Day 4 – Lustenau/Herisau – Game vs. EC Herisau

We landed in Munich, Germany around 7:45 AM and had the bus packed and ready to go by 8:30 AM. The trip from the airport to our hotel in Austria was around two hours. Once again, wonderful time for me to grab some shut eye. I woke up as we were pulling up to the hotel when it finally hit me that I was in Germany. The town we are in is a small little town that is just gorgeous , and even more gorgeous due to the constant light snow that has been going on all day long. We had a brief lunch at the connected restaurant and the went to our rooms for a few hours to get some sleep before our first game. The rink was only a half hour drive from the hotel and let me tell you…..going from one of the hottest rinks I’ve ever been in in Athens to the coldest rink I have ever been in in Herisau was not fun at all. All of my equipment was frozen solid. It was hard to get used to the European wider rink and getting my angles correct but once I found my groove, I felt great the rest of the game. We played a hard first period and came out trailing 2-1, but our jet lag kicked in during the second period and EC Herisau took it to us hard. We were trailing 5-3 after the second period and ended up losing the game 7-4. Although I gave up seven, I felt like I played very well. I had some big saves and most of their goals were scored after I had already made a first, second and sometimes even a third stop. The coaches also thought I had a very good game as well. After the game, Herisau had a bucket of beers waiting for us and we drank them together in their locker room. It was pretty cool to talk to them about what life is like over here. We got back to the hotel, had some dinner and then had about an hour before curfew to walk around the area. It has been a long day, but if this is what the rest of this trip is going to be like, this is going to be one incredible trip.