HAMBURG 2ND - ADD ON THE ADVERSITY
Honestly, I have no idea where to begin. This trip was absolutely chock-full of hilarious moments, well moments we laugh about now. However, at the moment, a little frustrating. To choose a top 3 I would have to go with the smelly plane passenger, the leaking hotel room, and the lost luggage. In the end, we left Germany with some extra belongings courtesy of the airline losing our bags and a beautiful silver medal.
As we zipped up our suitcases, we were worried that they felt so light. What were we forgetting? The fact that we could weigh our suitcases without a scale shows we truly live out of these bags! We made our way through security, well, I did. The Clear TSA scanner couldn’t pick up Kristen’s facial recognition so she was stuck in line for an extended wait and the fun began there.
Kristen and I were sitting in the lounge and received the dreaded ‘delayed flight’ notification and immediately we went into damage control mode. Our tight, 1-hour connection in Atlanta dwindled to 20 minutes to get on our Amsterdam connection. We were sitting in New Orleans trying to find new routes to Hamburg and the dreaded delayed flight notification quickly changed to the delightful ‘delayed flight’ and we could make the connection in Atlanta. We thought as long as we made it to Europe today, we could figure it out the last flight from there. If beach volleyball travel has taught us anything it's flexibility.
The Atlanta flight was delayed, then delayed more for cleaning, and then a second time for cleaning. When we finally boarded the aircraft the weather woman, Kristen, saw the storm bellowing into the airport vicinity. Unlike most weathermen, she was unfortunately correct and we were delayed again. We were sitting on the plane as it was shaken by the storm’s gusty wind. After it finally passed, we were 20th in line for takeoff. *Cue the next storm from the opposite direction and we were delayed once again as we moved into 10th place in line for takeoff.
“It looks like the world is about to end” – Kristen
As we were shaking in a metal tube in the middle of the storm 3.5 hours later, we were finally 1st for takeoff. We both were dozing in and out during the 9-hour flight. 15 water cups later we landed in Amsterdam at 9:30 am and we had to make it to our 10:20 am flight. We were once again sprinting through European airports. We made it to the gate… unfortunately, our bags were not as fast as us.
We landed in Hamburg at 11:30 am and we went straight to baggage claim only to be disappointed when our bags didn’t come out. We finally accepted the fate of our bags when we tracked them via our air tags and both bags were still shown in Amsterdam. We trudged to the long line of missing baggage to join the infuriated people who were also missing their belongings. The man in front of us had been waiting for his luggage his entire trip, and the man to my left had been missing his luggage for 9 days. Rightfully so, the panic did seep in. Security had to be called to move the man in front of us because he was so angry, we filed our claim, and 2.5 hours later we were ready to leave the airport.
We found our transportation and he informed us that we had to continue to wait for the China teams to land and collect their luggage. Morale was LOW! The transportation man pawned us off on the MC to take an Uber together which took even longer. When we finally got to the hotel all the China teams, coaches, and their 500 bags were already assigned rooms and on their merry way. By 2:30 pm we checked into our room with 8+ hours of delays, missing luggage, and 5 hours of waiting for luggage and transportation. We were hungry, ON EDGE, and in search of food. The foodie found a delicious-looking place and when we finally arrived there was a line out the door, so obviously she chose the right place. Option #2 sent us to a café where we were seated next to two girls that we could touch elbows with at our tables were so close then they started smoking so we moved again. To say it was a wild, long, draining travel day would be an understatement.
We went into problem-solving mode as we didn’t have pajamas or training clothes for the next day. There were plenty of stores to choose from, including Nike, Adidas, and Zara. Just about any and every store, but it was Sunday. On Sunday, people actually rest in Germany and only grocery stores and some restaurants were open. We made it to the train station to find a ‘grocery store’ with an enormous line to get the basics. We found toiletries, sunscreen, extra t-shirts, and my personal favorite grocery store underwear and bras to make it through until our bags arrived! Yes, you read that right, only the cutest grocery store underwear, socks, and bras were purchased! We made it back to our hotel and 7 pm hit us like a brick wall and we passed out right after our air tags notified us that our bags arrived in Germany!
