Westerstede, Germany

We arrived in Germany on Wednesday morning and headed for the town of Westerstede in north-west Germany. Redland’s AYSO soccer has a friendship with Westerstede and we send teams to each country as an exchange. Last year we had the boys from Westerstede stay out our homes and now their girl’s soccer team is welcoming us into their homes. Their girl’s team will be coming to the United States next year.
Our new German friends picked us up from the airport in two of team’s large vans or “buses”. On our way to Westerstede, they took us to a large soccer stadium in Hamburg for the HSV soccer team where we were taken on a guided tour of the stadium.

When we arrived in Westerstede, we were taken to their team’s club house to meet our host families. The city of Westerstede has large community center where they have soccer fields, a skate park, tennis courts, a volley ball court, a large gymnasium and other things like this. In this area they have a building which is called their club house. It has a kitchen, a large eating area, a bar, restrooms and large open area that can be used for dancing. They use this place for team parties and other get togethers. It has pictures of past teams hanging on the walls and trophies all around. Wednesday evening, we met here with our host families and they feed us large pot luck dinner. The food was a little similar to our food, like pasta salad, potato salad and breads, but we did try some new foods too. After dinner we were all taken to our host families’ homes.

On Thursday, we all met at the town center and boarded the team buses and went to a castle in a nearby city. We toured the castle and learned a little about the history in that area, it was difficult to understand everything because it was all through a translator.

Then they took us on a long drive to the North Sea. It was low tide when we were there and we had to walk a long ways to get out to the water.

A guide took us out across the beach and showed us many creatures and told us some interesting facts. We saw crabs, sand worms that eat sand and some very small things living in the sand too. The sand felt very weird and some parts were very squishy.

When we got closer to the sea there was a lot of mucky mud and they all had fun standing in the mud, some girls even got a little stuck.

After the North Sea, we drove to a lake near Westerstede and most of the girls lay on the beach and went boy watching while only 4 girls tried to water-ski. They have this very cool machine on the lake that pulls people with pulleys around the lake. The hook picks them up in the edge and then pulls them around in a big circle as long as they can hold on. Our girls did not make it too far out there.

That evening we went back to the club house for a pizza party with our host families. Their pizza is similar to ours but they have a few different toppings, like tuna fish. Some of the girls went outside and played soccer on a nearby field.