two weeks left here in the States. The season doesn't officially begin until March, but I wanted the opportunity to go over sooner, get my feet on the ground, and start meeting my new teammates. I am very excited to get to work preparing for the upcoming season and trying to help create a winner in the Cineplexx Blue Devils. Because of prior working engagements here at home, Mike won't be joining me in Austria until the end of February or beginning of March. This will give me 5-6 weeks in a foreign country by myself, getting to know the lay of the land. I am so overly excited that I fear these next two weeks will drag by.

We have the great opportunity as members of the Blue Devils to have four American coaches on our coaching staff. This is almost unheard of throughout Europe, and should help make our learning curve into the European game much easier. I feel very lucky to be going to a team with a large population of Americans. Each team in Europe is limited on the number of American players they can bring in each year, making the majority of the team mostly domestic players or players from other countries in Europe. I am new to this, and will be learning as I go along, and will update things as I learn them.

Thanks for joining me on my first adventure into blogging. I plan to make one more post before I officially move to Austria in two weeks. And hopefully it will be better than this one.

-Mitch Niekamp