Both of us woke up around midnight and thought the night was over. Our room was so hot without any AC and we both preferred to sleep in ice box temperatures. We woke up around 8 a.m. and had a scrumptious breakfast at the hotel. You know it was a good breakfast when there is a full wall of bread to choose from, freshly sliced meat, and a chef to prepare your eggs as you wish.
Monday morning, we hit the stores to get real clothes for training. We had a practice scheduled with Brazil for 5 p.m. There were more than a couple of miscommunications in our hour of training with them. Neither of us understood the other so it was very entertaining when we had a few minutes left Kristen offered the idea of playing a short game to 7, win by two. We stopped when the score reached 8-6 and they were so confused. We just laughed through the miscommunication and parted ways! Our next stop of the day was a delicious salad shop around the corner from our hotel. It was extra fun to order through the kiosk in German and we guessed what the food was based on the pictures.
We enjoyed our salads, went to treatment, and then returned to the Hamburg airport because we couldn’t just sit around and wait for them to transport our bags to the hotel. They were a mere 10 minutes away from us just sitting at the airport. We found the ‘bell’ to the missing luggage cemetery, and walked down a long hallway, and back to the baggage claim area. We gave them our information and I nearly knocked over the man that opened the door when I spotted our luggage in the giant room filled with lost luggage. It was a long day, baggage claim, and 7 miles of exploring later, we made it back to the room. What is Kristen worried about?
“Man, what bread am I going to choose tomorrow morning for breakfast” – Kristen Nuss
Not to worry, the Tuesday morning bread choice surpassed Monday morning in Kristen’s opinion. After breakfast, we happily scurried back to our hotel room to organize our room now that our long-lost luggage was returned to us. Next on the agenda, send the receipts for all the clothes, toiletries, and items we needed while our luggage was flying around Europe. Then we found out our record locator had shown up as an error and we were unable to complete the reimbursement form. We both pulled out our best “Karen” typing skills to file a complaint and got that squared away!
The venue for the Hamburg Elite 16 was the infamous Rothenbaum tennis stadium. The practice was rough, we trained with the Swiss who always like to start with a fun warmup game. They usually split us up to play with the other defender and blocker on their squad. I will say I loved the warmup game; Kristen hated it after getting hit in the face which resulted in a fat lip.
The warmup game required one player on each side to hold a volleyball between their hands, we had to get 3 touches and play out the points *remember one of the players on each side had to contact the ball with the ball in their hands*. It was very hard to control the touch of the volleyball on another volleyball – hence the fat lip from Kristen after she tried to dig the attack with the ball in her hands and it bounced up and hit her in the face. From there it started sprinkling, I couldn’t find the bathroom so I was late, and then the wind picked up, and we had to sit and chat about the terribleness of practice afterward to let it go. Needless to say, our trip was adding lots of adversity for us to deal with.
We got some treatment following practice and we walked to our favorite salad shop of the weekend. Kristen left for dinner early so she could curb her carbonation addiction with a Sprite Zero, turns out, they were nowhere to be found! We strolled back to our room and we were in the midst of recovery when water came dripping from our ceiling.
We immediately called the front desk and they sent someone up to check on our claim. The man informed us that there was no maintenance on duty at the time. The hotel manager kindly informed us multiple times that he had never seen this before and that it shouldn’t be happening. We had to pack up our newly unpacked and formerly lost luggage to move rooms all the way down and around the corner, and another corner, and another corner. On the bright side, this new room had working AC.
📸: Conny Kurth
Wednesday morning, I had breakfast alone as sleeping beauty, Kristen, was still passed out and enjoyed the benefits of being a good sleeper. I saw fellow American blocker, Andy Benesh, at breakfast and we bonded over being morning people and having partners who were blessed with the gift of slumber. After breakfast, we made our way to the venue for a photo shoot with Conny from Beach Volleyball World. Prior to the photoshoot, Kristen was in search of a bathroom, shocker. The photographer sent her through the door and she came back 7 minutes later with an escort and a scolding. Apparently, she went into the “off limits” bathroom but just added it to the adversity tab we had rolling.
Following the photo shoot, we were scheduled for a Beach Volleyball World interview at the hotel balcony. We were requested to go separately for the interviews, this is a foreign concept to us as we pretty much do everything together! They asked about our partnership, what’s it like to play with Kristen Nuss, our journey, and how I felt about sharing the court with Nuss. The interviewer was throwing out all of these questions and I had to take a lengthy pause to sit back and realize the journey we have been on. The unexpected hills and valleys we have had. The opportunity that I get to travel the world with my best friend. The blessing that I get to play with the Kristen Nuss, the defender of all defenders, an icon, an idol to many, a calming force on the court, and my best friend! I had very few words to express my emotions about all of this, but my facial expressions did the job for me. I am so very lucky!
