Playing Abroad
Anif, Austria is a picturesque municipality south of Salzburg. Farm fields splay out from the town to the foot of Untersberg, a stunning mountain with the typical vertical alpine rise from the valley. Anif is home to the Anif Palace, a famous castle in the middle of a man-made pond, and Anif Futbol Club, now known as the one-time training ground of the unheralded and as yet unknown American international soccer player Rob Harrington.
When I told my college coach I was going to do a semester abroad in Austria, he gave me one condition, “Robbie, you can spend a semester abroad as long as you find a team train with.”
“No problem coach. It’ll be a great experience, the history, the education, the skiing and, oh yeah, the soccer of course.”
I got to Anif in early January. Throughout the first month and a half I studied the people and acclimated myself to the culture by washing down wiener schnitzel with prolific amounts of weiss bier. In between meals, I got in a little skiing, put down some really good goulash and snacked on really big pretzels. The pretzels were salty, which made me thirsty – let’s just just say I was prepared if the soccer team wanted to guzzle a few biers after practice.
My house father hooked me up with a local soccr club. I was nervous before my first night of training. The Anif Futbol Club was everything I had romanticized about European soccer clubs. With its traditional club house and immaculate, manicured grass field, I would be training in a place where soccer is revered and honored. Forget the faintly lined fields with tufts of grass sticking out between weeds on a turf of packed dirt. It was going to be magical.
I showed up for training on a cool March night – the kind of night suggesting a hat and thin gloves you ditch a few minutes into training. I can’t say the players looked at me suspiciously because, actually, they didn’t look at me at all. That, of course, would change once they got to know me. We warmed up with a few passing exercises and then we played. Ah, this is my kind of club, I thought, no boring drills or mindless fitness regimens. Just a few minutes of warm up and start scrimmaging..
I did okay, despite my lack of fitness. I performed my patented 360 degree turn a few times and even scored a goal. I pestered on defense, working as hard as my wiener schnitzel stuffed body would allow. Afterward, the players asked me if I wanted to shower and sauna. “Danke schoen but nein,” I said, thinking, I’m not showering and steaming with a bunch of uncircumcised Austrians.
I missed playing soccer and looked forward to the second night of training. The field, the club, the reverence for soccer – everything was coming together beautifully; I just needed to get fit. Back home, Coach would be proud of me.
As with the first night, we started training with some passing exercises. Then the coach inexplicably put the balls in a bag and yelled out, “Jogge.”
The team jogged across the field. I followed the prompts, imitating my new teammates, soon-to-be friends and, who knows, potential groomsmen at my future wedding to a local Salzburg girl – the beauty stolen away by the charming American soccer player with equal parts grit and grace.
“Renne,” the coach yelled, and everyone turned quickly and sprinted back toward him.
“Jogge,” he commanded and again we turned and jogged across the field.
“Renne,” he bellowed.
This went on for a while. Then he yelled, “Kumpel.” The guy jogging next to me slapped me on the shoulder and jumped on my back, and giddyup I galloped back toward the coach with an Austrian on my back.
“Wechstein!” My teammate dropped off my back and I jumped on his. My German language skills weren’t the best but I’m pretty sure he yelled something like big sausage, which actually was one of the first words I learned when I arrived in Austria. Everyone laughed.
“Wechstein! Wechstein! Wechstein…” I don’t know which was worse, running (loosely speaking) with someone on my back or being called “fat sausage boy” while riding on my partner’s back.
After 30 or 40 minutes of fitness, we finally got a water break. The cold water and cool air on that moonless March night felt good. I felt the endorphins bubbling up and the bier and schnitzel seeping away. As I prepared myself mentally for what I assumed would be the practice-ending scrimmage, I saw other players removing their cleats. “Over?” I asked the player next to me in English, fluttering my hands and arms in my own unique and creative sign language.
“No, we run,” he responded in perfect English.
Many things ran through my head, most of which had something to do with self-pity and self-loathing. I think I also recalled that Hitler was an Austrian at that moment. I thought about screaming “You don’t use soccer balls in Austria?” but I didn’t.
I started running but quickly fell behind. The deserted Anif roads lacked streetlights. The night was silent; my breathing loud. For a short while, I could faintly see my teammates, and hear the patter of their shoes on the pavement. Then they disappeared. Occasionally, a car’s headlights traced their shadowy bodies bobbing in the distance. Then the car would pass and I’d be alone.
I reached what I thought was an intersection, but it was just a driveway. I waited for another car, hoping it would silhouette the team. When a car finally did come, they weren’t there. I kept running, clueless as to where I was, which direction I should take and how to get back to the field. It was dark, prison-break dark. Generally, not one to panic, I nevertheless envisioned a few hours of aimless jogging, passing out and being awoken by circling vultures.
In the distance I saw what looked like the lights of the soccer field. I started running toward them, then ran out of road. I ran across a couple hundred yards of dirt-and-mud farm field. As I prepared to jump over the fence I suddenly realized this was the wrong soccer field, the wrong soccer club, perhaps the wrong country.
