LVBK at Svedala

January 7th was a relatively stressful weekend for me, as my mom was trying to get from Innsbruck, Austria to Munich, Germany, and then up to Copenhagen, Denmark so she could come visit me for a few days here in Sweden. Unfortunately, there was a blizzard in Austria, thus creating a terrible domino effect. She was unable to make her originally scheduled flight, which meant she would miss her train over to me. She called me in a panic and asked me to contact the people at AirBerlin and reschedule her flight for the next day, but since my name wasn’t listed on the ticket, I wasn’t allowed. I called my dad via FaceTime (thank God and Steve Jobs for this amazing technology) while mom was in transit from Innsbruck to Munich to try to figure out the best plan of getting her up to me. 

Oh, did I mention that Thursday and Friday were “holidays”? I say this is quotations strictly because here in Sweden they call January 6th a red day, which means they are free from work, but some places also allow you to leave work early on Thursday; whereas in most of Europe only Epiphany is celebrated (Jan 6). I not only had Mother Nature working against me, but also the three wise men. Note: Epiphany is the Christian holiday that celebrates the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God in human form, as commemorated by the visit from the Biblical Magi to Baby Jesus. 

The girls on my team were so helpful during this time, as my mom was going to need to rebook her flight on AirBerlin (the airline man was NOT helpful at all), rebook a train in Copenhagen (which she would have to do on her own), and then find a way to get to our match on Saturday from Malmö to Svedala (good luck). Luckily, Julle’s parents were driving and offered to pick my mom up from the Malmö train station. My mom had landed in Copenhagen before our team even left Ljungby for the match, so she had quite a bit of time to kill at the train station. Despite her many attempts to call me (AT&T lied about having the fewest dropped calls), we finally were able to piece together a conversation long enough to figure out where and when she could meet Julle’s parents. 

Jo and I cheesing -- photo courtesy of Mom

A few hours later, we were reunited in the Svedala volleyball gym! It was a great match for her to come to, and definitely felt great to have a familiar voice cheering (and sometimes booing) me from the stands. Our team struggled initially, but was able to win 3-0: 25-20, 25-21, 25-21, successfully sweeping Svedala in both matches this season! We were pumped to gain our first road victory of the season. 

Random side note: one of the new professional players on Svedala's team is a Canadian player whom I had played against while in Hungary. She had taken the fall off, but had recently been placed here in Sweden. Talk about a small world!