American Football in Switzerland: First month in Switzerland

After spending about 5 weeks in Chur, Switzerland I have already experienced countless new things in my life. I came to Switzerland to play American Football professionally for the Calanda Broncos and for the possibility to win the Eurobowl Championship. I also came here to travel around Europe and see things that I've never seen before.

The 2012 Calanda Broncos Imports from left to right: James Canetti (from San Pedro, California, went to a D2 College in South Carolina, has an Italian passport), Me, Greg Conti (from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, went to Bucknell University, has an Italian passport), Sasha Glavic (from Toronto, Canada, went to a University in Canada, played in the CFL, and has a Swiss passport), Steve Valentino (my roommate, from Cleveland, Ohio, went to Dayton University, is 1 of the other 3 American imports), Tissi Robinson (from Germany, played at Foothill JC in San Jose, has a German passport, plays Corner and Wide Receiver), Mark de Swart (from Calgary, Canada, went to a University in Canada, has a Netherlands passport, plays Middle Linebacker), Marko Glavic (from Toronto, Canada, played at Lafayette University, has a Swiss passport, plays Quarterback), Iiro Luoto (from Finland, played on the practice squad for the New York Jets, and plays offensive tackle). Missing imports include: Zeee Germans, DJ Wolfe--RB from University of Oklahoma, and Yoan--Tight End from France)

During my first week here, me and a few of the other guys took the Gondola in Chur to the top of one of the mountains to check out the views and grab a beer.

Top of the Gondola ride in Chur.

View of Chur, Switzerland

Restaurant where we grabbed a beer at the top of the Gondola.

Best beer I've had in Switzerland at the top of the Gondola ride in Chur.

I have already traveled all around Switzerland. Obviously I've spent most of my time in Chur, but I have also visited many other places in Switzerland. The first major trip I made was a snowboarding trip to Arosa. 2 other players and I took a train from Chur to Arosa that took about an hour--then we shredded some gnarly Swiss pow pow all day. It was an awesome day on the mountain and the snow was fantastic.

On top of Arosa for a beer and some relaxation.

Marko, Me, and Mark aka "The Duke"

Shredding some Swiss powder in Arosa

Train ride up to Arosa.

Relaxation at it's finest at the top of Arosa.

The next trip was a bus ride to Tenero, Switzerland for a weekend of pre-season camp with the team. Tenero is right on the border of Southern Switzerland and Northern Italy. It was a beautiful place with mountains and palm trees surrounding us and Lago Maggiore was only a few hundred yards away from our practice fields. It was a great weekend to bond with my teammates and grow closer as a team.

Lake Maggiore--5 minute walk from our practice field at camp

View from the balcony from our room at camp in Tenero, Switzerland

Practice Field at camp in Tenero, Switzerland

After a week full of practices, meetings, and working out, 4 of us took an epic road trip to Prague, Czech Republic. Prague was an amazing city with unique architecture and very friendly people. We spent 3 days and 3 nights there and visited basically everything we wanted to see. We stayed in a hotel called Archibald City which was in Wenceslas Square--right near the big museum. We were walking distance from Old Town Square--which was where we spent most of our time, as well as the Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle, although the Prague Castle was more of a hike rather than a walk. Prague seemed like a magical city with so much to do and so many people--it would be a great place to live or spend a football season with the Prague Panthers ;). We had some amazing Czech beer--my favorite was the Budviser Budvar. We went on 2 pub crawls on friday and saturday night which were both awesome. And we ate some typical Czech cuisine (goulash with potato pancakes), as well as some KFC (4 or 5 times) because Prague is famous for having so many KFC's throughout the city....+ there aren't any KFC's in Switzerland--all we have here is McDonalds and Burger King.

Old Town Square--Prague

Old Town Square

Church at the Prague Castle

View from the top of the Prague Castle

On the Charles Bridge, Prague

Wenceslas Square--Prague, Czech Republic

After Prague I drove us to Munich to visit our German teammates that live in the city. Luckily, our owner gave us a fairly new Audi A4 Hatchback--so I was flying on the autobahn. At one point, I got us up to 240 kilometers per hour--which is equal to around 150 miles per hour. It was a really cool rush to drive that fast. Once we got to Munich we met up with our friends Rob and Pascal, and they showed us around the city and eventually took us to a "Starkbeirfest" which in english is translated to Dark Beer Fest. This was one of the coolest things that I've ever done. Everyone was dressed in there lederhosen and there dirndls, besides us tourists obviously. It was at a huge building with big wooden benches and tables everywhere and everyone was sitting in very tight quarters--or standing and dancing in tight quarters. It was a packed place, but the Germans said that it was nothing compared to Oktoberfest which goes on from mid september to the beginning of october. Although it wasn't Oktoberfest, it was still a lot of fun. We all ordered food and beers--the beers were in huge mugs and the beer was delicious even though it was around 10% alcohol by volume. Apparently they have these Starkbeirfests for 3 weeks leading up to Easter--I was told that the Monks used to drink this back in the day when they would fast before Easter. I guess this beer helped fill them up since they weren't allowed to eat anything. After a long day/night of dancing on benches, drinking beer, laughing, and saying "Prost" about 100 times to a bunch of random Germans, which is the German word for cheers, we were spent.

