http://www.criscom.at Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:32:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://www.criscom.at/svg-ex-socs/international-friendly/comment-page-1/#comment-12258 CRIScom travel experience flow - The personal website of Christoph Potzinger » Blog Archive » Visitors from Holland Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:50:52 +0000 http://www.criscom.at/svg-ex-socs/international-friendly/#comment-12258 [...] Time passes too quickly. We look back now at a memorable weekend which is already more than a week ago. But let me go much further back in order to explain. It was in autumn 1996 when I first met Ben and Rich, sitting in the Cafeteria of a football club close to Manchester City’s Maine Road stadium. That we had a terrible football inclination in common was obvious from the start. We obviously shared a great love for this kind of game. But this was not the only thing we had in common. We also found out that we shared the same accommodation, grand Arosa Hotel, and played for the same university team, Manchester Metropolitan University. Thus we met more often on the football pitch than we did at university, Rich and I playing for the first team, Ben in the third. I would quit the team after a few games but soon we should catch up again in the common room of Arosa hotel or in Flea & Firkin, a pub just across the street from the Humanities Department where I studied. That’s were you can trace the roots of our friendship. We spend a few nights partying hard and after leaving Arosa and Manchester behind we would catch up in wintry Amsterdam in 1997. A surprise visit of Ben and Rich, accompanied by Jessica (the third Dutch to inhibit Arosa), saw them explore the South Styrian wine hills, a Straßenfest in Leibnitz, and one of the legendary parties in our wineyard. It was the summer of the World Cup in France where we watched a 2nd round match between Norway and Italy (as far as I can recall it), sitting under the wine leaves of our country houses’s patio. The boring match was spiced up by a dramatic thunderstorm, which should afflict the region more frequently in the ensuing years. The drama soon blended into a lark-some night and provided the finishing touch to a memorable stay. Thus visits were exchanged over the years, culminating in Ben, Rich and Jessica’s attendance at our wedding in 2008 and - from a football perspective - in a visit of the Ex-Socs to Amsterdam in June 2007. [...] [...] Time passes too quickly. We look back now at a memorable weekend which is already more than a week ago. But let me go much further back in order to explain. It was in autumn 1996 when I first met Ben and Rich, sitting in the Cafeteria of a football club close to Manchester City’s Maine Road stadium. That we had a terrible football inclination in common was obvious from the start. We obviously shared a great love for this kind of game. But this was not the only thing we had in common. We also found out that we shared the same accommodation, grand Arosa Hotel, and played for the same university team, Manchester Metropolitan University. Thus we met more often on the football pitch than we did at university, Rich and I playing for the first team, Ben in the third. I would quit the team after a few games but soon we should catch up again in the common room of Arosa hotel or in Flea & Firkin, a pub just across the street from the Humanities Department where I studied. That’s were you can trace the roots of our friendship. We spend a few nights partying hard and after leaving Arosa and Manchester behind we would catch up in wintry Amsterdam in 1997. A surprise visit of Ben and Rich, accompanied by Jessica (the third Dutch to inhibit Arosa), saw them explore the South Styrian wine hills, a Straßenfest in Leibnitz, and one of the legendary parties in our wineyard. It was the summer of the World Cup in France where we watched a 2nd round match between Norway and Italy (as far as I can recall it), sitting under the wine leaves of our country houses’s patio. The boring match was spiced up by a dramatic thunderstorm, which should afflict the region more frequently in the ensuing years. The drama soon blended into a lark-some night and provided the finishing touch to a memorable stay. Thus visits were exchanged over the years, culminating in Ben, Rich and Jessica’s attendance at our wedding in 2008 and – from a football perspective – in a visit of the Ex-Socs to Amsterdam in June 2007. [...]

]]>