Long Overdue Update

First of all I need to apologize for the length of time between posts and therefore this one will be quite long. My last update was a video post giving you a little insight into what was going on with the Mavericks and that I was looking forward to my vacation. As mentioned in the video, I was hoping to be able to put up posts while I was on the road but evidently I wasn’t able to do that. My vacation was fantastic and I will remember many of the events for the rest of my life.

Here is an update of what my month of July looked like; first of all my family visited me in Monchengladbach (Mom, Dad and Aunts and Uncles from Germany) they all attended their first football game and stayed another day or two to spend some time together and watch the World Cup together. Here is a group picture of us.



Following my family’s visit, I flew to Valladolid, Spain where I needed to take the train to Pamplona to meet up with my teammates and friends from Canada. The plan we had long established was to participate in the world famous San Fermin festival and the “Running of the Bulls”. Unfortunately, because my flight was delayed I couldn’t catch any trains to take to me Pamplona in time to run with the bulls the next morning. Instead I had to take a complicated network of bus trips to get me to Pamplona at like 130am so I could get up at 6am to run with the bulls the next morning.

“Running with the bulls” is a morning event that happens every day for a week in Pamplona during the month of July. The festival of San Fermin draws in thousands upon thousands of tourists each year to attempt the running of the bulls or watch the running. The city is literally overrun with people and there are virtually no places to sleep so we as a group spent two nights sleeping in the city parks. The city is a giant party and people are littered everywhere. I don’t exaggerate when I say littered; people are quite literally strewn everywhere.

Our group ran on July 13th and this was the second last running of the bulls for 2010, and the festival closed on July 14th. Some people will say that what we did was quite crazy and I have to agree with them; it was an unbelievable rush, a dangerous rush but an amazing one. Those who know me well understand that I am little bit of an adrenaline junkie and I look for these kinds of moments. This is not to say I would do the run again; I don’t see myself ever doing it again, I understand the danger I put myself into and I am glad I did it but I don’t think I will do it again. I won’t say never again but probably not.





After being in Pamplona, running with the bulls, partying for two days, sleeping in the park, attending the bull fights this is what I looked like arriving in Barcelona. It's not a pretty sight but I think it was pretty hilarious and right on par with what the experience was like.



There isn’t much to say but that’s what Pamplona, the San Fermin Festival and putting your life on the line will do to you.

We were in Barcelona for three days and got to enjoy the sights, the nightlife and all the wonderful things that Barcelona has to offer. Here are a couple pictures from that leg of the trip.





Following Barcelona, I headed to Interlaken, Switzerland with my friends that were visiting from high school. Interlaken in my opinion is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been too. It is a small village located in the middle of a mountain range in between two lakes in the Swiss Alps.

Interlaken is one of the extreme sport capitals of the world and it really lives up to the hype, think of any extreme sport and there is a high likelihood that you can do it there. Naturally being the adrenaline junkies that we all are we decided to do some canyoning. Canyoning is a combination of rock climbing, cliff jumping, rappelling and a whole lot of awesome! Instead of explaining further here are some pictures.







The next day my friends from Canada had to head home but my teammates were coming to join me for another day. Once they arrived we undertook a big climb, we decided to hike one of the many mountains at our disposure, and we climbed a 2400meter or almost 8000foot peak. We all started together but some of us wanted to be a little more adventurous and eventually split into smaller groups, it turned out that we found a little lake at 2000meters and took a swim. It was an unreal experience to take a swim so high up looking at these unbelievable mountains. Check the pictures.





That same day was when I left the group and headed to Vienna. My plan was to see Budapest and Prague before my girlfriend arrived in Frankfurt three days later. I know that its not enough time to see either of those cities in one day but I thought it would be a good way to spend my time since I had a train pass. I saw many of the big sights in those cities and would love to go back one day to see more of the city. Here are some pictures.









My girlfriend was in Europe for two weeks and we saw Bordeaux, France; San Sebastian and Barcelona, Spain; Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monchengladbach and finally Frankfurt, Germany. Here are some pictures from our trip.







All those adventures and places concluded my month long travel odyssey throughout Europe. Upon my return to Gladbach, it was back to business and we needed a few more games to close out the Championship.

