ArOuNDtH3WorLd...

…the GPS says “You have arrived at your destination..” and you look up and are staring at a wall.

This is what happened to us last Thursday when we took a trip to play 2 games in Budapest, Hungary. It was a 4 hour drive to Budapest, we left Maribor in the morning, arrived around 2 to the hotel, ate lunch then departed for the gym 30 minutes ahead of when we needed to be there.

30 minutes went by, we ‘arrived at our destination’ only to realize something just wasn’t right. Unless the Hungarians played volleyball in people’s basements in houses which were to our right, we were way off. 

I’m not exactly sure what happened, but was later told the GPS had a malfunction and when we turned it off, turned it back on and retyped the address back in it re-routed us to the correct destination. As much as we love technology it loves to throw one back in our face every once in awhile for a good laugh.

With Budapest being a city inhabiting about 2,000,000 people and us trying to navigate it right at the peak of rush hour in 2 lane roads each way, we were in for a little bit of an adventure. 

As we navigated our way across town, the destination time on the GPS slowly inched closer and closer to our actual game time as we sat in stop and go traffic.

We finally arrived at the correct place right on time, well right on time if you were planning on being the spectator, except we were the event so we were a mere hour and a half late. We parked and were still not sure which complex it was in, there were several buildings in a close radius that were potential prospects, and this was the first time we had ever been here as these teams are new to our league this year. 

We piled out of the vans and started running around chaotically opening doors bombarding anyone and everyone we saw if they knew where volleyball was. 98 percent of those people looked at us like the crazy flustered people we appeared to be. Thankfully we found a man who was able to direct us in to the correct building. 

They gave us a solid 15 minutes from when we walked in the door until the first whistle to prepare ourselves, it was one heck of a whirlwind. Thankfully the team we were playing had a libero and a setter that were, no joke, just a few years younger than our head coach..which is in the late 30’s. And we were able to win pretty easily in 3 and laugh about the events in the 20 minute drive back to the hotel after the game. 

The next night we played another team in a different part of Budapest. Needless to say, we showed up to this one a full 2 1/2 hours before game time. This team was the exact opposite, and was filled with girls around the age of 20 and younger and were a solid group. We also won this one in 3. :)