The Boys from Bakersfield

2 cars pulled out of the Hassenpflug dirveway thursday evening, packed to the gills with fishing gear, bags, and 8 guys ready to have the adventure of a lifetime. Sweden is an 8 hour trip from the friendly confines of Dohren City, so leaving at 8 pm would put us there just as the fishing would start getting good. (the sun rises at 4 am there...and it doesnt really get dark until 11)

the excitement grew as we passed by Hamburg and no traffic jam, (quite a rarity since the Autobahn is torn to hell on the A1) we made great time to Kiel, and were crossing into Denmark in no time. The first ferry was a 40 minute trip across the Baltic Sea. it was crammed with cars, we were actually the last cars to get on. so we headed up to the ol poop deck and watched as ships passed in the night. since we had been in the car for about 4 hours, we were a little slap happy and began doing Titanic scenes, like "i'm the king of the world" and spitting over the side of the boat. we got some weird looks from the other passengers. this is also where we bought 12 cases of "Probably the best beer in the World" (Carlsburg) to go along with 2.5 cases of Astra we stuffed into our bags and the 7 bottles of liquir...so really the cars werent too packed to the gills when we left, but they definitely rode a little lower after coming off the ferry.

Denmark isnt a very fun place to drive through, it reminds me a lot of Indiana actually; flat farm lands for miles in every direction. but after 2 hours of driving, we made it to the next ferry, the one to take us to the promise land, just in time to see the gate go down and it sail away. so we had to wait for it to go over and come back...this was just enough time to start a dance party outside the cars. Thies also showed us how Rigs, his uncle's dog, pulled his hamstring once. this is truely indescribable, but i think you can picture it in your head...not the dog pulling a hamstring, but a guy on all fours reinacting it outside the 1st car in a line of 15 waiting to get on the ferry at midnight. this ferry had a much better viewing deck, which afforded us another golden opportunity to do the "king of the world" scene from titanic.

Once in Sweden, we had another couple of hours until we got to the lake house. and this part of the drive was marked by random spot lights lighting up trees in the forest, a giant elk statue, and stories of sexual conquests told just to keep Thies awake as he drove. we pulled into the house right at 4 am, exactly 8 hours from when we started, a new record. while most guys unpacked and headed to bed, Tony, Hubi, and I stayed awake and headed out to the boat with our fishing gear. it was quite chilly and it started raining after a while so we headed in empty handed around 6.

Flankey Ball is a game that I had come to despise, I hadnt won...hell i hadnt even knocked over a can in the entire 6 games that i'd played. but this is the tradition in Sweden, so when in Rome, right? so the stage was set, 4 teams battling for the right not to have to do dishes that night. (spaghetti was on the menu) Team USA consisting of...well i think you can figure that one out, took home the trophy and my thoughts about the game have changed a bit...its actually a simple game if you knock over the cans. Lowe (pronounced Loova) and Nico were the unfortunate pair that lost both games and had to clean up that night.

After a good meal, we sat around the table and played our first of many rounds of poker. Its a good thing someone brought chips and cards, because it would have made for some boring evenings otherwise. Everyone pretty much played every hand dealt, but i think it had more to do with the fact that they were "erotic cards" and had naked women on them, more so than them actually being good hands.

Saturday, we had decided, would be the day that we would go to Jonkeping and go to a bar instead of drinking at the house. we needed to see these Swedish women for ourselves. Timo, Nico, and Tony went early to see the town, while Thies, Lowe, Jan, Hubi, and I waited around a little bit longer...and by waited around i mean we pregamed. we got to the town around 6-6:30 and it was a ghost town, there was nothing opened and no one was around. but we had a case of beer with us so we found a parking lot (empty of course) and called the other guys to come meet us there. the 4 of us, Lowe had to drive, had almost finished the beer by the time the others got there, but they had a case too, so the party continued. we decided that if we were going to go out to these bars, we needed a back story...all great bar visits start with these kind of conversations. so we come up with the story that we were all high school friends from Bakersfield, CA there together celebrating Tony's bachelor party. so here is the line up:

Tony: plays wide reciever for arena football in Kansas City
Jan: shortstop for Tokyo Giants. leads the league in errors. He was our stoner friend in school.
Thies: Plays hockey for the Anaheim Ducks.
Nico: point guard for the Knicks
Hubi aka Sebastion Walsh: brother to Kerry Walsh and also a pro volleyball player
Me: Bomb dropper for the Mets
Timo: plays alongside Tiger Woods for Team Nike. he was taking meds to rehab a knee so no drinking for him