Our car for 6 months--drove that from Prague to Munich, got up to 240 kilometers per hour on the autobahn in Germany

Church in Munich

Starkbeirfest in Munich

With zeeee Germans (Rob Zernicki--Defensive End, on the left with his girlfriend and Pascal Maier--Wide Receiver, next to me on the right)

Me and Rob at the Starkbeirfest. "Prost!"

We made the 2 and a half hour drive back to Chur just in time for our sponsor lunch at Restaurant Ticino at 1pm. After the lunch, some of the players and I had a pre-season press conference. The press conference was all translated from Swiss German to English, back to Swiss German. It was an interesting process, but we all did the best we could to understand each other. Here is the link to the article about us, although it is written in German:

http://www.suedostschweiz.ch/sport/die-calanda-broncos-greifen-auf-allen-ebenen?prev=printmail%2F623798

The next week I went to Zurich with 3 other guys on the team and we stayed with one of our teammates who lives in the city. It was a really nice day, so we walked down to the lake and had a beer, then we hung out around town the rest of the night and ate dinner at our teammates apartment.

Drinking a beer at Lake Zurich, in Zurich, Switzerland

In Zurich with Yoan (our French tight end who lives in Singapore), Conti, Tips, me, and Matt Hammer (another Canadian on our team, he lives in Zurich and he plays safety)

On wednesday of that week I went on the train called the "Bernina Express" which is a luxury train with tall windows that travels from Chur, through St. Moritz, all the way down to Tirano, Italy--which is right across the border of Italy. It was a beautiful 4 hour train ride that went through mountains, tunnels, aqueducts, bridges, and went by a few rivers and lakes. Once we got to Tirano we stopped for a quick lunch at a local Italian restaurant. I ordered the spaghetti carbonara and a glass of delicious Italian red wine, Steve got a pizza, and his mom got the spaghetti with meat sauce. After lunch we stopped for some gelato, which I have been hooked on ever since I got to Europe, and we had to get back on the train for the 4 hour ride back.

Bernina Express train

One of the lakes/rivers on the Bernina Express

Bernina Express

Getting closer to Italy--on the Bernina Express

We went over the aqueduct in a corkscrew and then went right through it

You can see Italy from here...notice the vineyards

The Italian restaurant we went to in Tirano, Italy

By now I have played in 2 games. Our first game was home against the Winterthur Warriors--the final score was 70-0. Then our 2nd game was at the Bienna Jets in Biel, Switzerland--near the French border. We beat them 56-16, and the majority of our import players didn't play in the 2nd half. I had around 10 tackles in the first half and our coaches wanted to get us out of the game to keep us healthy--we were winning 49-0 at halftime.

2nd half of the game @Bienna Jets in Biel, Switzerland--notice the gloves/tape are off and the shades are on.

2nd half of the Bienna game--check out those stands (the small hill on the other side of the field). Check out Felix aka "The Boss" lining up at wide receiver.

Me making a tackle against Winterthur in our 1st game...I don't know what it says at the top of the picture.

I'm back in Chur, and I just had a typical day out here. Wake up in the morning--around 10am, cook some breakfast, go to the gym and workout, hit the sauna, take a shower and then head to our sponsor lunch. For lunch today we had our typical salad with french dressing, along with french and sesame seed bread. For the main course we all got the same thing today--a big piece of pork along with roasted potatoes and green beans with bacon. It was a solid lunch that definitely filled me up. After lunch we all packed into the car and went shopping for food--if you don't cook in Switzerland your money will go fast. If you go out for dinner, you're going to spend 20 francs per meal at the least. After shopping I took a nap and have just been relaxing all day. Just cooked some dinner and I finally brought myself to start a blog.

I've never blogged before, but I figured I would start since I have been emailing my family and friends so much about my experiences in Europe.

Here are some pictures from the many sheissfests that we've had so far. When you play for the Calanda Broncos you learn very quickly what exactly a sheissfest is. The word sheissfest in english is vaguely translated into "Shit-faced". So a sheissfest is the atmosphere you go to when you want to, or sometimes don't want to get really drunk. Our owner loves to drink, and he loves to buy his players drinks as well....Just look at these pictures:

Sheissfest #1 Marko, our quarterback looking over round #1. Our owner loves to take us out to a bar in town and get us very inebriated. So he buys us countless rounds of drinks...and this is just 1 round--for all of us imports. From left to right it goes: Braulio shot, apple vodka shot, jäger bomb, then car bomb to finish it off. He has us take all of these within about a minute span. Let's just say it get's out of hand pretty quickly. And this has been the first time I have been upset at someone for buying me drinks...

Me and Zeee Germans, Pascal and Rob

Post game celebration at Freisto's (our owners favorite sports bar in town). Marko is wearing our owners favorite drink vest--it's a Swiss liquor called Braulio which tastes horrendous.