This weekend we played our second to last game; it was against Lubeck and we won 49-7 to clinch the Championship. We were on a bus trip so it was be a good party on the way home. Here is a picture of my roommate Alan and I with Petra our adoptive mother as well as a team championship picture we took after the game.




The German Football League has put into effect a new clause that the first place team from the GFL2 automatically moves up to the GFL without having to play a relegation game. This has freed up about three to four more weeks of available travel time before I go back to Canada. Here is what we have planned. Fly to Greece for one week with stops in Athens, the island of Ios and Santorini. We then return back to Gladbach for two days and then fly off to London, Dublin and Stockholm for about three days each. We get back from that leg of the trip and the next day we head off to Munich for the world famous Oktoberfest to finish off our European football and travelling journey. A week later I will be coming back to Canada.

One of the reasons that I have been absent as of late from the blog is because I am trying to get myself organized for what work and what else I would like to do as soon as I get home to Ottawa. I am going through the same struggle that many people my age are dealing with, the ever-troubling question of “What to do with your life?”. I still don’t have an answer so the process is ongoing…

In my last month here in Germany, I will try to update you as much as possible about the little football that we have left as well as the travels that we have planned. Just like in July I will do my best but no guarantees. Twitter/Facebook will probably have the most updates. Thanks for checking out the blog.

G

Video Bar

Alright everybody I know its been awhile since my last post and to try and find a solution to my lack of time for writing up blog posts I decided to start recording video and do my best at explaining what I am up too.

All you have to do is click on the videos above and watch them to find out what I am doing. The video bar links all my videos from Youtube to my blog so you guys can see all my videos directly here instead of having to go to Youtube. I have already added my two highlight tapes from university and my Vlog updates should be coming in as the trip goes on so check in regularly and watch them if they aren't too painful on the eyes and ears for you.

Erik

P.S. In case you can't see my videos and there are other videos up on the page that aren't mine just go to the Youtube website and type in "egalas70" my youtube name that should bring you to my videos as well.

Dusseldorf Panthers Showdown Round 1

This past weekend we had our second game with the Recklinghausen Chargers. This was a back-to-back game since we had just played them last week in Recklinghausen. Well if you followed the scores of the game you know that we beat them pretty badly, 70-0 to be exact. It was quite a lopsided score and all our players got a chance to have a major contribution. Personally I didn’t play much offense and ended up with 1 catch for 20 yards. Defensively, our line and linebackers really controlled the game and I didn’t even have to make one tackle. Below is a sequence of pictures when I was returning a punt.








I can easily say this was the most uninvolved I have ever been in a football game but it was nice to see all of our teammates get on the field and be rewarded for the hours of hard work they put into our team. Unfortunately we lost another player to injury on Saturday; one of our receivers broke his ankle and will be out for a substantial amount of time. Hopefully with our break coming up he can heal up and be back on the field with us soon.

Naturally with the break coming up we are all getting excited for this vacation we are planning but we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves since we have our biggest game of the year on July 3rd. We play our rival the Dusseldorf Panthers; the winner of this game takes the lead in the league and holds the championship in their own hands. Dusseldorf has played one more game than us but they have a tie so if we win and close out the rest of the season in the same fashion as we have done so far we will have won the championship and get to play in the relegation game at the end of September to move up to the GFL. There is nothing else to say about the matter, this is a must win and then we can look farther ahead.

I also received the good news that two of my friends from Ottawa are visiting me in Monchengladbach, one is already here and the other gets here just in time for the Dusseldorf game. Its nice to get some friends from back home visiting and getting to see what I have been up in the last couple of months.

My parents, as well as my aunts and uncles will also be here the following week for my last game before the break. It was recently my mom’s birthday so it will be a nice celebration with the family together. This will also be the first time my aunts and uncles attend a football game so a new experience for them as well.

Yesterday, we went to the beach, this time with a bigger group and just relaxed after the big celebration from Germany’s victory over England. We spent the day lying around listening to music and playing beach volleyball not a bad time at all. It was pretty comical because at one point I lost my (cheap) sunglasses in the lake and kept diving down to try and find them but kept coming up empty-handed. Eventually I saw a lady with her son who had some diving goggles so I figured with my basic German I would try to convince her to let me borrow them for a couple of minutes so I could dive down and find my sunglasses. Eventually after a bunch of pointing at her son’s head and acting out diving in front of her (I am sure she thought I was a little crazy) I was able to borrow the goggles and retrieve my sunglasses.

