Traveling Picks Back Up and Panthers Pull Into 2nd Place

December and January have been very busy months for me! We only had one game in December, which left time for some travel, especially since Tracy’s knee was starting to heal and she was a bit more mobile! We decided to go to Prague, which is only a bus ride away rather than a plane ride. Prague was absolutely beautiful, especially at the time we went. We had heard all about the famous Christmas markets that Prague has, and wow were they right! We just went on a weekend trip to Prague, we both agreed that it was the perfect amount of time to see everything we wanted to see. One thing Tracy and I have to admit to all of our foreign friends is that we now understand the importance of wifi. What I mean by this is when we leave Germany our phones no longer work, but they do work on wifi! So, when we’re searching for somewhere to eat or grab a snack, no wifi = no customers! At the end of December our teammate from Mankato, Anna Fiegert, came back to Germany for the Holidays (She is from Germany and is currently a Sophomore at Mankato). This was awesome timing, we got to go to her hometown of Landshut and see where she is from and hangout with her for the day before she brought me to the airport so I could catch my fight back to Minnesota for Christmas! We walked around downtown Landshut, drank some Glühwein, and caught up on everything since we had last seen each other, which was when I graduated last year!

Once it was finally time for my flight home, I was definitely ready for some good old American (fast) food and English speakers! My time at home was just as perfect as I had hoped, except there was no snow on Christmas!! How do I live in Minnesota and not have snow on Christmas?! Mother nature clearly heard me complaining because no more than 2 days later we had all the snow I could ask for. All the snow caused my travel plans back to Germany on January 4th to crumble. My flight was cancelled and rescheduled for the next day, which wasn’t the end of the world by any means. So the next day rolls around and my flight is delayed an hour out of Minnesota to Chicago, then my flight in Chicago was delayed and hour and a half due to deicing the plane, which then caused me to miss my flight in London to Munich! It was a mess, but I eventually made it back to Germany with all my bags surprisingly not getting lost along the way.

January is when our hockey games started to pick back up for the second half of the season. My team is doing so well! For the first time ever our team has secured a playoff spot and we are currently in second place in the league. We are a team to beat and I couldn’t be happier to play a part in the success of the team! It’s such a rewarding feeling to have our team get the recognition in the community.

Our January trip was definitely an exciting one. We chose to fly to Paris and explore what the city of love has to offer. Paris is definitely a hyped up city and let me be the first to tell you that it did not disappoint. Paris was BEAUTIFUL! The Eiffel tower is truly an amazing sight; I couldn’t seem to stop taking pictures of that thing! We again just did a weekend trip to Paris so we knew we had no time to waste. We arrived on Friday at our hotel, which was no more than a block and a half from the Eiffel tower with a beautiful view of the tower from our hotel (My mom hooked us up on the hotel that’s for sure- she did good!) Friday night we decided to do the Eiffel tower since we knew we would be busy sight seeing all day Saturday. We were hoping to go to the very top of the tower but the wind was so strong that they shut down the top, which was a bummer. We were able to go to the midway point on the tower though which was still unreal!  The view of Paris at nighttime from that altitude was one of the best parts of our trip, a definite must do while there. Saturday was spent sightseeing. We bought tickets for a bus tour since Paris is a very large city and it turned out to be a really good idea. We truly felt like we saw an abundance of the recommended sights. One of my favorite things of the day was walking through the high fashion shopping district- how could I not!! It was tough to resist buying everything in my sight, which is definitely a good thing considering everything was priced high enough to give my dad a heart attack haha. After a long day of sightseeing we ended the night with some wine and dinner, very relaxing! One of our biggest regrets while in Paris was that we did not try Macaroons, not sure when we will forgive ourselves for that but we’re sure going to have to try! 🙂