Germany Trip Blog - Days 6 to 8

From Asst. AD/Athletics Communications, May 21, 2018 | Men's Basketball
by Dan Lukes, dan.lukes@snc.edu, (920) 403-4077

As told by Riley Haas and Joe Lemon:

Day 6 (5/19/18) - Today we started off the morning with a trip into the city of Mannheim for some leisurely sightseeing. First we walked down a strip that had multiple luxury shopping stores such as Rolex and Armani. As we got to the end of the strip, we came up on one of the twenty water towers in the city of Mannheim. It was a beautiful sight with water glistening down steps into a large water fountain. This particular water tower was bombed during World War II and has since been rebuilt. After hanging out by the water tower for a while we walked further into the city and saw the Mannheim Baroque Palace. As you might imagine, the palace was massive and stretched along a couple city blocks. Our last stop in the city was at the Jesuitenkirche Church of Mannheim and we got the opportunity to go into the church. Almost everywhere we looked there were beautiful pieces of artwork and sculptures made of gold. While we were in the church, an organ began playing and a man sang the iconic song "Ave Maria" which echoed throughout the building. It was the perfect ending to our morning in Mannheim. At this point we headed back to the hotel for some lunch before departing for our second game of the trip in Ulm. As mentioned in our last blog post, we played the Ulm Basketball Club 19U team who was coached by a former player of Coach Grzesk's during his stint at Lakeland College. They are considered to be the grassroots club for their main professional team in Ulm. We learned that multiple players on the team will be future professionals and their starting center already has an offer from Georgetown University back in the United States. We played hard and gave them a good game but fell short once again. After the game we got a chance to tour the arena of the Ulm professional team. Their arena seats 6,200 people and the best players on the team make around 500,000 Euro a year. We also got to take a peak in the locker room where we saw former Notre Dame University standout Luke Harangody's locker as well as the locker of Katin Reinhardt, who played at UNLV, USC, and Marquette. We hung around in Ulm a little longer to grab dinner before making the three-hour bus ride back to the hotel for our last night in Mannheim. Tomorrow morning we will depart for Munich, our third and final destination in Germany.

Day 7 (5/20/18) - This morning we packed up and headed out towards Munich to do some sightseeing in our last city. The first place we visited was perhaps the most intriguing and educational site we saw all trip. It was the Dachau Concentration Camp located just outside the city of Munich. It was the first concentration camp established in Germany and served as the camp for political prisoners. As we walked into the camp we got an audio guide and a map of the camp to aid us in navigation. Some of the camp had been rebuilt since World War II but some of the buildings were the original ones that still stand today. We were able to walk around the entire camp and see areas such as the crematorium, gas chambers, barracks, religious memorials, and the museum. We were allotted about an hour to walk around and learn about these things but easily could have taken up to three hours as there was a lot of stuff that multiple players didn't get to see due to the time crunch. After the concentration camp we headed over to Allianz Arena, which is the home of FC Bayern Munich. We had a tour of the stadium and saw the pitch, the home and away locker rooms, the press room, and various other parts of the stadium. There was also a youth soccer tournament happening while we were on the tour, so we cheered a couple times when goals were scored. The arena was built with an open roof that curved over part of the seats to maximize the volume of the fans. We could tell that the arena gets very loud during games because when we cheered for the kids it echoed throughout the entire stadium. Once the tour ended we went to our hotel to check in and get dinner before relaxing for the night. A few of us checked out some of the nightlife around the hotel but only for about an hour because tomorrow we have our final game of the trip against MTSV Schwabing.

Day 8 - Part 1 - (5/21/18) - Today was a national holiday in Germany called Pentecost so some of the shops and restaurants were closed or had adjusted hours. The first activity of the day was a tour of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich. The palace had acres and acres of land which featured small lakes and rivers throughout as well as statues of Greek gods surrounding beautiful water fountains. There were walking trails around the area and ducks and swans were almost everywhere we looked. We also had the chance to walk through some parts of the palace. More to come in the next blog!