My plans for the rest of the week are pretty low key since we have a big game this week but I will make a trip to Dusseldorf as well as Cologne to show my friend some of the sights to see in those areas. I am guessing I will end up climbing up the steps of the Dom but I can’t say I am looking forward to that, I really hate those tiny little spiral staircases. I can’t believe they send people up and down on the same staircase and of course the big people end up having to walk on the narrow part of the stairs, just great.

I will check back in a few days; drop a comment below, ask me a question or send me an email letting me know what your thinking.

World Cup, Vacation Plans and Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber

Since my last post I have played in a football game, visited some family, been to a medieval town, watched the German National soccer team win a big game against Ghana at a public viewing site which led to lots of celebration and managed to organize most of my month long vacation in July. The time was used productively, but not as interesting for posting on a blog. Let me give you a little run-through.

So we played another away game at Recklinghausen and won 35-0. The game was fairly uneventful, I caught a couple passes and got a touchdown. I played defense and offense again and the cool thing was that I got my first quarterback sack (when you tackle the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage) since high school or you could call it my first sack. We play Recklinghausen again this week but this time in Monchengladbach at 5pm Saturday night. As long as we all come to play we should win this game again. Here are a couple of pictures from last week’s game.






The morning following the game, my roommate Allan and I drove down to Southern Germany to the town of Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber. One of Allan’s teammates from Oregon State is playing there and he wanted to go visit him. I took the chance to go see my aunt and uncle living an hour away in Heilbronn and spent most of Sunday with them. Since they needed to work Monday, I drove back to Rothenburg Monday morning to meet up with the guys. We spent the rest of the day walking around this medieval village. Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber is an old fortress and the city is still surrounded by the wall that protected it long ago. We walked the entire length of the wall. I spent most the wall-walk ducking or walking hunched over since the roof on the wall wasn’t built for 6 foot plus people. Below are a few pictures of Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber.






Wednesday night the German soccer team had a game against Ghana that would determine whether they would move on to the next round of the World Cup or not. Soccer being the number 1 sport here, our coaches organized that we practiced earlier and then the team could watch the game together at the Hockeypark amongst the couple thousand people that came to watch the game on the Jumbotron screen. Germany prevailed with a 1-0 victory as those of you following the World Cup already know, and therefore will play against England on Sunday in the quarterfinals. If you followed my Twitter feed or my Facebook news feed there is a picture linked of the four-lane street outside my apartment full of people dancing and hanging out on the street celebrating the win. The riot police were called in to clear the people since no cars could drive by… Ironically most of the cars that were driving by or trying too at that time were team Germany supporters driving there cars in circles around the Altermarkt honking their horns, hanging out their car windows with flags and so on. They love the “beautiful game” over here.

Planning my vacation was a tough challenge; so many places to go and not enough time. I think I have done a decent job travelling around so far considering the schedule we have but most of my sightseeing has been in Germany. I am hoping to get to see some more places outside of Germany in the second half of my time here. During my vacation, I will be spending time in France, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Hopefully I survive travelling to all those countries during July and then I will be able to set my sights on London, Prague, Marrakesh, Munich (Oktoberfest), Warsaw, Luxembourg, Brussels, parts of Serbia and Croatia as well as some more time with my family before I leave in October. I realize visiting all those places in the little free time I have left probably isn’t realistic but I will give it a try anyways and get as many done as possible.

Drop a comment , send an email or let me know what your thinking.

Waterloo Scandal from a Different Angle

As many football fans now know the Waterloo Warriors football program has been suspended by the University of Waterloo following the results of team wide drug testing. The university decided to suspend next season after 9 players tested positive for banned substances. The university ordered the whole team to be tested following charges being laid by the Waterloo police against a player involving steroids and other illegal contraband.

Many people have chimed in and given their opinion on this situation and what could be done, how it could or should have been dealt with or how to prevent it. I have been reading responses on the Canada Football Chat and tsn.ca and many of them are placing all the blame on the school for making its decision to cancel the upcoming season.

Many people have been mentioning that this decision by the university has hung the clean student-athletes out to dry; I agree with those points and this decision will forever impact the members of the Waterloo Warriors football community. The university’s decision has stuck the student-athletes with tuition fees, apartment leases; it may have cost some athletes possible professional football opportunities as well as many other problems that these athletes are now facing.

