24 hours and 8 germans

Last night at 6 p.m., I stood in the Tampa International Airport and awaited the arrival of seven members of the Berlin media. Mind you, I'd never met a single one of them and had only seen some of their pictures. So it was a crapshoot.

Luckily, their fashion was European enough that they were not hard to spot. The super-tight jeans and quasi-spiky-mullet hairdos were enough to tip me off. Later, the eighth, my boss Maik, also arrived. We all shared drinks in the hotel lounge, where I understood nothing that was said.

Today, they came out to practice. A few of them don't know a whole lot about football, so that keeps things interesting. Today, I had to recruit some of our linemen to participate in a Whopper-eating contest against some Frankfurt players. One wouldn't think it'd be difficult to convince 300 lb. + guys to eat burgers, but some of them really were whiny little babies about it. But I got some guys, and Berlin won handily.

This afternoon, all of the talking and me not understanding started getting a little frustrating. I guess it was a bit of culture shock before I even leave the country. A free preview, if you will. After awhile, I got over it. But all the wild gesturing followed by hearty laughter about who knows what is still a little disconcerting. Every so often, my boss will translate/summarize for me, which is nice of him.

Later tonight, we all went to a nice Chinese buffet. Germans drink beer pretty much all the time. My favorite outfit of the night: black and purple diagonal stripted shirt tucked into magenta pants. The nice black blazer with the screen printed white tee was a close second. I'm positive this is how Justin will dress in about a year from now.

So at this point I've written quite a lot. Congrats if you actually made it this far. I'll update the chronicles of Berlin's media until they depart on Monday.

Cheers.