Trains, planes and Cymru am Byth!!

Hello again to my odd blog. Today I'm writing to you from a café next to the train station in Mettlach, and I'm late for school. Not by my own means, I was at Trier Süd at 7.04 as usual but the trains have done something I wasn't even sure German had a word for, they've gone on strike. Luckily I'm not working properly til 3rd lesson, so i'm just waiting for a lift up the mountain.

Anyway, this blog post is about my short visit home last week. This isn't going to be just a long rambling post about my 30 hour wait to get home though as, fun as that was, blow by blow account would prove be a bit boring.

The departures board for the airport, hard to see but almost all flights have "annuliert" written after them (cancelled).

In a nutshell, due to heavy snow Frankfurt am Main airport got closed due to snow, and I got caught up in it. This involved:

• A 4 hour queue on Tues evening. By the end of it me and my fellow queueing buddies were best friends. Shout out to guy going to Copenhagen, guy from Mexico, guy from London and Danish guy.

The Bild (Germany's equivalent of The Sun) summed it up nicely.

• Missing 2 connections and 3 planes being delayed. Or something, lost track a bit.

• Badgering Lufthansa for food vouchers every 4 hours or so, resulting in nearly €50 worth of free food.

My final plane to take me home arriving through the snow. I thought, having got all the way to Brussels, it was cancelled again, but apparently the snow wasn't too much of a problem on Weds evening.

• Upon arriving in Birmingham discovering that my bag never left Frankfurt, and not actually giving a damn because at least I myself had made it home. (Update, it arrived Monday aternoon, 6 days after they lost it...)

Oh well, so ist das Leben and all that.

The first 2 days when I finally got home were nice, just involved seeing my family and oldest friend Abs, watching some films and visiting Cardiff. On the Saturday however Exciting Things took place: Wales v England Six Nations decider.

In general I'm not a massive sports viewer, (at least, apart from this summer when, like everyone else, suddenly all I wanted to do was watch Turkey play Spain at ooh, I don't know, the leaf-blowing semi finals at the Olympics) but when it comes to rugby my love has slowly but surely grown.

As a child I hated rugby, as it would mean every week I (accompanied by the cat) would have to make a quick exit from the living room, startled by my Dad's explosive cheers of "come on Wales!", "run you bugger!" Or "****", my ears ringing from the aural assault that is the sound of his man hands clapping together in tension/excitement.

Anyway, the older I got the better I found watching rugby, and once at uni the fun times with Southampton uni Cymrusoc cemented my own passion for rugby. So, seeing as I was home for the event of the year that was Wales v England I duly made my way into Cardiff to watch the match. Even 4 hours before the atmosphere was electric. A sea of red flowed through St Mary's Street, a hotpot of older generations booming out Sospan Fach and the younger (female) generation replete in tiny dresses, towering heels, red dragons on their faces and blue knees from the cold.

(aside here, but ok, I know we welsh are a hardy lot, but HOW those girls expected to last in those heels from 1pm to 2am I have no idea, and really wanted to ask them).

Fans watching a 15ft screen. Note the random fans dressed in white amongst the red: they're the English, bless them.

Complete with a Welsh dragon on my cheek I too headed pub-wards. We eventually settled on the Gatekeeper, where after some sly yet oh-so-casual shuffling awarded all 4 of us with a brilliant view of the 15 foot screen. At 4.55 I went to queue for the loo, forgetting that the anthem was about to start;upon hearing the words "Mae hen wlad fy nhadau..." I dashed back to my friends, garbling something about how loo time can wait.

Here is a crappy phone video of the craziness that is a welsh pub 200 metres from the stadium singing along to the Welsh nation anthem. WARNING: Turn the volume down before you watch it.

Brief pause to explain something: Wales v England is always a big deal, but this year was particularly special because, although England were winning the tournament at that point, Wales weren't very far behind them on points, so IF Wales were to beat England with 7 points of more of a lead we would win the six nations (though not the Grand Slam, sniff). Tense stuff.

The game kicked off (with huge applause for Leigh Halfpenny, current Welsh rugby god and ideally my future husband) and we screamed our hearts out. At halftime the score was Wales 9 - 3 England, so while we were in good spirits we still hadn't won the tournament by any stretch of the imagination. That is, until, early in the second half Wales scored a try, then a glorious second one, and a conversion. We screamed, hugged each other, hugged randoms, someone poured a pint down my back in excitement and frankly my dear I didn't give a damn. Before we knew it the score was 30 - 3. Even with over 15 mins left people made their way to the bar and bought bottles of champagne, and the few English in the bar either surreptitiously made their way out of the screaming pile of Welsh or (the better ones in my opinion) shrugged their shoulders, summoned a grin and congratulated the people around them.

At full time (despite a cheeky last minute attempt at a try by England) we went crazy for roughly the 8th time :for the second year in a row Wales had won the six nations!

Now, if we could just beat New Zealand one of these decades...

I know I sound like any other sports fan and you're probably sat here wondering WHAT ON EARTH this is doing in a Year Abroad blog in Germany but I'll just say this: its times like these when, no matter how Germany is and will probably continue to be in the future my adopted home, I will never give up the brilliantly average (excluding rugby of course), cheerful and ever-singing nation that is Wales.




Get me the tissues.

PS I am pretty sure this will be the last blog post til the beginning of April, as in 2 days time Tylor, Whitney and I are heading off on a 10 day backpacking adventure around Germany (and Prague) where I may be learning to drive on the right (wrong) side of the road as we go, eek. Tschüss!!