I feel for these athletes and can sympathize to a certain extent. I have never been part of a steroid scandal but I did have to endure a scandal during my time in university. I personally never had a full season cancelled shortly before either my return to school or in my rookie year but my teammates and I at McGill University did have our season cancelled early and had the possibility of the season being cancelled hanging over us every day of that season.

The circumstances were obviously quite different because the Waterloo scandal deals with the decisions of individuals and the scandal we endured was a result of team decisions. For those of you unfamiliar with that scandal, we had to deal with a hazing incident; which the media used to slanderously attack players and the team without correctly gathering the facts of the event in question. The media is obviously a two-edged sword; sometimes the desired story gets published and other times its just looking for a big story.

I am in no way defending our team’s actions; but I do mention this experience of which I am not proud of because I believe it brings forward a similar dilemma. Waterloo University has now had to deal with a public relations disaster. McGill University also had to deal with a public relations nightmare during our scandal and in the end it also decided to cancel the rest of our season. By no means does getting to play 6 games and then have the season cancelled compare to losing the whole season but the universities decided the same fate for the football program. A university’s public image is crucial to its existence and therefore extreme actions follow when that image is tarnished or altered.

The institutions decided what they thought would be best for the image of the school, not the football team. We had to discover this for ourselves at McGill and now the Waterloo athletes as well. The collective of people in the administration from McGill, and now Waterloo, decided that something needed to be done and set some precedents. Obviously this decision deeply impacts the current Waterloo football community and its near future but I believe that in the long run it will have a greater impact on a national level for football and hopefully amateur sport.

This decision by the University of Waterloo will force the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport (CCES) to look deeper into how they can help prevent, monitor and control the substances that athletes are inducing in amateur sport. The athletes are ultimately responsible for their decisions to ingest banned substances but the governing body needs to assume some responsibility as well. When a community has lots of crime the police force is expected to control and clean up the mess and I believe the same could be said about doping in sports. If athletes can get away with doping then unfortunately some athletes will do so and until more rigid procedures are enforced doping will continue.

I believe that the current testing procedures are ineffective. I think that the “randomized” testing is well for lack of a better word, not random enough. I believe the term random in randomized testing, should also mean time of year; not just during the season, the testing should be sporadic. A university athlete trains and prepares him or herself year round and the drug tests should be put into effect during the off-season as well. It is obviously impossible to test all athletes several times a year due to the financial and logistical problems this poses but there are other plausible options and methods of performing these tests that could help control the doping dilemma.

I also think that invoking “targeted testing” would be a good idea, a procedure could be designed that would require teams to nominate a few players from opponents in their conference and have some of these players tested. Some players may find this shocking but if you have nothing to hide and are abiding by the rules then there should be no problems. I realize this allows opponents to control part of the testing process but I am only suggesting that this is done once a year to possibly help control some of the people that slip through the cracks of the randomized testing process.

In my five years at McGill University, I was never tested once. No big surprise here, I am like most university athletes, I was never tested during my entire amateur career. When I reflect and look back, maybe a couple teams in my conference may have wondered if I had taken any performance enhancers. I have never, and never will take anything of that kind but I was 191 pounds at my first McGill football training camp and by the time my fourth year training camp started I was 225 pounds. Not the biggest jump in the world but some teams may have been curious if my gains had been obtained through hard work or with the use of performance enhancers. I would not have been offended or had a problem with submitting to a test at any time to prove it.

Aside from the changes that I believe could help the testing process I also think that student-athletes need to take more responsibility. One thing that I probably didn’t understand well enough when I was in university was that just like I expect the school to support the athletics department and football team; it expects me to “support” the university. It expects me to represent the university to the best of my abilities.

When you are given the opportunity to play on a university team, you are representing yourself, your teammates, your coaches and all the alumni. This means that there are hundreds and thousands of people that your actions will reflect on. If you cheat, your actions not only affect you but all the people from your community. I hope that from this event some new effective procedures are put into place to allow athletes who are clean to continue to compete honestly and not have to suffer the consequences for other athlete’s poor, immoral decisions.

Let me know what you think.
www.erikgalas.blogspot.com