To tamp down my panic tinged with shame, I told myself that someday my new friends/teammates and I would share a beer and laughter about my auspicious second night of training. Remember when our star defender Rob got lost in Anif, they would guffaw and we’d all raise our steins to the sky. Here’s to our American friend Rob!
Eventually I found a new road, more lights and, yes, the Anif Futbol Club field. I arrived as the players were walking off the field toward the clubhouse. They must have stretched after that long run, I assumed.
“Do you want to shower and sauna?” they asked.
“Danke schoen, but nein,” I responded. Seriously, I wasn’t prepared for showering and saunaing with foreign men event if they were destined to be my best friends.
Training night three was about as much fun as training night two. I interacted with the players, you know my future groomsmen, by avoiding eye contact. We jogged and stretched, then matriculated to jogging and sprinting. Obviously, in accordance with traditional Austrian practice regimes, piggybacking was next. The night was cool and refreshing. I felt my endorphins firing and felt good about getting fit. Yeah, we were about to run, and yeah, no way I was going to fall behind and get lost again.
Sadly, my legs failed to respond to my pep talk, and the team dropped me quickly. But I stayed focused; I’m no dummy, I told myself, I’ll find the field this time. Running alone, my groomsmen far ahead of me now, I envisioned a different future for me and my new soccer pals. I was no longer hanging out with them but rather sauntering into a bar alone. I spot them sitting together at a big table. I try to avoid eye contact, make myself invisible, but one of them sees me and they all yell out, Hey, look who’s here, it’s lost sausage boy! Then they all burst out laughing.
I reached the intersection with the driveway that looked like a road, ran on for about 100 more yards, then took a right on a different road. I ran another 15 or minutes or so scanning for a familiar landmark. Like the previous night, I saw lights from a soccer field ahead and I ran toward them. Fantastic, it’s our field, told you I’m no dummy. Only problem was I couldn’t find a road that led to the soccer field, which lay on the other side of a farm field. Standing at the wooden fence like the wall-flower at a high school dance, I watched my guys actually playing soccer.
I hopped the fence and ran over to the coach. He smiled, amused at his cute little American clown, and put me in the game. Finally, I get to play soccer again. I was ready to perform, ready to show off some serious “defending fly”[1] shit. About two minutes in, I was hustling my butt off, getting after it on defense, when I collapsed to the ground, my hamstring balled up neatly into an excruciating knot. One of my teammates grabbed my leg and started stretching it. We made eye contact; my first meaningful exchange with a teammate.
“Danke schoen,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he responded.
Practice ended a few minutes later. “Shower and sauna?” they asked.
“Danke schoen, but nein,” I answered. “Why didn’t I shower and sauna?” you ask. Good question. The answer is simple, what was normal to them was, well, foreign to me. Why couldn’t they just invite me for a bier?
By the time training day four rolled around, I was exhausted from day’s one, two and three. But I’m young and tough, I told myself, I will keep up today. I hydrated for 24 hours, watched what I ate. I visualized myself running step for step with my teammates.
As with the other sessions, training began with stretching and jogging. As I mentally prepared for the sprint and piggy-back portion of training, my teammates removed their cleats and began putting on their running shoes. Were we skipping the sprints? I was ecstatic, but played it cool. The run began and the group fell into small packs. I was in the last pack, but, hey, it was a pack! I was running with other people beside me. Trouble is, they just don’t know when to quit. I started to fall behind. Not again, I prayed, please not again. I was running hard now; I felt as though my lungs were ripping open. Then, mercifully – there is a god – one of the players slowed up and started running next to me.
I wanted to hug him, but instead offered up a breathless, “Danke Schoen.”
“I didn’t want you to get lost again,” he replied in perfect English.
When we got to the driveway, the place where I always got discombobulated on the previous nights, my teammate, oddly, turned in. I followed. The drive wrapped around the house, almost like a passage way, and there, less than a quarter mile away, was Anif Futbol Club. I stared at my teammate/savior/future best man in disbelief.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
The entire run was less than a-mile-and-a-half total. I ran about six miles the second night and four the third.
We played soccer that night. I was not fit enough to be my usual annoying fly-like self on defense. And I was not skilled enough to stand out. But I played fine.
“Do you want to shower and sauna?” they asked me.
“Thank you, but no,” I responded in perfect English and never returned. You see, the hypnotic allure of European futbol was little match for Berlin, Paris, Prague, Budapest and The Festival Los Fallas, in Valencia, Spain.
In the fall, when I returned to college, my coach asked, “How was your trip Robbie? Did you find a club to train with?”
Well, Coach, depends on what you mean by the word find, I thought to myself. “Sure did, Coach, the Anif Futbol Club. It was a great experience”.”
[1] My old coach, Craig, nicknamed me the defending fly. He said playing against me was like swatting at a fly that won’t go away. Some have said it also describes my social skills.
