Das Auto

About a day or two before leaving for training camp, our sports director took me to pick up one of the team cars. As you can imagine I was excited to get a car because this meant I would be able to get around Germany. There was one problem, I don’t know how to drive standard, well didn’t know how to drive standard.

Now some of you might know that most vehicles in Europe are standard transmission or manual shift; whichever you prefer. Unfortunately for me I had never had the chance to learn how to drive standard, so along with figuring out where I was, I would also be learning to drive again so to speak. We never had a standard vehicle at home and this would be a new challenge for me to learn while I was here; it was either learn, or walk.

Our sports director asked me if I wanted to drive the car off the lot from the sponsoring dealership but I told him that it probably was not a good idea and that he should take the first leg of this voyage.

Here is a picture of the Honda Jazz.



After leaving the dealership, it was my turn to take the brand new Honda Jazz for rip. Well like I said this happened a few days before training camp so as previously mentioned this was when my coach took me around to the different locations in Monchengladbach that I would be going too like the Gym, grocery store and so on.

Instead of getting to used to starting, stopping and shifting in a parking lot as I had hoped, I was put behind the wheel on a street with not much traffic. We only stayed there for the time it took for me to get the vehicle into second gear and we were off to explore Monchengladbach with my shaky shifting. Fortunately for me Monchengladbach is a pretty flat town and not too many hills so I didn’t need to worry about the roll back too much. I did pretty good right from the start; that’s not to say that driving with me didn’t cause whiplash but at least I didn’t stall the car every time I needed to start from standstill. I seemed to be able to get the car going with some choppiness; well heavy choppiness, but than I was fine once in second gear. I would get into trouble when I would stall; it seemed every time stalled, I would stall for three or four times and then get going; suffice to say the vehicles behind me really enjoyed having me on the road.

The first couple of weeks of driving were a little choppy but I got a hang of it and now I can proudly say I know how to drive standard and not give whiplash to my passengers. I have already driven in a few traffic jams, big city traffic (Frankfurt and Dusseldorf) as well as soccer fans driving to the game (they didn’t have much patience good thing I was already pretty comfortable by then).

Quick side note Monchengladbach is home to one of Germany’s premier soccer clubs, which plays in the Bundesliga (#1 league); they are called Borussia Monchengladbach and here is a picture of their stadium that I took from the roof of the Hockeypark; the stadium hold about 50 to 60,000 people(so I have been told). I am hoping to get to see a game before I leave 'Gladbach; soccer was the first sport that I played competitively so seeing a game would be really cool. As well a link to their team website.



After having that Honda Jazz for a few weeks, and some of the new imports arriving we went to return the car and receive our three new red Hyundai I20’s with team decals on them. We went for a quick photo shoot with the cars so they could write a press release about the dealership’s sponsorship of the team.

Here are some of those pictures.




I am happy that I was presented with the opportunity to learn how to drive standard since it can’t hurt to know how to drive that kind of vehicle. I want to thank my coach/driving instructor for putting me in the hot seat and dealing with all the “friendly” honking cars while I stalled. I think he just permanently had his hand up waving sorry to everyone around us. He told me that it’s a normal thing for him to go through because every time a new group of players from North America come over there are always a few that don’t know how to drive stick.

Drop me a line if you got any personal driving horror stories, or any questions about anything I mentioned or forgot to mention.