May 15, 2008

BRNO, Czech Republic - Each day one during its European Tour, one member of the Purdue volleyball team or coaching staff will write about the day's happenings.

Thursday saw the team depart Prague after a four-day stay. After a little more than two hours on a bus, the Boilermakers arrived in Brno where they would spend the day and face their next competition. A short tour of downtown and lunch filled the afternoon hours, before the team headed to the gym to play KP Brno, which finished third in the Czech Republic First Division this year. KP Brno, which had won the division each of the last few years, lost in this year's semifinals to Olymph Praha, whom the Boilermakers played on Wednesday.

The match was highly contested, as all of Purdue's tour matches have been, but KP Brno won the first three games 25-20, 25-20 and 25-19. The teams then agreed to play a fourth game, which Purdue took by a 25-18 score.

Libero Kelly Miller will now take over to fill you in on the rest of the story in Brno.

Thursday - Prague & Brno

We woke up to a wonderful surprise this morning -- we got to pull all of our luggage over 3/4 of a mile up hill in the beating sunshine. Once we reached the top, sweating and out of breathe like we had just done sled pulls, all we wanted was some water. We went to the market and bought water, but it turned out they only sold carbonated water. It was nasty.

From there, we took a two and a half hour bus trip from Prague to Brno. We met a woman in the hotel who played in Wimbledon back many years ago. Her husband also was there signing autographs for his book being sold.

From there, we walked to lunch in the middle of town. There were people dressed up in crazy costumes all around town. Apparently, they were trying to raise money to go to college. Some of us had McDonalds for lunch, but most of us had pizza at this restaurant outside. It was much cheaper than Prague which was nice!

We played some great competition this afternoon. We won one game and lost three, but played better than we had all spring. After the match we were told that we would get to go enjoy the culture at night if we hurried. We have never gotten ready so quickly! As we were trying to get dressed and made up at the hotel, we were using too many hairdryers at one time and ended up blowing a fuse. All of the hairdryers stopped working in our wing of the hotel!

After we all managed to throw ourselves together, we crammed into the tiny hotel elevators and headed to dinner. Tonight after dinner we are planning on going to a local spot with our tour guide, Michael. It should be a lot of fun dancing to their house/r&b remix music. (House=trance/techno music according to our tour guide.) It should be a lot of fun.

P.S. Sam wants everyone to know she is really upset that the hotels never have clocks!

Kelli Miller

#7