Milan, Italy

I hope this post finds everyone well back at home in the States. Our first game is this coming Sunday against a team from Basel, Switzerland. I have a similar feeling before this game that I had before our first game every year in college. I know we have tremendous players and incredible potential, but you're just always unsure how everything will fit together. We have some very good athletes and a lot of speed, which I think will pan out well for us as a team. I am looking forward to discovering what the level of play is here and how our team can do against the rest of the Swiss teams in our league. For anyone who may be interested, I did a radio interview with WBBA out of Pittsfield earlier this week. It will air on Sunday March 27th around 5:15 CT. I was told that it would be streamed online as well. I called in via Skype (a wonderful program, by the way) and had a long 20 minute or so interview. I'm not sure if they will air the whole thing or not. But, if you feel so inclined, please feel free to tune in then.

A picture of the cabin on the train.
Two of us shared one of these cabins.
It made for a pretty comfortable ride. 

This past weekend 6 of the import players took a train from Hohenems to Milan, Italy. It was a pretty incredible weekend. We left early Saturday morning and reached Innsbruck, Austria by about 9:20 am. After a twenty minute layover there, we hopped another train headed for Verona, Italy. About 3 1/2 hours later we reached the city where we would have a six hour stop before our train left for Milan. We simply hopped off the train and started walking towards the center of town, and the scenery was pretty fantastic.

The main street in Verona, headed towards the Coliseum.

Arches leading to town square
in Verona 

As we walked through the streets of the old town, we knew we were headed for an old Roman built coliseum. We had done a little bit of research on Verona before we left, knowing we would have six hours to kill there. The main street heading through Verona was pretty cool. Lined with trees on both sides, the street headed towards the Coliseum built by the Romans. Shops, restaurants, hotels, and bars filled both sides of the street, with the occasional individual selling trinkets, clothes, or food from a personal tent set up on the street. As we neared the center of town, a cool archway that spanned the street greeted us to the town square.

Once we passed through the arches we came upon a cool little town square with brick roads and mainly pedestrian traffic. The only traffic allowed through this part of town was people who live in or around the square, so walkers pretty much owned this land space. Also, the view across the other side of the square was pretty fantastic...the coliseum built by the Romans in the 1st century AD. It was the third largest coliseum that the Romans built in their time period, and it was pretty impressive/awe inspiring to see a building of such magnitude that was so old The FIRST CENTURY AD. That is 1600 years older than the United States of America. It was unbelievable. $4.50 got us into the coliseum for a self-guided tour. We met a girl inside who was from New Jersey and was studying abroad in Italy. She accompanied us for a while before we went separate ways. We asked her if it would be worth our time to visit the spot in Verona were Juliet's balcony is (for those of you who read regularly, you may remember that I mentioned in my last post that Verona was the setting for Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet"). Her response "Six guys in Italy, if I were you guys I might skip that one." Alas, we took her advice, and instead went for pizza...in Italy...pretty cool. Below are a couple of pictures of the coliseum (still used to hold concerts and other events today, hence the construction of the stage happening in the pictures).

After spending time in Verona, we hopped the train headed for Milan around 7 pm. While on the train we were playing cards and perhaps being a little loud, someone poked their head in our cabin and said "You guys speak English?" The guy turned out to be our age, and a native Italian, but he lived in Milan. We invited him in and he played cards with us until we reached Milan, and then he took us out in Milan when we arrived. It was nice to have someone who knew the city take us out and show us where to go.

The next morning we awoke and headed toward the central train station in Milan, a sort of hub for happenings around the city. Four of the guys decided to go to a soccer game that was being held that day at a very famous stadium (Inter Milan was playing for any of you soccer fans out there). Mike and I decided to take a bus around the city for the day and try to see as many sights as we could. There were some pretty unbelievable things to see around the city, but one thing stood out without question: The Duomo. The main cathedral of Milan, and the third largest church in the world. Built in 1384, the structure was magnificent, and the plazza that surrounded the building was full of people. The following is a video taken from the square in front of the church.

To continue on and tell/show you everything we saw in Milan (i.e. seeing the church that holds Da Vinci's painting of "The Last Supper", old fortresses, walking into and feeling completely uncomfortable in a Luis Vuitton store, etc.) would take much too long for my impatient self. I can tell you that it was a great experience, and it was awesome to simply say "I think I will go to Italy for the weekend". It's awesome to live in a part of the world where so many different places and cultures are within your grasp. I'm truly beginning to love this place.

But that's all for now. Again, I hope everything/everyone is great back at home, and I will post again soon with results from our first game.

Go Blue Devils/Boys!
Mitch Niekamp