We then stopped at a coffee shop to get out of the hotel and get some work done. We wanted to find a coffee shop with WIFI for both of us. We stopped in a café with 100 signs about free WIFI but it didn’t say absolutely 0 WIFI signal. If you want to make Kristen mad, give her spotty WIFI and she will lose it! As I am typing away, WIFI-less Kristen looks at me with the eyes and voice of a 5-year-old asking, “So, can we get a treat?”. We did!
We checked in for the event and went to dinner. Dinner was full of conversations with all of the teams. More and more teams are sitting together with the “enemy or competition” and bonding over travel, or long-distance relationships, or asking about the different ways the international federations work. Needless to say, this sport is physically demanding but there is even more that goes into the mental side and the partnership side, of which, I am so blessed!
*I tried a plum for the first time and the German blocker said to me “you’re going to have fun with that”. I simply love the rough translations and the jokes that are lost with the language barriers.
We came back to the room and Kristen pulled out the envelope from check-in that had a sweet letter that 2 young German fans left for us requesting signatures. My heart melted; it was so sweet. This job is so sweet!
On Thursday morning we were ambushed on the way out of breakfast by a man with too many photographs of us from various tournaments and he was requesting our signatures. Although it is cool that he was a big fan, it was a little terrifying that people were printing off photos of us! We shuttled to the venue to match up against the German’s Borger & Ittlinger. That was plain and simple an ugly win. We were uncomfortable, couldn’t see, couldn’t pass, jittery yet flat. To find the positive, we were still able to grind through the ugliness to pull out a win with the home country against us.
Next up, Switzerland’s Brunner & Huberli. Game 1: we lost 21-11. This was a very important moment. If you were watching I got served off the court, aced, dug, everything that I shouldn’t do. However, the second set came around and we refused to let that happen again. Although it looks easy, that was a huge mental victory to come back from getting demolished in the first set and fighting tooth and nail to play like you know you can in the moment. Nuss crushed the teammate award and although I am grateful for her, multiple moments this week made me realize it even more. I was so angry after winning the match because of the horrible first set but so happy with the growth that happened. Grateful for the win, disappointed in the failure, and proud of the fight!
Friday afternoon we had the French duo. They are very scrappy, and emotional, and love to build momentum and run with it. We tried to keep the focus on our side, side out, limit errors, and push with momentum. We achieved that goal on set one and had too many unforced errors in set 2 for our liking but pulled out the two-set victory for a place in the quarterfinals!
Saturday morning breakfast was filled to the brim with people. There are so many oversized humans in one area. People that are staying at the hotel were looking around in mass confusion about the height of all the players! The hotel provided everyone with the little slippers to wear around and the 6’9 Lithuania blocker decided to wear them down to breakfast even though only half of his foot could fit.
We were slated to play the winner of Germany and Latvia in the quarterfinals. We walked to the venue to watch our future foe and get some movement in on the side warmup court. We were lined up to play THE Laura Ludwig, in her homeland of Germany. Kristen had been idolizing Ludwig since she started playing the game, now we were about to step on the court to play against her and in Germany! It was such a cool full circle moment for Kristen that she relished in until the game face came on and we stepped on the court.
It was a dog fight match! Again, the first set was less than ideal but we came to fight too. We pushed the match to 3 and in the end, came out victorious. All I have to say is Laura is an intense competitor, skilled, and a very cool and genuine human being. If you haven’t seen the end when Ludwig and Nuss hug… just watch it now! We walked out to the media zone and Nuss had a fan section. She is that inspiration that she just played against. She knows that she is representing all of those smaller, undersized humans! Laura told us that she wanted to play us and when she was on maternity leave from the game, she was watching us. WOW!
Our Tel Aviv friends. How awesome are they?.. They started a pro beach volleyball league in Tel Aviv.
*Kristen is a great defender but she can also tell the future, she said “I think we are going to be playing a German team in the quarterfinals” before the draw was even released. She does it all!
