ArOuNDtH3WorLd...

Just when I thought I had seen rivalries bring out emotion of all kinds in every shape and form from fans, I went to a huge rivalry European football game. Woah. My socks were blown off, and I was picking my jaw up off the ground for more than 3/4 of the game.

I went to one soccer game last year in Maribor, and was hardly impressed. Maribor is a smaller city in terms of Europe in general and therefore doesn’t attract a huge following for sporting events. 

But the rival game between Maribor and Ljubljana, the 2 biggest cities in Slovenia, was coming up and I had a friend who had a friend that played on the team and told me that if I were to see a game this was the only one worth my time here. So I accepted the tickets that were sold out for who knows how long, joined the 12,000 other spectators and felt like I was in a movie the entire time.

When we first walked up there was an overwhelming amount of Police officers surrounding the stadium and in clusters everywhere we went throughout the entire stadium. And not just normal police officers..they were decked out in full fledged helmets with face masks and strapped with guns to do some damage. This was no joking matter.

The two teams have a group of fans that stand the entire time, chant and literally would die for the team(that was the strong vibe they were giving off). Ljubljana’s fans are called the “Green Dragons” and Maribor’s are called “Viola”. Each group is sectioned off and basically corralled like animals and surrounded by police officers and fire fighters.

Our seats were on the end near the Green Dragons and I am pretty sure I watched them 90 percent of the time rather than the game, which was about as interesting as it could get ending in a 2-2 tie. 

I do not even have the words for the things I saw these fans do throughout the entire game. They were constantly throwing fire balls on the field causing massive smoke clouds, ripping their seats apart and throwing them on the field, they hung over the railings taunting whoever and whatever would pay them attention, mostly the police officers, and not to even mention the numerous brave, or better put, crazy, men that would sporadically run across the field and have to be chased and arrested. Unreal. I thought this stuff only happened in movies but I watched it all with my own eyes. 

Extremely awesome experience, and they took team loyalty to a whole other level I didn’t even know existed. 

Annnd in volleyball news: We are currently 4-2 and 2nd in league. We are in the middle of a 2 week break from matches and are just grinding out practices and weight lifting, they are not shy on putting us to work right now, which I can’t complain about :) 

We start up again next weekend against the #1 team in league, Vienna at home and have a great opportunity to bounce back from our last loss on the road. We recently have added back our setter from last year and a new libero from Serbia who is very impressive. It has been fun having new faces in the gym and more competition!