Toward the end of our 2nd case of beer, Thies decided he wanted to say something, "Hey i have a question. I'm hungry. Let's go to McDonalds."
The rest of the group, "Thies, that was actually 2 statements. you didnt ask a question anywhere in there."
this became a common saying throughout the rest of the trip. as did, "i'm not from California, I'm from Anaheim." again, thank you thies.

so now that we had our story straight, we did finally go to McDonalds, and then off to paint the town red. we walked along the strip until we fould a place that was having some kind of party on the roof with a live band. so we headed in and when we got up the stairs, we saw that everyone there was dressed up very nice in shirts and ties and we came strolling in wearing t-shirts and shorts. they were all dancing and singing though, so we thought why not stay and see where this takes us. We found the bar and ordered a drink. 49 krown for a beer, that equates to 5 euros a beer, which when compared to the dollar is something like 8 bucks. but we got a beer and headed up to the dance floor. it was filled with older women and they took to us like ducks to water. we were dancing and singing along and just loving life. then the band took a break, and just as they left the roof and the door closed behind them, a drunk guy crashed into the mixing board and fell to the ground with it. but he didnt seem to break anything because the band came back out and continued on. The singer called up a girl, we think it was her birthday or something, and then looked around and grabbed Hubi and they danced for about 5 seconds of the song before the girl was bombarded by her friends and hubi came back to our circle.

an older man came up to us, asking what we were there for, and we told him that we were celebrating Tony's bachelor party, and he said that there was a place down the way that was more our age group. he sounded sincere about it, but talking about the conversation later, we thought that we might have been impeding on his game a little bit by dacing with all the women, so thats why he told us to leave. but we walked down to where he told us and found a line halfway around the block to get into the bar, Twin Cities. and we found out that there was a cover charge as well. so i went up to a group of girls and asked them if they knew of any other place we could go to hang out and drink some beers. they told us about a bar on the other side of the big hotel infront of us and that they would come with us. we gave them our bullshit story about being from Bakersfield and playing all of our sports, and they bought it...hook, line, and sinker! well...that is until some of the guys started speaking German and one of the girls asked Tony, "are your friends German?" "Uh no, they spent a few years in Germany though, so they like to take German to each other."

This made the girls leave, and there we were sitting on the corner of the street, wondering what to do next. there was some discussion, but since the drivers wanted to leave, we all had to go home with them.

Sunday was yet another day on the lake, trying to catch those pesky pike. I'm pretty sure they were holding on deeper cover, in the cooler water, but since we didnt have a depth finder or anything like that, it was impossible to find the fish. we were able to catch 4 pike, ranging from 30cm to 59cm, throughout the 5 days. but they were just shore runners alone, searching for some smaller bait fish. Lowe did have 2 fish on that threw the hook and got away, but the 4 we caught were grilled up and devoured.

on Monday, we went swimming at the jumping tower...i say we because we all went, but only Nico, Hubi, Thies, and Lowe got in the water. it was way too cold for me. but they all climbed up the tower, and took a jump. Nico and Hubi went up to the 10 meter platform and did perfect backflips, and didnt even make a splash when they hit the water. it was like they water opened up and just swallowed them, no disturbance whatsoever...or at least thats how we are all going to tell the story.

the rest of the trip is littered with poker, long hours spent at Pike Tongue and Killer Pike Island, beers, and songs with innappropriate lyrics that i wont mention here, though i will never forget them. we also ran out of beer on sunday night, so we had to go buy more for monday evening festivities. Beer is very expensive in Sweden but we found the cheapest, most alcohol percentage we could and got 3 cases. the same amount of money would have bought 14 bottles of korn here in germany, so thats roughly 70 euros for 3 cases of half liters. Harboes is a danish beer, and not one i'd never really like to drink again. it had a bad taste going down, and not a real good after taste either...pretty much it was just bad beer. But beggers cant be choosers so i drank it anyway.

4:30 wednesday morning rolled around pretty quickly and we were packing up and heading home. we cleaned pretty much all day tuesday so we could get up and go wednesday morning so we were on the road by 5 am. we had practice that night at 7 and wanted to get back, unpacked, and rested a little before hitting the field.

Hubi made a 1-hour video of the entire trip, i hope we burns it to a CD so i can have visuals of this entire thing.

It was a tiring trip and now i need a vacation from my vacation.

A-Ron