After winning the quarterfinal match, we were excited for various reasons (not in this order): free hotel, lunch, dinner, more games, more points, more experience. We snuck through the secret tunnel to escape the mass chaos and made it back for treatment, dinner, and sleep. Just before bed, we read Travis’ Volleyball Mag story about the hurricanes hitting Southern California just in time for the Manhattan Beach Open. We absolutely had FOMO for missing the event but I will certainly avoid hurricanes at all costs.
Championship Sunday! The day we worked towards all week and ours started off with a Delta notification to check in for the flight that leaves in 24 hours. Before we left Germany, we had some very important business to finish! We had our last day with the bread wall breakfast, we both felt calm and had a nice, slow morning.
There were so many Germans against us but we stomped into the full lion’s den ready to fight! We had Germany’s Muller and Tillman in the semifinal match, a rematch of the Gstaad Bronze medal match. This pair is very fast, and physical, and serves extremely well. We took the calmness and the fire to win the game in two sets and we were off to the gold medal match later that day against Brazil’s AP/Duda. But first, we met so many German fans and true beach volleyball fans who adore the sport and appreciate solid beach volleyball no matter who wins.
We snuck away for lunch and we were chased out by the bees. Everyone was laughing at us running around the tent holding our plates of food and running from the bees while everyone was just sitting there calmly eating their lunch. Remember when I said everything is closed on Sundays? Well, Café Laya was one of our only choices to get some caffeine before our gold medal match and it was packed. 45 minutes later we finally got our espresso and some bread to make our trusty peanut butter protein and banana toast!
We lost the gold medal match; I was steaming with anger. We didn’t side out and didn’t make plays. Although second place is a great finish it still hurts. Losing does drive us more and more and finishing the event on a loss leaves a sour taste. We showered. I cooled down and tried to gain perspective and got ready for the awards ceremony. We were honored with the silver medals and a giant, sparkly bottle of champagne and bags and bags of stuff!
Sticky from the champagne we made it back to the hotel for dinner and a 4-hour nap before we got up and hit the airport for our 18-hour travel back home. We arrived at the airport ready to check in, check our bags, and get some breakfast. Only to find an error with printing the bag tags. I told the airline rep that my bag tags wouldn’t print so he came to the kiosk to help me. He printed me 3 extra rounds of boarding passes and still no bag tag. Then he told me he didn’t know what to do, checked with his supervisor and they didn’t know what to do, he pointed me in a direction away from him and in a general vicinity to get away from him and figure it out. He said “I honestly have no idea. I can’t help you and I don’t know what you should do”, just what you want to hear after 4 hours of sleep at 5:15 a.m. Kristen printed two bag tags under her name and we crossed our fingers and sent our bags off into the airport abyss.
Kristen was so delirious that she forgot how to eat and started spilling food all over herself and we were only at our first airport of the day! As we were boarding our flight someone said to us “you guys are our favorites”. Then we boarded our next flight and someone snuck up behind me to say he was our biggest fan and we took a rough-looking selfie. He just looked at us and could only say “ahhhhh all the emotions”. Those moments. Those are special. They are so cool; they make up for the rough moments that are bound to happen well worth it.
Hamburg was full of great fans, important lessons, and our first silver medal!
In order to finish the story, it's only fair to add one last piece of adversity. We boarded our final flight from the Big Apple to the Big Easy and we were seated and ready for a nice 2-hour flight until a scent came rushing over us. There was a passenger who had forgotten his deodorant and a shower for the day or month and shared his scent with us for 3 hours plus a 30-minute delay. The stench was nauseating.
The first hour I was laughing to try and make light of the situation, to the point that I was about to pee my pants. The people behind us could read the room and offered Kristen a face mask to protect her nose from the scent. She said, “I am about to plug my nose with my gum”. Y’all it was horrendous! After we were allowed to get up, she searched the plan for an empty seat only to find that they were all full. She tried everything from spraying deodorant all over to cover the scent, she put lip balm in her nostrils, she was literally sitting on top of me to get away. Nothing would mask the smell! With 30 minutes left of the flight, she genuinely looked sick to her stomach from the stench and we needed to get off the plane! I did let out a couple more laughs because it was just the perfect ending to this eventful trip and I was shot with the death glare of all death glares and the giggles stopped.
By: Taryn Kloth
