Sept. 7, 2001

Senior Debbie Lieberman wrapped up her daily journal from the Terps' European Tour once she returned to the United States. She wrote the last three days of the trip were written in retrospect. Here is is...

It all went by so quickly. After Adventure Tuesday came, game-day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. As you can imagine, There was not too much time for reflection.

Day 8: Aug. 22
On Wednesday, August 22 after a light training session, we traveled to Maastricht, Holland. This city can be compared to an American mall. It was very modern. There were some cute shops and plenty of Dutch people. Some of us were more successful than others in finding the souvenirs we wanted.

I wound up stumbling upon a Dutch CD store! My love for music sparked my interest in buying a CD by a native Dutch band. I went into the store, asked the sales man (in English - almost everyone I encountered spoke English) to show me his most popular Dutch groups. Long story short, I walked out of there with 4 CD's. I'm such a sucker. Others seemed to be upset with the shopping because everything in the stores could be bought in the U.S. People wanted authentic gifts.

After shopping we ate dinner at a local Italian restaurant. A meal that we are all familiar with, pasta and tomato sauce, filled our stomachs. Following the meal, we departed for Boxtel to play a Holland team: ODC Boxtel at 7:30 p.m.

The game was our 1st European victory, scoring four goals compared to their two. An exciting win closed day number 18.

Day 9: Aug. 23
Thursday morning August 23 greeted us, once again, with a light training session. Following that, we boarded our (what some consider our 3rd hotel) bus and road to Aachen, Germany.

Aachen was built in the 9th century. Upon our arrival, we met our guide who took us on a walking tour of the city. She shared several tales of the city with us. We learned that Aachen has natural springs rich in sulfur content. The large amount of sulfur may have smelt bad, but the town's people swear by its natural ability to heal the sick and speed up the healing process. A few of us tried the water. My personal opinion, it tasted like it smelt, like rotten eggs - yuck!

As a whole, I believe that the team found this city much more souvenir friendly than Maasticht. In particular, there was a department store with a sporting goods department. It was there that most of us bought our authentic Adidas/Fila gear and other German paraphenalia.

For dinner, we ate in Aachen at an Italian restaurant.

One thing I noticed: Europeans, at least the ones that we encountered, do not drink as much water as Americans. After downing our first glass of water, we ate our meals thirstily waiting for the waitress to refill our glasses. It never happened. Luckily, Gus bought a large gallon sized bottle of water at the market in Aachen. It's immense size gave it character, so we had to name it: Roxanne was it's brand, Roxanne is what we called it. Thanks to good ol' Roxy and her owner Gus, we cleaned our pallets and ate our meals with full glasses of water.

Game #4 was against FC Duisburg, a contending team for the Dundesliga Damen Championship. This team was probably our toughest opponent. They had 6 national team players and a well-organized squad.

We fought hard and well. This was a good preparation game for our ACC opponents. We wound up on bottom this time. 3-2, but a great game overall.

We stopped for pizza on our way home.

Day 10: Aug. 24
Friday, August 24 we were able to sleep in! After a quick breakfast, we departed for our day in Antwerp, Belgium (the diamond capital).

We did not have too much time there, mostly we ate lunch and did a little shopping. A big seller for the team, Belgium chocolate! Yummy!

An interesting note, they use Belgium Franks in Antwerp. The exchange rate for American dollars to Franks was one dollar to 40 Franks. Thank God we did not have so much time in this city. We all probably would have left with headaches from dividing by 40 and doing math all afternoon.

Also interesting, almost every restaurant seemed to be Italian. It was kind of amusing, Eating Italian food, served by French speaking waiters, in Belgium. Obviously these countries are not as separate and individual as we see them to be.

We left Antwerp and headed over to play our last game of the trip against Oost Kapelle.

Talk about going out with a bang, we won 5-0.

A long bus ride followed the game and we arrived back at the Monastery at 1:30 a.m. This was a good thing be it was our introduction to shifting our body clocks back to Eastern Standard Time.

We packed our bags, caught a two-hour nap and on Saturday, August 25 left the Monastery at 5:00 a.m.

Our European preseason completed with a sleep filled plane ride to Newark and a transfer to BWI.

I think we all really appreciate our coaching staff for planning the trip and helping it become reality. European preseason brought our team together and helped make us more worldly and well rounded individuals in ways that we could not have done on our own.

A large thanks to [Shannon, Kerry D., and Steve] for making it all possible. Also thanks to Phyllis for keeping us healthy, Hendrick for being our tour guide, and Mr. Tottman for the planning.