Balla Balla Balla

Peaks reaching for the sky, nice little brooks gurgling down into the valley and the fine air fills out all your lungs. Hell yeah, this is Switzerland! The home for a beautiful landscape, for the snow caps glaring in white and for the Europeada in 2008 of course.

We arrived at our quarters in Segnas late in the night on the 31st of May and the most natural common activity for the whole team was to fall into the bed like sacks of salt. Only thing tricky was getting used to falling asleep to the ding-dong of the cowbells instead of the sound of the crickets, but we managed to catch the Z-s anyway. We didn’t even have the time this way to look at our surroundings, thus the amazement was even sweeter in the morning: looking out our window, we were stunned by the view provided by the nice little groups of houses quilted here and there into the endless green and the brook curlicuing all its way into to the horizon. Gorgeous. All the participating teams were housed in the regions around Segnas, where the canteen and a huge Sport centre was, a good place for training. We, the Germans living in Hungary dined at the canteen. The meal was fine for me, if we do not consider that the repertoire stood of pasta almost every day. The level and quality of football was actually higher then I expected meaning that I personally couldn’t fit into the picture but my more talented mates held the ground gallantly. There was a cultural program in the middle of the week we spent in the Alps, and it took place high in the mountains of Sedrun. Funny part was that one had to take the ski-lift to approach the hall-like building where the event was held. The whole room was filled with the teams of Europe and you could feel the various cultures mixing and merging as the different nationalities represented a part of their own. The common dancing and singing, plus the not slight amount of beer brought an obvious result: the mood was splendid.

After such an exciting, though quite exhausting week, no wonder that we felt our hearts a bit heavy to leave this lovely place, but we didn’t let our selves quail over it for too long, for we’re already looking forward for the next Europeada!